Ready to start creating your summer reading list? Check out this resource! Whether you’re a lover of fiction or non-fiction, these books will not only help you sharpen your Christian perspective but also better equip you to recognize life issues and respond to them courageously from a life-affirming, Gospel-motivated perspective.
We’ve all at least seen a video of this. Maybe you have experienced it firsthand. You’re tabling on a campus, looking to have productive dialogue about abortion. A pro-choice person marches up and starts loudly accusing you of trying to control women, telling you that women need choices or that a fetus is just a clump of cells. You make one remark in response, and it’s met immediately with another stream of objections. As intimidating as this can be, what we don’t want to do is shut off the conversation. We want every person to see the value of human life, even the person who seems very uninterested in hearing about it. So what can we do to help the encounter move from a battle of smart remarks to a productive dialogue about the issue of abortion? Read through this infographic brochure to learn tips about how to have charitable conversations.
Sometimes it’s easy to be a Gospel-motivated voice For Life. You simply wait for God to open a door, and then you walk right through. But sometimes God opens doors to paths we’d rather not travel, paths with life issues we weren’t expecting, life issues we’re sure we’re really not ready for …. Like hearing a close friend has terminal cancer. Or discovering a child has been diagnosed with a life-altering disability. Or sitting next to a woman on a plane who looks you straight in the eye and says, “I used to have a niece, but now I have a nephew. And my other nephew started saying he was a girl when he was three, so he transitioned early.” It’s tempting to jump off the path, to shut your eyes and hide from the issues. Weighed down by sin and death and brokenness in a fallen world, life issues can be heavy, and responding to them with a Gospel-motivated voice often means saying things that are both counter-cultural and unpopular. Yet … “God gave us a spirit not of fear, but of power and love and self-control” (2 Timothy 1:7). Yes, God’s Word is pretty clear: We’re called to speak the truth in love so that we might win our neighbor, and in so doing, bring him to Jesus. Read through our C.A.L.V.A.R.Y. infographic to learn more about a life-affirming approach to conversations about life issues.
Need an easy way to refer back to the acronym C.A.L.V.A.R.Y.? We’ve made a quick reference for you with this downloadable poster! As you seek to be a Gospel-motivated voice, use the acronym C.A.L.V.A.R.Y. to engage in conversations from a life affirming approach. If you’re printing these to hang around your church or school, you will need to print on size 8.5″ x 14″ paper.
“A Lutheran Catechism on Abortion and Life,” by David A. Kaufmann, Ph.D., F.A.C.S.M., offers a question and answer primer on abortion and life in a format similar to Luther’s Small Catechism. This booklet has unlimited educational use!
Downloadable and FREE, Teaching For Life is a unique, Gospel-centered, curriculum supplement designed to help Lutheran school teachers apply God’s word to life issues! Designed for pre-school through eighth grade teachers, this supplement teaches nine truths about life and provides age-appropriate ideas for integrating these truths into each content area.
Life issues didn’t arise overnight. Their frequent connection to medical technology can make them seem like recent developments, and advances in understanding physiology and pharmaceuticals have made abortion and euthanasia more efficient and available of late. But these circumstances have been causing society’s difficulties – and providing opportunities to proclaim the Gospel – since ancient times. Even Martin Luther applied his voice to life issues! Luther promoted marriage, encouraged childbearing, and praised parenting. He concluded even unborn babies qualified as full-fledged human beings.
