Sanctity of Life Sunday

[Wilson L. Deaton]

"On January 22, 1973, the U.S. Supreme Court, in its Roe v. Wade decision, struck down the abortion laws of all 50 states and made abortion on demand, at virtually every stage of pregnancy, the law of our land....

Many churches hold Sanctity of Life Sundays on the third Sunday of each January to commemorate this date and decision, and to speak against abortion and for life."

Does your church observe, "Sanctity of Life Sunday?"

Most years we have not but we are this year. (Due to scheduling conflicts we are observing it one week early, this coming Sunday.) Our service will feature a special guest speaker: the executive director of our local Chrisitan crisis pregnancy center, Care Net.

The schedule conflict is due to our guest speaker dedicating a new facility in Racine--next town up the highway--on the 21st.

Wilson

[Belinda Y. Edwards]

i don't know --- perhaps, we should visit this - but i am inclined to think that we address this subject in subtle ways all through the year. At this point in time, i am uncomfortable with the idea of having a Sunday just for this.

i don't know...

Talk to me

Convince me of the need

[Pete Vecchi]

I think this thread and poll suffered loss when the maintenence was being done. I had already voted in the poll, and I had already commented in this thread, but I notice that there are now fewer total votes and at least one or two posts besides mine missing.

My comments were along the line of that I voted "yes" in the poll because basically throughout my ministry, as an evangelist and pulpit supply preacher, and now as a pastor, when I've had the opportunity to preach on "Sanctity of Life" Sunday, I generally will preach a message that has to do with the sanctity of human life. The message may or may not deal with issues such as abortion, infanticide, euthanasia, the death penalty, and others, but will generally at least point to the Biblical truth that human life is sacred to God. So, while I haven't ever to this point had a special speaker in for that Sunday, since I generally preach a message on the topic, I answered that I commemorate that day.

[Cindi Hammons]

Wilson,

Last year we showed a DVD that I created with photos of "Life!" I used the music to Steven Curtis Chapman's song "You Make All Things New!" It was very powerful, but did not focus on abortion. It was a celebration of LIFE!

I'm not sure what we will be doing this year as I have not had the time to develop a new DVD. Mark said something about a video by Mark Schultz, but I haven't seen it yet and we'll have to look into the idea.

I think it is important.

I'm editing this to add that I found a link to the video that Mark was talking about. Get out your tissues....

Everything to Me--Mark Schultz (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HzRdPlkf60E)

From Word Record's web-site: One of the highlights of the record is "Everything to Me," a song Schultz co-wrote with Cindy Morgan. "I was adopted and I just wanted to write a song about it," says Schultz. "So we started into it and we got the first two lines: ‘I must have felt your tears when they took me from your arms/I'm sure I must have heard you say goodbye.' And Cindy just lost it because she's a mother with two kids."
Cindy and Mark discussed the love and courage it must take for a woman to give up a child, knowing she could never give her child the things he needed. "I've had such a good life. I have the best parents in theworld so I wanted it to be a song to thank my birth mom for giving me the opportunity to live," he says displaying the kind of transparency that makes people immediately connect with his work. "It's almost like taking her hand and walking her through my life when I was little and playing baseball with my dad, the prayers at night with my folks, and my mom reading ‘Goodnight Moon.' Then back to what would it be like if we met on the street. Would you know it was me? Would you just kind of know?"
Schultz hopes the song will bring peace to women who've given children up for adoption. "I loved the line that says, ‘Was this the dream you had in mind when you gave me up? You gave everything to me.' I think hopefully birth moms will hear this song and just say, ‘You know what? I feel good!' I would think there's a certain amount of wondering they would do and that it would be really, really hard. So I wanted to say to my birth mom and all birth moms that life is pretty precious and just to get the chance to live ispretty awesome."

[Billy Cox]

I would be dismayed if my church did such a thing. It really should be called 'Sanctity of unborn life Sunday' since most anti-abortion evangelicals are in favor of capital punishment and are indifferent to the plight of infants born into poverty.

[Belinda Y. Edwards]

Wilson,

Last year we showed a DVD that I created with photos of "Life!" I used the music to Steven Curtis Chapman's song "You Make All Things New!" It was very powerful, but did not focus on abortion. It was a celebration of LIFE!

I'm not sure what we will be doing this year as I have not had the time to develop a new DVD. Mark said something about a video by Mark Schultz, but I haven't seen it yet and we'll have to look into the idea.

I think it is important.

I'm editing this to add that I found a link to the video that Mark was talking about. Get out your tissues....

Everything to Me--Mark Schultz (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HzRdPlkf60E)

From Word Record's web-site: One of the highlights of the record is "Everything to Me," a song Schultz co-wrote with Cindy Morgan. "I was adopted and I just wanted to write a song about it," says Schultz. "So we started into it and we got the first two lines: ‘I must have felt your tears when they took me from your arms/I'm sure I must have heard you say goodbye.' And Cindy just lost it because she's a mother with two kids."
Cindy and Mark discussed the love and courage it must take for a woman to give up a child, knowing she could never give her child the things he needed. "I've had such a good life. I have the best parents in theworld so I wanted it to be a song to thank my birth mom for giving me the opportunity to live," he says displaying the kind of transparency that makes people immediately connect with his work. "It's almost like taking her hand and walking her through my life when I was little and playing baseball with my dad, the prayers at night with my folks, and my mom reading ‘Goodnight Moon.' Then back to what would it be like if we met on the street. Would you know it was me? Would you just kind of know?"
Schultz hopes the song will bring peace to women who've given children up for adoption. "I loved the line that says, ‘Was this the dream you had in mind when you gave me up? You gave everything to me.' I think hopefully birth moms will hear this song and just say, ‘You know what? I feel good!' I would think there's a certain amount of wondering they would do and that it would be really, really hard. So I wanted to say to my birth mom and all birth moms that life is pretty precious and just to get the chance to live ispretty awesome."

So curious - -how would this differ from Mother's Day?

[Wilson L. Deaton]

I would be dismayed if my church did such a thing. It really should be called 'Sanctity of unborn life Sunday' since most anti-abortion evangelicals are in favor of capital punishment and are indifferent to the plight of infants born into poverty.

Several things here:

1) For the record, I openly oppose capital punishment (even Saddam's).

2) Yesterday (most Tuesdays) I spent the morning tutoring an immigrant with his English because I care about quality of human life during these middle years (I'm a Kenosha Literacy Council volunteer). I had a reading lunch then went to a home where I sat two hours with a dying man so his wife could run errands and do some shopping because I care about human life on the dying end of life (My current role as a Kenosha Hospice Alliance volunteer).

3) Care Net counsels women not to abort. They also have parenting classes, a mother mentor program, a father mentor program, a baby botique for baby supplies (mothers earn "baby bucks" by participating in the parenting classes, etc.), adoption referals, prenatal assitance, do abstinence workshops in high schools, etc. They counsel, love and support those who have already had abortions and are troubled by it. Their approach is far and above simply being anti-abortion or only caring for the unborn.

4) Besides our Care Net guest, we are also be having a 10-15 minute report from my daugther who just returned from LA visting urban ministry centers. She will be telling about the variety of approaches she observed, etc., covering the entire gamut from AIDS to homeless to addicts to race relations to crime, etc.

We will tie the whole thing together as a call for taking seriously the sanctity (value) of human life and the need to do something positive and concrete.

This is at the core of what real Christianity (the Church) should be about.

Wilson

[Wilson L. Deaton]

i don't know --- perhaps, we should visit this - but i am inclined to think that we address this subject in subtle ways all through the year. At this point in time, i am uncomfortable with the idea of having a Sunday just for this.

i don't know...

Talk to me

Convince me of the need

First I need to know if this is a generic problem you have with conducting theme Sundays in general or if you just think this one isn't important enough to merit such a day. Does your church do anything special to observe Mother's Day or Independence Day or Veteran's Day? If so, are you "uncomfortable" with those days?

Wilson

[Cindi Hammons]

Not all mother's have given up their baby for adoption in lieu of abortion.

[Belinda Y. Edwards]

Not all mother's have given up their baby for adoption in lieu of abortion.
nods - we just deal with the issue of abortion in our small group settings.

[Marsha Gupton]

So curious - -how would this differ from Mother's Day?

Like Cindy said in her post, this deals with the birth mothers who gave up their babies for adoption rather than opt to have an abortion.

This is off the subject just a bit, but what Cindy quoted in her post from Mark Schultz really is powerful. I do not think many of us realize the hurt a birth mother experiences as they give their child up for adoption. This is a subject with many many facets to it.

I recently watched an episode of Law and Order:SVU where an adoption was illegal and after 12 years this child was taken from the adoptive home and placed in the home of the birth father. Now this is only a tv show and I do not approve of displacing a child but say this to show the many many issues surrounding adoption.

[Belinda Y. Edwards]

Like Cindy said in her post, this deals with the birth mothers who gave up their babies for adoption rather than opt to have an abortion.

This is off the subject just a bit, but what Cindy quoted in her post from Mark Schultz really is powerful. I do not think many of us realize the hurt a birth mother experiences as they give their child up for adoption. This is a subject with many many facets to it.

I recently watched an episode of Law and Order:SVU where an adoption was illegal and after 12 years this child was taken from the adoptive home and placed in the home of the birth father. Now this is only a tv show and I do not approve of displacing a child but say this to show the many many issues surrounding adoption.

nods - well noted, Marsha - thanks.

[Laurie Florence]

Several things here:

1) For the record, I openly oppose capital punishment (even Saddam's).

2) Yesterday (most Tuesdays) I spent the morning tutoring an immigrant with his English because I care about quality of human life during these middle years (I'm a Kenosha Literacy Council volunteer). I had a reading lunch then went to a home where I sat two hours with a dying man so his wife could run errands and do some shopping because I care about human life on the dying end of life (My current role as a Kenosha Hospice Alliance volunteer).

3) Care Net counsels women not to abort. They also have parenting classes, a mother mentor program, a father mentor program, a baby botique for baby supplies (mothers earn "baby bucks" by participating in the parenting classes, etc.), adoption referals, prenatal assitance, do abstinence workshops in high schools, etc. They counsel, love and support those who have already had abortions and are troubled by it. Their approach is far and above simply being anti-abortion or only caring for the unborn.

4) Besides our Care Net guest, we are also be having a 10-15 minute report from my daugther who just returned from LA visting urban ministry centers. She will be telling about the variety of approaches she observed, etc., covering the entire gamut from AIDS to homeless to addicts to race relations to crime, etc.

We will tie the whole thing together as a call for taking seriously the sanctity (value) of human life and the need to do something positive and concrete.

This is at the core of what real Christianity (the Church) should be about.

Wilson

Awesome!

Blessings,
Laurie

[Bob Evans]

Wilson

I am glad you and your church are taking the actions your taking. Far to many times Contemporary Christianity has a service, writes a check , attends a right to life banquet, or marches with out engageing the problem. Wilson it sounds like you all are getting it right in your life as well as the life of the church.

I think the named should be changed form Sancity of life Sunday to get involved with a pregnencey center Sunday. One recently closed in Grand Rapids and we had close to 6000 at a right to life banquet. It doesen't balance out in my mind.

[David Cash]

I'm not sure what our church has planned. I would expect maybe a special presentation of some kind, but probably not a whole sermon on that subject alone. I'm ok with it either way.

David Cash