Churches encouraged to ‘embrace grace’

Nationwide ministry assists single mothers and single fathers

BY DIANA CHANDLER

nmarried mother Lila DiBias was afraid and ashamed. She’d become pregnant just a month before the Covid-19 pandemic and hadn’t been able to attend church when she needed it most.

Her son, John, was 7 months old when she returned to Fruit Cove Baptist Church in Jacksonville, Florida. That’s when she learned of Embrace Grace, an international Christian ministry for single women facing unplanned motherhood and single men facing fatherhood.

DiBias found a friend in Fruit Cove’s Embrace Grace leader Windy Keene, a married mother who had been single and pregnant decades earlier at 17.

“She changed my life,” DiBias said of Keene, “and I truly wouldn’t be in the place that I’m in now if it weren’t for her, because she just showed me the grace of God, quite literally.

“The more she learned about me and my situation and my son, the more I learned about her and I realized how passionate she was about this group and helping the girls, and how big of a love for God that she had in wanting to tell us that he just wanted to love us with open arms, not just them and the leaders.”

Keene sees a responsibility for the church as a whole in responding to the needs of mothers as well as the unborn.

“As a church we are really great at being anti-abortion. Women are abortion-minded because of life’s uncertainties or their situation. When they choose life, all of those fears and anxieties come to fruition,” Keene said. “As a church we have to make sure that we’re coming alongside them. We can’t just be pro-life; we have to be pro-love. And programs like Embrace Grace help the church to facilitate just that.”

Starting a pro-love movement

Embrace Grace cofounder and president Amy Ford understands the plight of unwed mothers. She has been married 23 years to her “high school sweetheart” Ryan, the father of the child the two considered aborting when Ford was 19.

At that time, abortion seemed a quick fix. She scheduled the abortion, went to the clinic and paid for the procedure. “When I went in and they were telling me how they were going to do the procedure, I ended up hyperventilating and passing out in the abortion room,” Ford said.

“One of the nurses said, ‘You’re too emotionally distraught to make this decision today. You can come back another day, but today you are not getting an abortion.’”

She and Ryan decided to keep their son, now 23-year-old Jess, and prepared for the disappointment they expected from their parents. “We decided to get married because we knew we wanted to get married someday, not necessarily in this order, but we had decided to get married when I was 16 weeks pregnant.”

Ryan asked a pastor who earlier led him to the Lord to perform the ceremony, but the pastor refused, citing Ryan’s and Amy’s sin (He later apologized).

“We were like, ‘Oh my gosh, we are such horrible people. We can’t even get married and be blessed.’” They found another pastor to perform the nuptials. Realizing the power of the church, Ford surmised how her experience might have been different had she consulted a church instead of an abortion clinic.

“But because no one ever really talked to me about this issue, plus with my own shame, it was the last place I wanted to go to.

“We want to change that, and we want the church to be one of the first places a girl runs to in that situation instead of the last, because of shame and guilt. So we (she and Ryan) started Embrace Grace.”

Ford calls Embrace Grace a “prolove movement.”

“We believe pro-life is a stance, it’s a belief system,” she said, “but pro-love is the action.... We have to be the church in this situation and welcome these girls in, and say we’re going to walk with you, and no single mom should have to walk alone.”

DiBias describes the unexpected open arms she experienced when she began attending Embrace Grace at Fruit Cove Baptist.

“The welcome arms I was received with was just overwhelming,” DiBias said. “I think more (pregnant girls) would be there if we didn’t feel so scared by the church...because you can’t control what people are going to think or what they’re going to say.”

Women learn of Embrace Grace support groups through the Love Boxes the ministry leaves at pregnancy care centers for patients, and are sometimes referred through word-of-mouth. At least 454 pregnancy care centers have participated since Embrace Grace was founded, distributing the boxes featuring a letter of hope, a journal and such gifts as onesies and a motivational book featuring testimonies from other single mothers.

“It’s a really powerful curriculum. It’s not over their heads, but yet, we know that there’s healing that’s happening in their hearts... even their identity and their value and their worth in Jesus.”

How to start a group

Embrace Grace has 700 support groups in 49 states and 10 international countries. Embrace Legacy, the support group launched in March for men, has about 40 groups in the U.S.

To start a group, pastors sign an agreement form to conduct the ministry at church. Embrace Grace sends mentoring curriculum and digital training. The only costs to churches are printed materials and class accessories, with costs averaging $30 per participant in the average class size of five. If churches are unable to cover the costs, materials are provided at no charge.

Contact EmbraceGrace.org.

Diana Chandler is senior writer for Baptist Press.

Sanctity of life extends to streets and sidewalks

Rising violence presents new challenges for pastors and preachers in the living room of the parsonage surrounded by woods and a hunter’s slug came through the window.

(Editor’s note: With 797 murders in 2021, the homicide rate in Chicago is at its worst in more than 30 years. The violence including shootings and bystanders and children has created an atmosphere of fear.

We asked two Chicago-area pastors to take on this issue, and what the church can do in this troublesome environment. Nathan Carter is pastor of Immanuel Baptist Church near downtown. Bryan Price is pastor of Love Fellowship Baptist Church in suburban Romeoville. Both men are IBSA Zone Consultants in Chicagoland.)

Nathan Carter: I remember visiting Cairo, Egypt, several years ago. Our hotel was guarded by men with machine guns. At a café I had a conversation with someone and told him I was from Chicago. He said he could never live there because it was too violent!

Church, doing enough to preserve the lives of people that God values?

I am certain what happened down the street from my church pales in comparison to what my brothers in the heart of the city deal with regularly. Still, whether one’s ministry is in the city or suburbs, the violence that pervades Chicagoland touches all of us. Based on the words of Jesus in Matthew 6:10, I believe the Church is called to share the burden of bringing some semblance of peace wherever violence persists.

What that looks like, I am not always sure.

Carter: I think a robust theology of the body that comes from doctrines like Creation, Incarnation, and Resurrection has to undergird all our pro-life positions and behavior. Our church tries to call people to faithful presence in a place—embodied embeddedness. Covid has not helped this. It’s easier to try to exist as disembodied souls in cyberspace, worked up about internet controversies, disengaged from real neighbors, and not rooted in one place.

Technology, if we’re not careful, can keep us from seeing other people as humans and this I think has to be a part of the uptick in inhumane violence in our city.

Price: I wholeheartedly agree that Covid has exacerbated personal disengagement, plunging us further into the depths of self-centeredness, self-absorption, and self-satisfaction. When one’s only concern is about oneself, how will that person see the God-given value in other people?

This is the core notion of the sanctity of human life, the understanding that every human being has intrinsic value in the eyes of God.

Whether a baby in the womb, the drug dealer on the corner, or the elderly person in the nursing home, God loves each one equally and calls us to do the same. And the church, as “the pillar and foundation of truth,” must champion this concept (1 Tim. 3:15).

Sadly, there really is no such thing as safety here. But because we have the hope of eternal life, we can lay down our lives to show that others’ lives matter.

Price: Though some places are safer than others, I agree, there is no such thing as complete safety. Whether one lives in the city, suburbs, or the sticks, as it were, the potential for violence is anywhere sinful human beings exist.

Sometimes I get the same reaction from friends and family who live in places like Cairo, Illinois. When I first moved to my current urban neighborhood over 16 years ago, I remember having the thought that I might be a martyr. And I have seen some crazy stuff over the years. But here I am, still living and ministering in this great city.

Br yan Price: Regarding the perception of Chicago, I have had similar experiences. And while Chicago is a world class city with so much good to offer, there is truth to what people hear.

This past summer a young man was shot and killed by another young man, both from the same suburban neighborhood. The incident took place just a short walk from the church where I pastor. We learned later that both boys, though not members of our church, had attended our Vacation Bible School consistently three years in a row while in their early teens.

I could not help but ask myself, and our church, what we could have done better to prevent such an awful occurrence? Are we, the

Carter: As we were writing this, a 71-year-old man was shot 22 times in the middle of the day in front of a school not too far from our church as he was walking to pick up a paper. Some of our members knew his family. He was the father-inlaw of a local pastor we know.

We prayed about this during our prayer meetings, and we make space in our services to do this every week. I bring realities like this into my sermons as they fit in my regular program of expository preaching (and they fit regularly!). But the main thing I do is encourage people to keep living here in order to be part of re-weaving the social fabric and try to model this kind of faithful presence.

I remind our people to keep loving their neighbors through their vocations and involvement in the neighborhood, and to keep being vocal with the gospel. I encourage them with the vision of the New City we’ve been promised (Zech. 8:4-5; Rev. 21-22). And I point them to God’s sovereignty.

One time one of our families was in their living room watching TV and a stray bullet came through the window and lodged in the back of the couch. That next week I was talking with another IBSA pastor who had previously served in a rural church. One night his family was sitting

And while a family with children—or an elderly couple–may move from one community to another in hopes of finding “safer” surroundings, to leave must not mean abandon.

Just because I do not live in a particular community or belong to a particular people group does not mean that I have no responsibility to care for that community or people group.

Our church takes this to heart by engaging in ministry both in our local community and in the city. In my preaching, I often remind God’s people that if we tout the sanctity of human life once a year, with a narrow view of a concept that covers a broad range of scenarios, then we have missed the mark.

I am glad to report that there are several IBSA churches north of Interstate 80, both in the city and suburbs, where the sanctity of human life is evident, not just by what they say, but by their actions.

Those churches feed hundreds of families each month because they believe in the sanctity of human life. They serve and support crisis pregnancy centers because they believe in the sanctity of human life. They collaborate with local police to end gun violence and human trafficking because they believe in the sanctity of human life.

I praise God for that.

Churches pursue vital campus partnerships

BY GRACE LILLPOP

would not be where I am today were it not for the people who discipled me when I was in college,” said Tyler Baggett, associate pastor at Lincoln Avenue Baptist Church in Jacksonville, about the significance of college ministry when he was a student.

College students today need the support of other Christ-centered people now more than ever, he said.

“It is such a pivotal time in the lives of young people and you’re trying to figure out what your entire life will look like,” Baggett said, “As a Christian, you’re discerning God’s will in that process.” Baggett joined the Jacksonville church staff in 2019 and leads the college ministry. Since then, he has been learning the challenges and triumphs of mentoring young adults. “I think it is tough! Few students decide to join a church but are involved in a variety of ministries. It’s important that churches have a mindset of serving students no matter where or how they are involved.”

Ethan Williams is a student in the ministry Baggett leads. “One of the reasons I think many college students stop attending church is because they haven’t been properly instilled with the importance of being in a local church, so they put off finding one and it becomes a habit.”

Juggling a full-time sophomore-year schedule while maintaining good grades, friendships, and extra curriculars can feel overwhelming, Williams said. But a full schedule only increases the need for students to be involved in a community of believers.

“Attending a college ministry is a great way to meet people in your peer group who can become fast friends and fellow disciples, who, at the same time, are able to encourage you in your Christian walk,” Williams said.

Because students are only in college for a short period of time, that makes it difficult to strengthen those relationships long term. Baggett advises building on those connections

CAMPUS cont’d P. 12