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by Pamela J. Smith
Proverbs 24:11 – Rescue those being led away to death;
hold back those staggering toward slaughter.
In 1984, two missional-minded students from Biblical Seminary in Hatfield, PA started a crisis pregnancy center in Lansdale. At last count over 3,000 women and their unborn children, their born children, husbands, boyfriends… have been ministered to by the now Pregnancy Resource Clinic of North Penn. Women have their physical needs for housing, equipment, maternity clothes, and baby supplies met, completely free of charge, and can talk about lives full of guilt and regret without fear of being judged and with confidence in being loved.
Two years after the center opened, and feeling totally inadequate, I began volunteering every Thursday night taking two counseling appointments each week, hearing stories that broke my heart. Almost 20 years later, I continue to serve as both a senior counselor and a new counselor trainer. One thing about working in this ministry has never changed…you need to be authentic about your commitment to the clients, or they will see right through you.
The clinic’s story is a missional one of watching for emerging needs in the culture and responding to those changing needs so that the gospel can be demonstrated, as well as heard, by the clients.
What has changed over 20 years? In the early days the reason a client would come was to get a free pregnancy test and counseling about pregnancy. Ten or so years later as pregnancy tests became available in the Dollar Store and counseling on pregnancy issues no longer had the appeal it once did, getting an ultrasound became the new emerging need. The clinic responded by raising funds to purchase an ultrasound machine and recruited a volunteer medical staff to conduct ultrasounds every Thursday night.
As client stories then started featuring an increasing number of multiple sexual partners and stories of three possible fathers, the clinic responded; not by a heavy handed approach that stressed abstinence that wouldn’t be heard by the culture; rather, they developed a program for sexual integrity that is rich with biblical concepts and successfully convinced public schools to let them come and present the program to junior and senior high students.
There’s a new need that has emerged. The clinic is currently doing the research on how to become authorized to do STD testing because sadly, more and more clients are in need of this service.
As part of the intake form for a client, we ask, “Do you have any religious background?” When I first started in the ministry, the responses were “Baptist” or “Lutheran”. Ten years later, the responses were “Protestant, I think” or “I guess, Christian”. Today, the responses are “Hindu”, “Muslim”, “Goth”, or “Nothing”. I’ll usually press a little with, “Well have you ever been in a church?” And the reply is, “Nope”.
20 years ago, I might have been able to convince a young girl to bring her mom back in on a second visit, and her mom might be angry that her daughter was sleeping in on Sundays instead of going to church. 10 years ago, mom would sometimes bring the daughter on the first appointment, angry with her that she had messed up the birth control that mom had taken her to get. Now…Mom doesn’t care as long as it doesn’t become her problem…Mom’s not concerned that her daughter has had 8 different sex partners, has the HPV virus which can lead to cervical cancer, and is on medication for ADD and depression.
I’m now seeing the daughters of the clients who slept in on Sundays, and their lives are a mess. The culture we are trying to reach has changed dramatically, and we need to use the example of the Pregnancy Resource Clinic of North Penn in seeking ways to do ministry.
This the missional work I sign up for every Thursday night. I can continue to do it because by God’s grace, I had a moment when I grasped that it’s not the things you do that make you missional; it’s what’s in your heart, because it changes the life that you live.
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