Sanctity of Life Sunday Prayer

O wise God and heavenly Father,

We praise you for your love and watchcare over us, and for granting us life with abundant blessings. Thank you for calling us to care for one another and to safeguard the weakest and most vulnerable among us. We thank you for granting us the joyful miracle of birth and new life, for our newborn children and grandchildren, and nieces and nephews. May we never cease to be amazed by the gift of children—every one of whom is made in your image, each endowed with measureless worth and the right to life, deserving of extraordinary nurture and protection.

Yet, Father, we mournfully confess that Satan has cast a great delusion on our society today, so that unborn children are so often viewed as commodities or even as liabilities to be dispensed with or discarded as inconvenient chattel or a bad real estate investment. Our hearts tremble and lurch at the thought of the loss of even one of these most innocent babies at the hand of the abortionist, let alone millions of them.

So, Father, we pray with great earnestness that you would clear the fog of delusion that has made our society so callous and ungrateful for the gift of new life so that, regardless of circumstance, each baby will be welcomed to this world with joy and tender hearts. Make us effective in winning the political and public relations battles necessary to end abortion.

Restore to our society the common sense of traditional sexual ethics, where sex is enjoyed within the security of marriage, so that a child grows up with the benefit of having both father and mother. And in extraordinary circumstances, we pray special grace upon those who must raise children without the benefit of the two-parent traditional family. Help grandparents, foster parents, and all those who step up to fill in the gap as necessary.

We pray also for the thousands of volunteers and workers at our Crisis Pregnancy Centers who so selflessly give of themselves to care for newborns rescued from the threat of abortion. May we eagerly support those mothers (and fathers) who bravely ignore the tainted and tattered wisdom of this decadent world, and choose life. Call workers from our own congregation to be channels of blessing to them and to their newborns. May we put our muscle and money where our mouth is.

Now Lord, there is much prayer and work that needs to be done. May we not forget the urgency of our calling, but remind us daily that we serve your kingdom. We ask these things in the precious name of Jesus who loves the little children—all the children of the world. Amen.

Artwork by Sara C. Leonard 
https://www.facebook.com/mtleonesart/

Journeying through Grief--Stephen Ministry and Encouragement for Those who Grieve

Stephen Ministry is a parachurch ministry to encourage those who suffer loss or experience significant grief. I use their grief booklets--a series of four ($10). I send the first of the four booklets, with a personal letter within a month of the funeral. The other three are sent out roughly every quarter.

The booklets are helpful--my mother really appreciated them in light of my father's death, for example. It's an effective tool that does not require much time and effort, if the church secretary manages the calendar and prompts the pastor accordingly.

Stephen Ministry Grief Booklets

Well-Rounded Bible Teaching Ministry

Well-Rounded Bible Teaching Ministry

The healthy church has several venues or opportunities each week or month to develop a well-rounded teaching ministry:

• The pastor’s pulpit ministry. People should leave worship knowing a bit more about the text on which the sermon was based, including larger and smaller contextual issues. Far too often, people hear what they think is a great sermon, but they learned nothing about the inspired text. Essentially, many preachers give a “TED Talk, with a scripture attached to it, as someone once said. The focus of the sermon, however, is not the exegesis of the text. Rather, sermons should focus on the application of the well-examined text. The sermon affords five to ten minutes of actual Bible teaching ministry.
• Sunday School ministry. Sunday School is traditionally designed to survey the Bible’s content, so that children will grow up to know most of the Bible stories, and adults grapple with the setting and background of the 66 books, along with the larger flow of argument or narrative in them. The emphasis is on what the Bible says. Historically, Sunday School curricula is formulated on a seven-year cycle, so that the devoted Sunday School student will have surveyed the entire Bible.
• Midweek ministry. Midweek ministry should include an element of training in Christian ministry. Many churches still refer to the midweek meeting as Prayer Meeting, although the role of prayer in the midweek meeting has been significantly reduced in most churches to allow more time for Bible study. The way most midweek Bible studies are conducted is essentially the same as the Sunday School ministry, except that there is no Sunday School book, and the pastor just simply opens the Bible and divulges what he knows about a given passage. A well-rounded Bible teaching ministry, however, should give ample instruction on how to read the Bible, rather than repeating the Sunday School’s mission of merely teaching what the Bible says. The idea is that the midweek faithful hone Bible study skills that increase their competence to teach the Bible. Thus, midweek ministry is more than just Bible teaching, but also training in Bible teaching.