“We’re in a time where people need healing, and the Church is the answer for that. Jesus is the answer, but [knowing] Jesus through the Church is critical. [If pastors only] knew how much people needed the Church—not the politics of the Church, not all of the theology of the Church, but just the Church in action.” Thoughts on Mission & Ministry FROM LEADERS IN URBAN CHURCHES & COMMUNITIES, Page 12

Pastors have a God-given opportunity to lead their church to impact communities for the common good. Listen as Angela welcomes Dr. Alvin Sanders, President and CEO of World Impact, an organization that trains and equips church leaders and workers to serve in urban areas. World Impact and the Barna Group released a study this month: Inside the Urban Church – How local congregations engage with and impact their communities (October 2023). With a representative sample across eight major US metros, this quantitative and qualitative study heard from a cross-section of pastors, community, civic leaders, and churched and unchurched participants.

One of the many key findings of the study was that churched and unchurched respondents saw the church as a safe space to wrestle with and help figure out the moral issues of the day; thus, urban churches have a huge opportunity to convene discussions that bring understanding and healing through God’s truth. “The study also revealed that metro residents inside and outside the Church think Christian churches are well-positioned to address the problem of loneliness. This finding is notable for highlighting the top issue locals entrust to churches and as a sign of common ground in perceptions among the churched and unchurched.” (Page 22) Both these insights offer encouragement on how we can have new conversations on abortion in our churches and be perceived as safe to approach for help.

In this episode, Angela and Dr. Sanders discuss their hope and mutual love for the Church to be as Christ designed, a place of grace and belonging to reflect the kingdom in a secularized world. How can the Church be ready to receive people with the love God intended?

Links:

Books Mentioned:

Research shows that many people in our culture have positive personal experiences with individual Christians in their lives but a negative perception of Christian institutions and how they interact in the public square. How do we bridge that gap and show up differently on contentious issues like abortion, especially after the overturn of Roe v. Wade? In this episode, Angela welcomes her friend, noted author, speaker, former pastor, and host of the Holy Post Podcast, Skye Jethani. Listen as they discuss his book What if Jesus Was Serious About the Church and explain how the political abortion debate fuels the divide. How can church leaders change this perception to bring healing and unity to the body of Christ? How do we lay down the political idolatry, refocus our allegiance to our representation of Jesus, and mark our churches safe for much-needed dialogue?

“Politics did not create the abortion problem in this country, and politics alone will not solve it.” - Skye Jethani

Angela interviews Rev. Dr. Darice Wright, Associate Pastor of Life Church in suburban Chicago, for an eye-opening conversation on her work to help pastors disciple people in racial reconciliation - and how she discovered that extending grace is essential to healing. They discuss how we can apply grace to discussions on gender, the political divide, and how we, the Church, show up for those who experience unintended pregnancy and abortion. Together they go back to Barbieland to uncover themes art can reveal about this cultural moment and how we can catalyze God's way of doing and being in our world.

A nonpolitical discussion about the Barbie movie is important because it touches many people. It's sparking a cultural conversation about how women and men relate to each other, which must be healthy if we're going to have conversations that lead to empathy and understanding of divisive social issues like abortion that the Church is called to address.  

Listen in as Angela and her special guest Simone Halpin, CEO of Naomi House, unpack their takeaways from the Barbie Movie and connect it to their personal stories. Using art and comedy, can the movie be one tool to help us deconstruct some teachings we have absorbed about gender inequality from culture and the Church and replace them with true Biblical principles?  As leaders of organizations that work for the social good, Simone and Angela discuss the importance of women and men in the Church coming together for nonpolitical conversations around gender issues that reflect God’s intention of partnership.

Spoiler alert: If you plan to see the Barbie Movie, storylines, scenes, and themes are discussed.

Click on the links below for the resources mentioned during the episode:

https://www.naomishouse.org
 

Books:

We encourage you to read and listen to the following for further resources. We appreciate how these two Christian leaders with different theological interpretations on women's roles agree on the Biblical imperative to prevent toxic gender narratives by following the example of Jesus.

https://www.churchandculture.org/church-culture-podcast

https://www.holypost.com/post/neither-barbie-nor-ken

What’s in a story? We all have one. Hearing a person’s story requires listening to understand and identify the connecting points. What if we stopped the back and forth in the abortion debate to emphatically listen to the other side?  In this episode, Angela sits down with Christy Vines, President and CEO of Ideos Institute, who introduces us to how she and her team use Empathic Intelligence (EmQ) to transform spaces of division. The results advance empathy, transform systems, and inspire solutions. As with the ProGrace approach to help Christians think, talk, and engage differently in unintended pregnancy and abortion conversations, Ideos Institute uses Jesus’ teaching model to help people navigate contentious topics to find common ground. Learn how you can retrain your brain to do a different job of moving from debate to dialogue by putting yourself in someone’s story. 

For more on Ideos Institute, see the show notes below, including their groundbreaking documentary Dialogue Lab: America.

LINKS:

1. Dialogue Lab: America | Documentary Film (2022): https://youtu.be/RJA7W3hQggE
Ideos Institute official website: https://ideosinstitute.org/ 
2. Narrative 4: https://narrative4.com/
3. Barna study: https://www.barna.com/research/polarization-2015-2022/
5. Christy LinkedIn profile https://www.linkedin.com/in/christyvines/ 

Are you a person who wrestles with how conversations about abortion are happening (or not happening) in our churches? If so, listen as Angela unpacks how Christians can find common ground aside from political binary views and meet from a place of empathy based on her journey. If we believe that God loves the woman and the child equally, how can we focus on what we agree on, position the Church as the solution, and open safe spaces to meet people where they are?

Resources:

If you don't feel at home in either Pro-Life or Pro-Choice, welcome to the ProGrace podcast. Angela Weszely, CEO and co-founder of ProGrace invites you into a conversation on how to rise above the political divide and develop a compassionate approach. She founded ProGrace to equip Christians with a new way to think, talk, and engage around abortion so we can create safe spaces for conversations. Let's model our approach after Jesus, not politics.

Listen on Apple Podcasts | Listen on Google Podcasts | Listen on Spotify

Denise and Angie talk with Anne Waddell, former Executive Director of Central Alberta Pregnancy Care Centre in Canada and current Director of Outreach with ProGrace. Anne has an incredible passion to have conversations not only with Christians but throughout our communities. When she talks, people are inspired to look at the issue of abortion in a new way - you will be. too! 

Skye Jethani created a video on abortion and politics for the Holy Post podcast which came out a month before the November 2020 election and received 1 million views. Angie asks him about the responses to his video from Christians, and what that means for us moving forward. You can watch Skye's video here: https://www.holypost.com/post/but-what-about-abortion

In the midst of the debate around how Supreme Court Justices and the President impact abortion laws, Angie, Denise, Lacey, and Krysta talk about what it would mean for Christians if Roe vs. Wade was overturned and abortion was suddenly illegal. To do this, we unpack the questions: What is our primary responsibility as followers of Christ? What is Jesus calling us to do? And what's going to bring the most positive change?