Equipping Our Youth Pastors

There’s a reason why a lot of Christians have abortions.

High schoolers who go to church think about abortion.

This is the third post in a four-part series on preventing abortion in the church. These posts are reprinted with the author’s permission from https://www.care-net.org/abundant-life-blog/what-every-pastor-can-do-to-prevent-abortions-in-their-congregation-pt-2

Last year I presented a new speech called Why Every Teenager Should Be Equipped In Pro-Life Apologetics at a homeschool conference in Atlanta. Before my talk began, I spoke with a few of the first people to sit down, and one of them was a youth pastor from Alabama.  Even though there were nine other workshops going on at the same time, he came to this one because he said that he had a responsibility to equip teenagers to defend their views and was interested in what I had to say.  I told him that I was so glad he came, and then began my speech.

During the Q&A session I answered a question about when parents ought to tell their kids about abortion, and then I shared what I think youth pastors should do about this issue.

There are high schoolers who think about abortion. The number one age demographic that has the most abortions are college students, but high school students are number three[1], because obviously it’s a pretty big, scary thing when you’re a teenager with an unplanned pregnancy. And that happens with Christians.  In fact, there’s a reason why a lot of Christians have abortions even though they know that abortion is wrong: it’s a much bigger deal in a lot of churches.

At this point I looked directly at the youth pastor in the audience, and said:

If you take anything from this speech, please have a youth group and a church that everyone knows that if someone gets pregnant, we’re going to love that kid. We’re going to love that student, we’re going to be there for them, there’s not going to be a scarlet letter, we’re not going to kick them out of the youth group because we’re terrified of what they’re going to do, but instead we’re going to get around this person and help her choose life.  Because there are thousands of Christian teenagers that are having abortions, who know they’re killing a baby, and are wrecked after it but they do it because they’re afraid of what happens if their parents find out, they’re afraid of what happens if their youth pastor finds out, their youth group finds out, they’re afraid of being judged and teased and all that stuff, and no one better than parents and youth pastors to prevent that, but that is a cultural revolution that has to happen across this country!

Unlike some other pro-life church activities, this change would need to come from the top down.  It would need to be the pastor taking initiative to talk to the church body about what will happen in the future if someone in the church gets pregnant out of wedlock, so if a woman gets pregnant later, she will then know that her church (or youth group) is a safe place for her and her baby.

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If you think you are pregnant and want someone to talk to, we can help you. We will provide free pregnancy testing, vitamins and an ultrasound (if you qualify). Don’t be afraid to ask for help.  If you are a youth pastor and need more information about how to talk about abortion we can help.