FORT WORTH, Texas – Gospel ministers should be “unafraid” of “messiness” that comes with ministry to women in crisis pregnancies, representatives of Prestonwood Baptist Church said during a chapel service highlighting the Prestonwood Pregnancy Center ministry located on the campus of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.
The center’s executive director Leanne Jamieson said when the Prestonwood Pregnancy Center location opened its new location on campus in January, she and others involved tried to keep expectations realistic, recognizing that news of the new location and its services had to spread. But as of end of June, Jamieson said they have had more than 1,200 client visits with expectant mothers or couples, with 45 choosing to keep their babies just in the first month.
Jonathan Teague, pastor of Prestonwood’s North Campus and an adjunct professor at Southwestern, said the church has had a heart for this ministry ever since Jack Graham came as Prestonwood’s senior pastor in 1989, “casting vision for us as a church about what we should be doing as it relates to the advocacy for the unborn.”
“This is the business of the Lord’s church: to stand right in the middle of all of the spiritual attack in this space and to advocate for the unborn and for these moms and for these stories,” Teague said in the Sept. 25 chapel service. “That’s what we do. We do it into the tune of thousands of stories every year.”
Teague referenced Genesis 1:26, where it states that humans are created in God’s image, and read from Psalm 139 for evidence of the theology involved with the mission of advocating for the unborn.
“‘For you formed my inward parts. You knitted me together in my mother’s womb,’” Teague read from the psalm. “Could the Scripture be more clear about what the Lord thinks about the unborn?”
Teague and Jamieson both encouraged students to be prepared to emphasize the biblical importance of the sanctity of life in their current and future ministries, and to stay current on the issue as they may one day serve in states where abortion is legal and even promoted.
Despite the overturning of Roe v. Wade by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2022, which allowed trigger laws in Texas and some other states to make abortion illegal instantaneously, Jamieson pointed out that access to at-home options through online sources is making abortion easy to obtain.
“Back when I started 10 years ago, we were still having discussions in the sonogram room about whether or not that child on that ultrasound screen was a baby,” Jamieson said. “Do you know that no longer is the discussion? The discussion now centers around, ‘What is this going to do to my life?’”
Jamieson said the center is more than a medical clinic offering care, counsel and resources like diapers and bottles.
“We know that there are immediate needs that that young woman or that young couple may have, and we’re going to address those felt needs, but eventually we’re going to get to their true need, and that’s the need of a Savior,” Jamieson said.
The ministry provides an opportunity to meet people where they are, often at their most vulnerable, she said.
“Sometimes it’s the first time they’ve truly felt seen,” Jamieson said. “We get to ensure that they feel love, and they get truth, and that truth is wrapped with mercy, grace, and His love.”
Teague explained the reason Prestonwood started its own pregnancy centers instead of joining existing ones was so the church could hold on to its doctrinal convictions as it uses the centers’ services as opportunities to address the more important spiritual needs.
“At the end of the day, it flows from the preaching and the proclamation of the Word,” Teague said of the ministry. “And because of that, we’re able to love these women that come to the center well, not only from a medical perspective, but really from a soul perspective as well.”
Teague encouraged male and female students to consider volunteering at the pregnancy center, pointing out their seminary education is about orthopraxy as well as orthodoxy.
“If you’re serious about loving people and bringing people to Jesus, then you’ll use every effective means possible, biblically and righteously, to get where people are and be unafraid with the messiness that comes from that,” he said.
Teague expressed gratitude for the “warmth and the friendship and the openness on the part of the leadership of the seminary” that has allowed the pregnancy center to operate on the south part of the campus in a building on Townsend Drive.
At the end of the chapel service, attendees gathered in groups to pray for the center and the individuals who come for help.
Prestonwood Pregnancy Center ministries began about 35 years ago, and across their original two locations and one mobile unit serve about 32,000 clients a year, with about 86 percent of those who arrive with abortion in mind deciding to choose life. About 200 individuals made decisions to be followers of Christ in the various locations last year.
The chapel service can be viewed here.
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