Just as first responders and hospital staff are “essential” in their life-saving work, so is pregnancy help in its intervention effort. Just like a lack of equipped and available healthcare leads to lives lost, so does the lack of proactive pregnancy help! We are essential to lives being saved, hearts being healed, and futures being rescued.
As abortion practitioners try to defend that their practice is both a “choice” – which in medical parlance means elective – and essential at the same time, the work of pregnancy help remains critical to the local community.
Amid “stay at home” orders and reduced common services, many pregnancy centers are finding footing focusing on maintaining, and maximizing as best as possible, their core mission. Moving parenting and childbirth classes online helps address less essential services, practice social distancing, and make more room for continued outreach to at-risk clients.
Clarity in mission helps us make better decisions in a crisis – whether sheltering in place or dealing with a shortfall in funding. The mission of pregnancy centers is not to operate a pregnancy center! It is to reach those facing life-and-death decisions about their pregnancy with the Gospel of Life! The pregnancy center is but a method.
Just like the church building is not the church, the pregnancy center is not pregnancy help. Sure it helps. It’s convenient. But the mission is bigger than any one method. And these times are revealing that the mission can, and must, happen in different and innovative new ways to meet changes in our culture, community, and country.
Clarity of mission brings clarity in leadership.
Here at Heartbeat, we’ve been telling everyone, including ourselves to “Stay on target!”
Our “target” is both the at-risk woman – which we serve through Option Line and, possibly, through Abortion Pill Rescue Network – and the pregnancy help community which is called to champion life in the same life-affirming way.
Our original target in April was our 49th Annual Conference, set for Seattle, Washington. Our plans were changed for us, but we are working hard to “stay on target” by altering our in-person conference, 2020 Vision, into a virtual experience. Like all of the pregnancy help movement, we’re gaining new footing, learning new capabilities, and understanding new opportunities in a hurry so that we can serve the pregnancy help movement of today, for the mission we will most certainly need tomorrow.
While we’re in the midst of the Coronavirus craziness we must also look beyond it to realize what lies ahead. The short-term reality is that the baby boom that will certainly happen 9 months from now will be preceded by an abortion boom in the coming weeks. We’ll all need to sharpen our outreach, and seize the opportunity to strengthen our outcomes for what comes next. Beyond battling the abortion industry in a few weeks is realizing they’ve been changing the game and we need more insights, information, and inspiration to rise to the challenge.
Today's preparation determines tomorrow's achievement! We’re determined to be as prepared as possible so we can rescue as many lives as possible. That’s why in just two weeks we’ll be hosting our full conference—online. It’s a time to follow in Joseph’s footsteps and realize that what was “intended to harm,” God can use “for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.” (Gen 50:20)
2020 Vision is necessary to see clearly where we are, where we need to go, and how we need to get there. This conference will be a great way to turn mandatory time at home into a critical training endeavor to be fully armored for the missional adventure ahead.
Oh, and the (newer) name of the original Star Wars movie? A New Hope! That’s what we need now, and want for the future. So stay on target!
The information in this article is accurate as of its publication date. We are working to keep our articles up-to-date as changes surrounding COVID-19 occur, and we encourage everyone to check the CDC, WHO, and their local authorities as the situation is ever-evolving.
