Graham announced the Stand for Life Conference will be held in collaboration with other organizations Jan. 18-19, 2023, in Washington, D.C., on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Roe ruling. The event is intended to unify pro-life leaders and organizations, as well as the church, to strengthen the movement for a new generation, she said.
Kevin Smith, teaching pastor of Family Church in West Palm Beach, Fla., and vice chairman of the ERLC’s trustees, encouraged Southern Baptists to engage sinful people like Jesus did in Luke 15:1-2 rather than like the religious leaders.
Christians will be challenged as they encounter women and men who have been influenced by the false message from Planned Parenthood and others that abortion is their only choice, Smith told messengers. “[W]e as the church of the Lord Jesus Christ, and Southern Baptists in particular, have to have a different, peculiar, holy, sanctified, loving witness in our local communities.
“Tone is going to matter, brothers and sisters.”
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Smith encouraged Southern Baptists to think about:
— Their rhetoric “as we seek to make our congregations places that the weary and confused might come for refuge.”
— Their engagement with foster care and adoption in the states. “If we are going to create a culture where women in crisis will take a pregnancy to term, we’ve got to create a culture where they know that many Christians desire to adopt. They’ve got to know that children won’t linger in foster care and adoption systems within our states.”
— The reality of methods of abortion that are private. “[W]e have to contend for the minds of abortion-minded women because there are non-public ways to have an abortion,” such as mail-order abortion pills.
— The church’s “on-the-ground, salt-light reputation in our community.”
This article originally appeared at Baptist Press.
