The Bridegroom and His Bride

written by Al White, Development Specialist

As the newest member of the PCC Development Team,  I bring a pastoral background into my responsibilities. My role is to encourage generosity and support for the PCC efforts. I have the joy of aligning passions and resources on behalf of our mission to “compassionately engage, educate and inspire others about the truth of human sexuality.”

I’ve been recently captured with the Biblical metaphor that depicts Jesus as the Bridegroom, and His followers, the church, as His beloved Bride. This relational aspect helps us understand His sacrificial love for us, and our response to that love. That relationship is also a great way to encourage husbands and wives to adopt that he/she model as they both have roles and responsibilities to serve each other out of love.

I recently discovered another and even more specific application of that word picture to the work of the Pregnancy Care Center. Beyond the model of a great marriage, we can also see the model of the roles of a father and a mother. Jesus served His Bride with protection and provision through sacrificial leadership, and The Bride, the Church is called to a maternal role of producing and developing life.

Traditionally, the Church nurtures life through its Christian education, or discipleship efforts. The legacy of producing generations of faithful followers is clearly set forth in the models of the New Testament churches. But with such a maternal responsibility for producing Christian life, should not Christ’s Bride be equally passionate about protecting life? If our interest is about creating more and more followers of Jesus, doesn’t it make sense that we should be more interested and active in insuring that more potential followers are given a chance to be born? Our hope is that every child born would someday hear the message of Jesus’ love and respond, to be born again. Children can’t be born again without being born the first time.

Followers of Christ – be His beloved, radiant and ready Bride of Christ. Embrace that maternal role that calls us to affirm life that it may be born – with hopes that the child will be born again. Yes, our mission is to help others be “born again”, but our initial maternal role and responsibility is to protect and promote life.

Thank you for your ongoing support and prayers for the Pregnancy Care Centers of South Central Indiana. Your partnership with us not only affirms life, but fulfills the Church’s mandate to create more followers of Jesus.

Defenders of the Weak

written by Christy Shaw, Volunteer Coordinator

Recently, many of our staff members were able to attend the Indiana Association of Pregnancy Centers  (IAPC) conference in Indianapolis. The opening devotion was a thought provoking pep talk, steering us forward in the battle we are in daily, as we serve in our communities. I wanted to share some of the statements made, to encourage you in your service here at the PCC, no matter what role that may be. We greatly appreciate and admire the time and efforts given by faithful supporters and volunteers who are “Defenders of the Weak”!

In working with the PCC, you are given the chance each shift to compassionately engage with many stories. In response to those stories, you are obeying scripture in many ways:

• God is a “Father” that looks after, protects, defends, and provides for the “fatherless”. Our clients may have biological fathers, but the PCC steps in to be a supportive, spiritual, and emotional “father” to them.
• God looks after our clients, and you do also by listening to and providing for them in their time of need.
• God commands us to look after the widow and orphaned. A part of PCC’s mission is to serve the babies and clients who are abandoned. 
• You care for the most powerless, voiceless, most vulnerable group in the world – the unborn child. That is close to God’s heart!
• You serve the margins of society, ones without resources, support, and who are alone and afraid.
• You are pushing back on evil by affirming life through your compassionate engagements, education, and inspiration! 
• You are caring for the vulnerable and defending a growing culture of death. 

When you serve “the least of these", you are most like Jesus! In Matthew 25:40 God tells us that when we serve the weak, we are serving Him by meeting the immediate needs of those who are hungry, thirsty, estranged, needing clothed, sick and in prison. PCC definitely sees people daily who are sick and in bondage to sin. They are in desperate need of love and service, so that our deeds can point them to the One who is the Lover of their souls. I cannot think of a better way to show them God’s love than to meet them right where they are in desperate need of Hope!

I am so glad God meets us where we are and we do not have to become a perfect person before He starts perfecting us! His grace knows no abounds! Amen!

Never grow tired of doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up. Galatians 6:9