“Of those children who are lingering in care, if someone doesn’t step in and welcome them into their family those young people are going to eventually age out of the foster care system.
“Those young people are then going to be more suspectable to homelessness, incarceration, trafficking and all of these things that really put them back in that cycle of being a part of unplanned pregnancies. Church, we can make a difference, and we must make an impact here.”
First Baptist Concord was not the only church to speak on the historic Supreme Court decision.
J.D. Greear, former president of the SBC and pastor of The Summit Church in Raleigh-Durham, N.C., spoke about the ruling during The Summit’s Sunday service.
“This past Friday was a day that I thought I might not see in my lifetime,” Greear said during the service.
He told Spectrum News 1 RDU that conversations with his congregation have reflected gratefulness, but also awareness to the difficulty of the topic.
“In the conversations I’ve had, people have been grateful for the Supreme Court recognizing the mistake from 1973 of saying this (right to abortion) was included in the constitution,” Greear said in the Spectrum News interview. “They’re grateful that this has been turned back over to the people to decide.
“We also recognize that for many women in our congregation and in our community, this is a part of their story and it’s very difficult to talk about. We want them to know that this is a safe place for them to be able to tell their story here. We also want to work in the societal factors that create that situation where someone would feel like that’s their only alternative.”
Bart Barber, SBC president and pastor of First Baptist Church of Farmersville in Texas, focused his church’s opening prayer time on the news of the decision.
Three areas of prayer Barber said he wanted to concentrate on were rejoicing, mourning and commitment.
Rejoicing over the news of the decision and that lives that will be saved, mourning for the continued death toll from abortions and for women who have previously had an abortion as well as a commitment to the work that’s left to be done by both his local body and all believers, he told the congregation.
“We’re just thankful anytime that anybody gets to live, and this decision is something many of us have prayed for a long time for,” said Barber.
“There are people who conceive in all manner of difficult moments in their life, and we want to be a church that’s there to point people to God’s love and also to demonstrate God’s love in what we do. We commit to ourselves to continue to help people who are around us.”
This article originally appeared on BaptistPress.com.
