Can a local church be both pro-life and Christian in its gospel proclamation? Scott Klusendorf put that question to Mike Spencer, who spoke for years on the Life Training Institute team, going into schools and pregnancy center banquets. Mike now leads Project Life Voice, a gospel-driven human rights ministry that equips and inspires pro-life ambassadors to speak compellingly and act sacrificially on behalf of the preborn. He speaks at banquets, at pastors’ luncheons and breakfasts, and in high schools. He is also the author of Humanly Speaking.
The Seeker-Sensitive Detour
From the mid-1990s until quite recently, there was a big push for churches to market their church growth strategy as seeker sensitive, or seeker friendly. The idea was that when you preach on Sunday morning to your largest audience, you choose your topics carefully, and you choose topics that appeal to seekers. Scott considers it one of the most disastrous things to happen for the gospel and for the pro-life cause.
Mike agrees. The seeker-sensitive movement was catastrophic for the health of the church at large, and certainly for the preborn. The strategy was all about being sensitive to those who were seeking. But if they are seeking the truth, why hide it from them, especially on a moral issue as major as abortion?
It has also had an effect on the pastorate. Not to paint with a broad brush, but it has largely turned the pastoral role into a marketplace of egos, where shepherds are more interested in building a megachurch and building their brand than in fulfilling the primary duty of the shepherd: to protect the flock.
Why Pastors Stay Silent
Why are pastors reluctant to take on abortion? Is it only brand building, or are there deeper reasons? Mike sees several.
Fear. There is the fear of appearing too political, since we have been told for decades that the church can’t be involved in politics in any way. There is the fear of diverting attention from the gospel, which is a ridiculous thing, because standing for life is the gospel in action. And there is the fear of dividing the flock. That one has always interested Mike. If the flock is divided over a subject like abortion, that is not a reason to remain silent. At that point, a pastor is only protecting division. He is not protecting unity. If the flock is divided, the shepherd ought to be asking why his church is divided over such a major moral issue. Division over abortion should become his marching orders, not his reason to remain silent.
Apathy. Mike has a friend in the Detroit area where he grew up, not a pastor but very discerning, who told him something years ago he has never forgotten: “I’ve come to the conclusion that the pastoral role is the easiest job in the world for a man with no integrity, and the hardest job in the world for a man with an abundance of it.” In every career field there are people who don’t care about those they work with or for. Some teachers don’t care about their students. Some doctors don’t care about their patients. And sadly, too many shepherds don’t care about the flock and are not willing to speak up for them.
A lack of confidence in the gospel. Probably not the last reason, but a third: a real lack of confidence in the gospel and in the sufficiency of Christ’s atoning sacrifice. This has deeply affected how pastors view abortion. If we really believe the gospel we claim to believe, we will not shrink back from sharing it. The gospel is what everyone in the abortion debate needs: the unborn, who need our protective gospel voice; the abortionist, who needs our prophetic gospel witness; the post-abortive couple, who need the hope the gospel provides; and the couple burdened with guilt over previous abortion decisions, who need the forgiveness the gospel provides.
Fear, apathy, and a lack of confidence in the gospel and in the sufficiency of Christ. Those are the three big reasons.
Known for What We’re For
Scott has heard clergy say, “We don’t want to talk about abortion because we want to be known for what we’re for, not what we’re against.” How do you answer that shepherd?
It is the “better to light a candle than curse the darkness” kind of thinking. But when the threat is as menacing as abortion, when the evil is that dark, we can do both. We can curse the darkness and we can light a candle.
The idea that speaking out against abortion means being defined only by what we are against, and not by what we are for, is ridiculous. Jesus was against a lot of things. He was against adultery. He was against gossip and slander. He was against hypocrisy, and he was against mistreating children.
If a wolf attacks your flock, you shouldn’t worry about how you are going to be perceived. You had better be anti-wolf with a vengeance, and not concern yourself that your family, friends or neighbors will misunderstand your stand against the wolf as you not being pro-sheep. It is a silly objection. And that standard is never applied to other sins. If we were talking about sex trafficking, nobody would ever say, “Well, I don’t want to be against that.”
Mike puts it simply: “I’m against abortion because I’m for children. I’m against abortion because Jesus is against abortion.”
What Silence Does to the Church
We all know clerical silence on abortion harms the unborn. How does it harm the local church?
Pastoral silence is damaging the church’s gospel witness in America, and there is no doubt about that. What is a watching world to think of professing Christians who speak adoringly, even worshipfully, of Christ, the lover of children, but then don’t love the children he loves enough to speak up for them or to sacrifice for them? It is a weak position, to say the least. If we love the preborn, we are going to be a voice for the preborn.
Mike has pastored churches, so he knows where these men are coming from; he has sat in their chair. Scott knows it too, because he once preached on abortion at Mike’s church, and may have played a role in getting Mike driven out of it. That, and the fact that Scott, describing a pro-abortion argument he found particularly disingenuous, got a little animated and, as Mike reminds him, actually did say the word “crap” in the middle of a sermon.
Four Duties of a Pro-Life Shepherd
So what does a pro-life church look like? Mike starts with John 10: the good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. Boil the shepherd’s job description down to two words and you get sheep protector. He protects the flock from gossip and slander, from false teachers and false doctrine, and from evil men who dress up like respectable doctors and threaten the children under his pastoral care. What we need in the pulpit and in the church are shepherds who are offended by abortion, who take the threat against the children under their care personally. Mike sees four primary duties.
First, lead the congregation in prayer for the preborn. Not on Wednesday night, when the faithful twelve are there, but on Sunday morning, when the big crowd is there. Our churches pray for the sick, the elderly, our shut-ins, our missionaries, and our politicians, even the ones we don’t like, especially the ones we don’t like. But very few churches today pray for the preborn. Walk into the average Catholic or evangelical church and hear the shepherd praying from the pulpit for the preborn, for their mothers, and for the abortionist, that he would come to Christ, and it would be shocking. It ought to be the norm. We should pray for them from our pulpits so often that nobody in the congregation thinks it strange.
Second, equip the flock. Teach human dignity so the congregation can engage the culture persuasively. We have all heard it said: if it’s going to be caught, it has to be taught. Mike points to Scott’s book, The Case for Life, and its section on the role of pastors, on whether congregations will magically absorb the doctrine of the Imago Dei. If it’s going to be caught, it has to be taught.
Third, expose abortion from the pulpit for the evil that it is. Ephesians 5:11 gives us our marching orders: have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them. Congregations need to see what abortion does to children. When Mike speaks in churches he is frequently allowed to show a one-minute victim imagery video, the same one Scott uses. The congregation does not see an abortion being performed, but they see its effects in all three trimesters. It is difficult to see. But we often need to see things that are difficult to see, because few things awaken moral intuitions like an image.
When he shows it, Mike does three things. He gives people the opportunity to look away, though he encourages them to watch. He explains why he is showing it: not to shock or manipulate, but to educate, and to bring our emotions into alignment with our heavenly Father’s emotions. Our hearts ought to break for what breaks his, and if we don’t see abortion, we are not likely to be broken over abortion. And he brings the gospel to bear on the ugliness of abortion, making clear that there is no sin, including the sin of abortion, so bad that the grace of God through Jesus Christ is not greater still.
Fourth, lead those impacted by abortion decisions to the One who died to forgive them. When the pulpit goes silent, the shepherd is communicating one of two messages, both regrettable and both damaging: either abortion is not so bad, or the gospel is not so good, or both. We can do better. We are to speak the truth in love, and when we do, we lead those who have been burdened by guilt and shame, perhaps for years, to the One who died to forgive them. John 8:36 is clear: if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.
A pastor, Mike says, is something like a police officer or a fireman. He has the ability to save lives, and to lead those whose lives have been wrecked by previous abortion decisions to where they can find real forgiveness and real healing.
That matters, Scott adds, because so many clergymen tell him they don’t want to be distracted from the main thing. The main thing is the gospel, the Great Commission, and they don’t want to bring a political issue into it.
Abortion as a Faith Builder
Chapter 11 of Humanly Speaking has a whole section on unmuting the pulpit, and it speaks of abortion as a faith builder issue. To some that sounds like an oxymoron.
Mike explains it this way. Teaching apologetics, whether Christian apologetics in general or pro-life apologetics, builds faith in believers. When they are taught good reasons to believe what we teach and claim to believe, they feel more confident sharing it. Mike sees this with adults, and he sees it with youth. When they see good, robust arguments for the sanctity of human life, presented in a compelling way, it inspires them and encourages them to go out and become a voice for the voiceless. This is not a theory. Students stand in line for a long time afterward, as do adults, expressing gratitude for what they are being taught.
It is good for unbelievers too. When they see that we can speak compellingly and intelligently and present a good argument for our position, they are left to think that maybe we have something important to say about other important issues, like the gospel, forgiveness and eternity.
Mike shares a line from J. Gresham Machen, who battled theological liberalism at Princeton over a century ago: “False ideas are the greatest obstacles to the reception of the gospel. We may preach with all the fervor of a reformer, and yet succeed only in winning a straggler here and there, if we permit the whole collective thought of the nation to be controlled by ideas which prevent Christianity from being regarded as anything more than a harmless delusion.”
Scott says it absolutely nails it. And it can be broadened: shepherds need to teach not only on abortion and the doctrine of the Imago Dei, but on defending the Christian faith itself. Apologetics is that important a faith builder. Mike knows it has had that impact on his own life, and he is grateful for those who invested in him that way.
From Moral Truth to the Gospel
Their common friend Greg Koukl has a great way of putting this. When people tell Greg that apologetics never saved anybody, he reminds them that preaching never saved anybody either. Loving people doesn’t save them. Acts of mercy don’t save them. Without the Holy Spirit moving, nothing works. But with the Spirit, a lot of things work: apologetics, preaching, loving.
Some Christian circles hold that until a person is converted, he will never see moral truth. Scott thinks that is false. It is not a biblical view, and it is not true in practice. Sometimes it works the other way: people are awakened to moral truth, and that points them to their need for the gospel.
Hadley Arkes is an example. A secular Jew, he wrote voluminously against moral relativism. He was a good guy writing against relativism, but he was a secular atheist. One day it dawned on him that if he was arguing for objective moral rules, they had to come from someplace. Objective moral rules need an objective moral lawgiver. That pointed him to Christian theism, and he converted well over a decade ago.
That is apologetics raising the curiosity threshold, so that people start to wonder what else is worth hearing. Scott has had many conversations about the bodily resurrection of Jesus and our need for atonement for our sins. Once you convince someone that moral truth is real and knowable, it is not a hard leap to ask whether people who commit moral crimes ought to be punished. If the answer is yes, you are right on the threshold of the gospel. Ask whether theyshould be punished for their moral crimes, and there is only one option: either they will pay for them, or a substitute will. At that point you are right through the door of the gospel.
Hadley Arkes is one of Mike’s favorite authors. And to the pastors who say they are not about social issues but about the gospel, Mike says: if you are really about the gospel, go hang out outside an abortion clinic. You will have more opportunities to share the gospel there than anywhere else. When Mike tells a seatmate on an airplane what he does, the conversation naturally leads to matters of life and death, heaven and hell. It is a natural segue, Scott agrees, and too many people shun it, thinking it is a distraction.
Students Can Handle It
Scott hears it in Christian schools: students today aren’t capable of following and engaging a robust, intellectually grounded pro-life argument.
Mike calls that a ridiculous thought. When he speaks at a school assembly, students stand in line afterward to talk to him. They can’t get enough of it. They want it, they need it, and they need to be equipped. The conventional wisdom says students can’t sit for more than a 20-minute talk. When Mike negotiates with a high school administrator who offers him 35 minutes, he asks for 45, and he is told the students will have a hard time listening. They never do. When they hear the truth exposing the evil of abortion and an argument rationally proclaimed, they are intrigued, even the students on the other side of the issue.
They need it. People like Charlie Kirk, God bless him, Allie Beth Stuckey, Michael Knowles and others are filling a vacuum created by silent shepherds, by cowardly shepherds. Mike sees the impact Charlie Kirk had, and continues to have, on our youth, even though he is gone now, and he loves it. But that impact should have come, and should come, from our local churches and our local pastors.
If only it had, Scott says.
A Charge to Pastors
Mike is grateful for the shepherds who do speak out. They are out there, and he has the privilege of meeting them. But he would encourage every pastor with this: if we could just raise the moral status of the preborn in our churches to enemy status, maybe this whole thing would go away. Jesus told us to love our enemies, to do good to our enemies, to pray for our enemies. If we would just treat the preborn as our enemies, think how much better things would be for them.
And he asks pastors to think of it this way. When we see the preborn and their mothers as Christ does, as fellow precious image bearers, then speaking up for them and sacrificing for them is no longer a begrudging duty. It becomes the grand privilege of our pastoral ministries. It is a joy. It should be a joy for us to run to that pulpit in defense of the preborn, and in defense of their young moms and dads who often feel cornered by life circumstances.
This is a great opportunity. Let’s not miss it.
Mike’s book, Humanly Speaking, is available on Amazon. Scott can’t think of a better resource for equipping you to engage your church on abortion, or to give to your pastor to strengthen his fortitude in addressing it.