LOCALLY SOURCED
When Babies Save Moms—from College Church to the World Sarah Lindquist
Mark Nicholson of PassionLife Ministries visited College Church in July and shared global accounts of outreach, witnessing and discipleship to families in crisis pregnancies, and of babies saved and mothers believing in Jesus. The stories of God’s providence and Christians reaching out to meet physical and spiritual needs were truly inspiring. I was so encouraged and reminded that the Holy Spirit’s power enables Christ’s followers across cultures as they “Rescue those who are being taken away to death; hold back those who are stumbling to the slaughter.” (Proverbs 24:11)
as they receive much attention. They were able to see that God had answered their previous prayers for a son. Mark Nicholson has observed firsthand that after a generation of effective propaganda, most Chinese couples today want one child or even no children. In July 2021, all government limits on children were abolished as China faces serious demographic consequences of intrenched abortion and imbalance of a significantly larger young male population when so many baby girls were not allowed to be born. In the midst of these dark circumstances, God is working! In one city, Christians are able to provide counseling in a hospital to women who are there for an abortion. Medical staff agreed that women in crisis who don’t want to have abortions but are afraid because of their circumstances should receive practical help instead of abortion. In another city, the first Christians a Muslim women ever met have provided counsel and material assistance. Her doctor told her to abort her naturally occurring quadruplets but she now witnesses that “The Christians helped us with how to make it work.”
Local Leaders Multiplying Ministry
Origins: China PassionLife Ministries began in 2012 but has its roots in one of the College Church China study teams. This China study team held weekly all-night prayer sessions that included asking God to pierce the darkness of abortion and “gender”cide in China. Providentially, American pastor John Ensor chose to take twoweek family vacation to visit his daughter Megan who was on this team. Pastor Ensor had the opportunity to share with a group of Chines pastors what God’s Word said about the value of human life. The local pastors’ tears and promises to save the unborn resulted in babies saved within days as the pastors reached out to women in crisis pregnancies. A Christian couple who had already defied the one child policy with the birth of their second girl were distressed and lacking faith when unexpectedly pregnant for a third time. With a pastor’s counsel and church material provision, they kept their triplet boys and testify widely to others
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PassionLife focuses on training local pastors in what the Bible says about life, life in the womb, shedding innocent blood, gospel grace setting people free from past abortion, and God’s calling to prevent abortion. The training session covers theology, scientific/medical content, and moral philosophy instruction. Practical tools such as medical models of a pre-born baby, phone apps showing fetal development, and a compact ultrasound wand that can be used with a phone or tablet are distributed. PassionLife introduces examples of crisis pregnancy intervention but leaders are encouraged to implement outreach in whatever manner makes sense in their culture and community. After the day of training, leaders are encouraged to reteach the material within 10 days to someone new. After PassionLife training in Vietnam, Christians were inspired to conduct a six-month Bible study on sanctity of life and then translated the information into minority languages of their Hmong neighbors. During the 2020 lockdown, 30,000 Vietnamese Christians were trained by their fellow Vietnamese leaders to protect life.
New Life in Christ “Crisis pregnancy is globally the most common crisis across all races, geographical regions, religions, socioeconomic levels, all
