← Equipped for Life Podcast
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- [00:01]
A
Welcome back to the Equip for Life podcast. A lot has happened since the last time that we were in your ears, so couple of updates right at the top. First and most obvious, we have Emily and Rebecca here, which means that this is our very first podcast recording without our amazing outgoing president and co founder, Josh Brom. We love Josh so much and it feels a little weird to be recording without him. But at the same time, I'm really excited to be here with Rebecca because I think we're going to make pretty amazing co hosts, I gotta say.
- [00:28]
B
Yeah, this is gonna be fun. And also, we miss Josh, as you may have heard if you follow other ERI things is stepping down after 12 years.
- [00:36]
A
Emily, as I think it's 12 as ERI's president, the entire ERI history, which
- [00:41]
B
is a really, really long time to run a nonprofit for fun fact. So he has been pretty burned out and decided, I think about six months ago, confirmed that he was planning to step down and started looking for eri's new president. We are super excited about him. Josh is super excited about him. His name is Greg. Josh and Greg will be releasing an update video that I think will come out before this pod comes out. So we'll put that in the description for you as well. We are really excited for what's next for eri and we're really excited for what's next for Josh and we miss him.
- [01:07]
A
Yeah. I hope that if you haven't already seen our 100th episode of the podcast, you take a second and go. We'll also link that in the description because it's honestly one of my favorite episodes we've ever recorded because it was just so fun. First of all, we had the whole staff on, which never happens, so you guys get to like experience what our normal staff meetings are like, which are very fun, for the record. And also we just spent the whole episode kind of talking about the history of the Equip for Life podcast and all of the different eras of it, which are quite hilarious if you go through the entire thing and talking about how amazing Josh is and has been to the podcast, to the history of eri. I mean, really, Josh is the reason that both Rebecca and I are here in the first place. Like, the whole reason we work for ERI is because we were exposed to Josh and the Equip for Life course back when we were in college and we're like, this is amazing material. How do I be part of this? Because this is like game changing stuff for the pro life movement and he's the whole reason we're here. He's the whole reason that I work for era I that you work for ei. And now that we get to co host this podcast, we owe all of that to Josh. And we got to just spend a ton of time honoring him and talking about that in a 100 episode. So I hope you all go check that out. But definitely also check out the update video that has got Josh and Greg, our new president, on it, because we are really excited about Greg. I think he is really uniquely positioned to help take ERI into this next chapter. He has some really different skills that nobody else on our team has, which I think is going to be really, really exciting for us. Cause we're a really small staff. Like, most people don't realize how tiny we are, which in many ways is great because we can be like a family and we can really work together and do things. But in some ways, that's hard because it means that there's not people with, like, a ton of different skill sets. And Greg is bringing a totally different skill set into ERI that I think is really going to help take us to the next level, help take us in a new direction and grow more. So we're really excited about him. So you should definitely check out and honor Josh, because we love Josh. And you should also meet Greg, because I think you're going to be as excited as we are about our new kind of direction for eri, our future, when we have this amazing new person at the helm. It's going to be really, really great. Yeah.
- [03:03]
B
I think Greg is going to be able to have ideas and structure to, like, help take all of the things that Josh has made ERI to be and get them to more places, which I'm really excited about. Josh is also super excited about Greg. I may have said this in the hundredth episode, I don't remember, but if you ever need an ego beast, have Josh talk about you to somebody else in front of you. It's pretty great. So I'm sure that Greg has heard Josh talk about him a bunch in the last month, and I'm sure it's been really awes for him because Josh can, like, talk about people's awesomeness like nobody else. And Josh is awesome.
- [03:36]
A
Josh is awesome. And Josh knows how to make other people feel awesome just by really part of why Josh is awesome talking about. Yes. This is all part of why you're getting the moral of the story. Josh is awesome.
- [03:44]
B
There we go.
- [03:45]
A
So he will be very much missed both on this Podcast and at the rest of your eye, a couple of other updates. I happen to be sitting for the very first time on this podcast with Dr. Rebecca Carlson. You may have formerly known her as Rebecca Carlson, but today she is here at as Dr. Rebecca Carlson. Because just was it last week, two weeks ago you became Dr. Rebecca Carlson, which is very exciting. And I promise not to call you Dr. Rebecca Carlson every single time I speak to you throughout the rest of this. Appreciate that because that would be annoying, but I will for the next two minutes because it's fun.
- [04:14]
B
There's a 10 year old friend of mine at church who, and like she usually calls me Rebecca. We were leaving church the end of I think this last Sunday and she said, Goodbye Dr. Carlson, which just made me feel very special.
- [04:25]
A
That is so cute.
- [04:27]
B
She's awesome.
- [04:28]
A
I love that so much. Well, Dr. Carlson and I have a lot to discuss today anyways. Yes, Rebecca got her PhD in philosophy from the University of Southern California two weeks ago, which is just a massive accomplishment. Like I don't know if I like pre meeting Rebecca understood just how a massive accomplishment. That is a. First of all, just the amount of work that it takes for one to get a PhD is like, oh wow. And number two, we are pretty darn sure that Rebecca is now the only person with a PhD in Philosophy working full time in the pro life movement. Is that right, Rebecca?
- [05:04]
B
I think so. I feel like if there were somebody else we would know, like there are Absolutely awesome philosophy PhDs who are pro life and do a bunch of prolific pro life work who like work full time at a university and also like contribute to the pro life movement. But I think working full time in the pro life movement, I feel like if there were somebody we'd know.
- [05:20]
A
Yeah, if you know someone, we would love that connection.
- [05:22]
B
I would love to meet them because
- [05:23]
A
we would love to talk to them. So like put that in the comments, email us, whatever. But to our knowledge, Dr. Rebecca Carlson is the only PhD in Philosophy working full time in the pro life movement. What makes ERI very unique because we have that person on our staff. Which means if you are concerned at all that the philosophical rigor of ERI was going to go away now that Josh is leaving, I would not be concerned about that because if anything, like literally this morning, the day we're recording this, Rebecca just put out a blog article that got into some philosophy things. And as I was reading and editing it yesterday, I was like, this girl is so smart. How did we get her? When I remember when Rebecca first came on Staff. When I was explaining to people who Rebecca was, like, some of my donors or like, I was meeting people at a speech and I. They were like, oh, you got this new staff person. I was like, yeah, Rebecca is amazing. She's like me, but way smarter. That was literally my description. Rebecca's really smart. That's the moral of the story. So Dr. Rebecca Carlson and I. I'll stop now. Thank you. Appreciate it. We talked about a lot of things today. One more quick update for those of you that listened to our two podcast episodes. I made the very exciting announcement that I am pregnant. And at the time, I was also very nauseous. And so if you watched that podcast episode, you might be sitting and thinking to yourself, is Emily doing okay? And if you are thinking that, first of all, thank you. Thank you for caring enough about me to be having that thought. And the answer is, yes, Emily is doing great. I am feeling much, much better. I am not a hundred percent out of the woods. I'll be honest. I still get bouts of nausea occasionally. But in happier news, the baby bump is back. I'm starting to enter the I only wear dress face because normally I love wearing pants, but pants aren't super comfortable anymore. So yay. Emily gets to wear dresses now for all summer, which is actually kind of fun. So there you have it. That is our updates. I am very excited for what we actually have for the meat of the podcast today, because this podcast is really meant for the person out there who listens to our podcast or looks at our ERI materials and is like, okay, I like, you know, some of this stuff. I'm gonna, like, cherry pick a few things that are really relevant to me. But I hear you guys talk or, like, reference this whole idea of outreach a lot. And whenever I hear the word outreach come up, I'm just gonna stop watching that particular video because that's not relevant to me. That's not something that I could do either. It's not something I could do because I'm not in that age demographic. Like, I'm not a college student. I can't easily set up a table on a college campus. That would be weird if I set up a table on a college campus. And so, like, not really relevant to me. I'm just gon move on. And I'm going to watch some of your other videos that are really cool, which, thank you. Or maybe you're like, yeah, my personality. I don't think I could do outreach. Not really. For me, there's something just about who I am that that's not a great fit. If you're one of those people that's like, you hear us talk about outreach or outreach come up in one of our things, and you're like, I'm just going to tune that out for a second and maybe I'm going to go look at some of the other amazing things that your eye does. This podcast is for you. This podcast is also for you if you love outreach and already do outreach, because I'm going to give you some new ideas that you might be like, oh, that's cool, I should try that. But this podcast is for those people that are like, I could never do this because I'm gonna be totally honest with you. First of all, that was me. I was one of those people. When I very first heard about the idea of outreach, I was like, that sounds crazy. I can't do that because that's just not my personality. That's not something I feel like I'm comfortable doing. That's not something that would actually work in my environment. Like, there's a million reasons that you might think that outreach doesn't work for you, but we wanna talk today about a lot of things that you might not expect about outreach and ways to do outreach that aren't the typical ways that we talk about, but can still be very effective at reaching pro choice people. And those ways take down a lot of those barriers. Those ways work regardless of what age demographic that you're in. Those ways work even if you're a person that maybe the traditional way, quote unquote, that we talk about, doing outreach wouldn't be a great fit for you. Like, honestly, it wouldn't be a great fit. But there's other ways of doing outreach that could be a really good fit for you that might align more with your personality or the things you're comfortable doing. And so we want to help you see that there are really great ways that you can help move the pro life cause forward in doing outreach without doing what you think of as outreach. You're not seeing me do scare quotes like on the audio, but when I say outreach, I'm talking about getting out there and in some way engaging with pro choice people. So that's what we want to talk about today. And I'm really excited about it.
- [09:46]
B
Yeah. So maybe one good place to start is just like, what do we mean by outreach? Obviously, some people have probably heard a bunch of like, tabling stories on college campuses or things like that. Do you mean like any kind of conversation with a pro choice person where we're like making arguments for the pro life user. So don't have like a narrow. You must be sitting at a table on a college campus talking to college students in order for it to count as outreach. There's a chance that you've done outreach and you don't realize it because you don't realize like how broad that is. Like any kind of conversation where you're asking a pro choice person about their view or you are sharing that you are pro life, our friends at secular pro life talk about one really effective thing to do is just when you're in a social setting where most people are assuming that you're pro choice or a lot of the people around your pro choice and somebody said something very obviously pro choice kind of assuming everybody in the room is going to agree to just say, hey, I don't really want to get into a big conversation about this right now. But just so you know, I don't agree. Just so you know, I don't agree that one sentence I don't want to get into a conversation is outreach. That is helping pro choice people see that there are pro life people who are reasonable and compassionate because they know you in that setting. So it doesn't have to be talking to strangers. It doesn't have to be having a big, deep, philosophical conversation. Outreach can be really, really broad and we'll talk about some of those things. Yeah.
- [10:54]
A
I often define outreach as any time your goal is to give someone a positive experience with a pro life person. Like, if that's what's in your mind, is like there are these people or this one person who is pro choice or undecided or whatever, and I want to give them a positive experience with a pro life person. You are doing an outreach Now, I want to define the word positive. Positive does not mean we are just going to like sit in a circle and give each other hugs and sing Kubaya. Okay, that's not positive. Positive means two things. It means intelligent and loving. So if I think about me trying to give a positive experience to a pro choice person or an undecided person or someone out there, that's not like a hundred percent on the pro life side. I am thinking about, can I in some way show them that I am a loving person, that I love them, that I love women that I love just like people in general and that's why I'm pro life. Can I in some way show them that I'm a loving person and can I in some way show them that I am an intelligent person Maybe that looks like responding well to something that they said from like a common ground standpoint and being like, oh yeah, that's a really good point. And bringing up something that makes you think, like you've thought about this for, you know, more than one second. Or it could look like making a really good argument for something like one argument. Okay. You don't have to like nail the entire conversation if you made like one good point and you were loving. I think you have given them a positive experience with a pro life person. And so when I'm talking about doing outreach, I'm thinking about you seeing a person or a group of people in front of you and saying to yourself, I am going to intentionally try to give them a positive meaning, intelligent and loving experience with a pro life person. If that is your goal and you're going in and saying, I am trying to do that, I think you're doing outreach.
- [12:36]
B
And I'll add, like an intelligent person can be someone who says, that's a really good argument. I'm not actually sure how to respond to that. I'm going to have to think about that. So you don't even have to have an argument to, to give them a positive experience of a pro life person. Now we want you to learn the arguments. That's awesome as you have capacity for it, but honestly, an intellectually humble, open minded pro life person is demonstrating intelligence. I think a lot of pro choice people think of a lot of pro life people. And honestly, some pro life people are as really dogmatic and closed minded. Like, I can't consider any other kind of view. Like I have to cling on to this because this feels safe to my brain to like know what I think and have it really narrow and rigid and not consider any other point of view. So for you to be able to say, actually that's a really good argument. I hadn't thought of that before. I'm gonna have to like think about how to respond to that. Can we come back to this conversation later or just I will go away and think about this is a way of demonstrating intelligence and a way of giving someone a positive experience of real life person.
- [13:27]
A
Yeah, When I first kind of realized that that that was the goal of outreach, that's what outreach was. That's what really changed my mindset from that's not ever something I could do to oh, that's something I can do. Because to be honest, I think that is something anyone can do. I think any pro life person is capable of giving someone else a positive experience with A pro life person. Maybe it takes a little heart for yourself to get to a point where you can show really loving. Maybe you're not in that spot right now. Maybe you need to take a second and think about what kinds of intelligent things could I say? How would I say that sentence to say I am not sure? I think that's a really good point and I need to go look at that. Like, maybe it takes you a little bit to get there, but I don't think it takes that much to get there to get to a point where you could say something intelligent and something loving. When I realized that was my goal, it was much less scary than having to say, oh, I'm going out to change people's minds. And if I don't change somebody's mind today about abortion, I have failed. I don't think that's true at all.
- [14:29]
B
Yes, absolutely. Redefining the goal is really helpful. Also getting curious, like, when you say, I could never do that, ask yourself why? Not as like an accusation, like, you're terrible because you can never, like, why would you say you could never do that? But as like a genuinely curious question, like, what makes it feel hard? And some of the answer to that might actually be like, what has disagreement looked like for you? What did it look like in your house growing up when you had a fight with your sibling or when your parents had a disagreement with each other? What did that look like? And whether you ever do outreach or not, getting curious about why does outreach feel impossible? Why does that maybe even, like, not feel safe to my body? What are the stories? There can be a really, really helpful thing, just in general, because we all have experienced disagreement and we all have different experiences of what that has looked like. And helping figure out, like, what would make my body feel safe during outreach or during a conversation with someone I disagree with about something important like abortion. I think is really, really helpful for outreach, if you ever do choose to do outreach, but is also just really helpful in general to start to get curious about.
- [15:27]
A
Yeah, I want to help people get a vision for what outreach can look like. And I have some really fun examples that might surprise you of things that I would like consider outreach, but also might inspire you to be like, that sounds like something maybe I could do. And the fun thing about this is Rebecca doesn't know any of my examples. I get the privilege of working with tons of our affiliate groups all over the country. So if you're not familiar, we have a program called the Affiliate Group Program where we will partner with local Pro life clubs. That could be a college pro life club. It could be a high school pro life club. It could be a church respect life committee, or like an adult county Right to Life chapter. We'll partner with all sorts of those groups, and we'll help them become more effective in their advocacy. So we'll help train them in apologetics, help them learn how they could go out and do outreach kind of things and help them recruit members and help them run better meetings and all that kind of stuff. And so when I get to work with all of these groups, I help them brainstorm what are effective ways that we could be doing outreach in our particular area. And some of these ideas I've come up with myself, some of these ideas the affiliate groups have come up with through trial and error and creativity and really cool stuff. And then they come back to their next meeting with me or one of their coaches, and they tell me about this really cool thing that they tried, and I'm like, that's amazing. I have never heard of that idea before and I kind of love it. And then I write it down, and then I'm branding to this meeting, and then Rebecca and I are going to talk about them. So I want to get some of your, like, live reaction thoughts. And honestly, I haven't processed through most of these either. I've just, like, jotted them down in a giant list, as people give them to me, of what do we like about these ideas? What would it take to do something like this? Maybe some potential concerns we have with this idea, or, like, things to watch out for if you wanted to try it. But there's a lot of different ways that you could do this. And I want to go from the least intense to the most intense form of outreach that I think exists now. I should say this first. Technically, I think the least intense form of outreach is to do something like what Rebecca said earlier that our friends at Secular Pro Life talk about and just say something that's like, hey, I don't really want to, you know, argue about it, but for the record, I don't agree. I would argue that's actually the less least intense form of outreach that exists.
- [17:27]
B
But we already covered that.
- [17:28]
A
In this case, we're talking about slightly more intentional things, things you don't, like, just stumble across in your daily life where you're like, I should just slip in a little. I don't agree here. But like, you actually waking up this morning and saying, I am going to try to engage about abortion today. If we're talking about that kind of outreach. I think we have a wide spectrum of less intense to more intense things, and someone kind of want to work through them in that order and give you some ideas, give Rebecca some ideas and see what y' all think. The least intense version of this, where we're waking up in the morning and we're like, I'm gonna go try to talk about abortion today, is to go to a space where you believe most or all of the people are already pro life. I do actually, by the way, still think that's outreach, because most the time, a good chunk of them aren't as pro life as you are. They're like, oh, yeah, I'm pro life. I would never have an abortion. Obviously, abortion's not good, but I'm not out there talking about it. Or maybe I don't vote pro life. Or maybe I don't donate to my local pregnancy center. Like, I'm not, like, actively pro life like Emily. Back in high school, there was a pro life club at my Catholic high school. I was not in it because my attitude in high school was like, I mean, yeah, abortion's wrong, obviously, but also, I have, like, 85 other things in my life that are way more important than talking about abortion. Everybody at my school is pro life anyways, so why would I waste my time talking about this? And also, I am sure. Yeah, also I say I'm sure. Not everyone at my school was actually pro life. Yeah, that's me back in high school thought that.
- [18:51]
B
And if you are in a space, if you listening, are in a space where, like, you go to your church and that's your primary community, and you're like, I don't know any pro choice people. I bet you're wrong, because everybody else in your church knows that that's primarily a pro life space. And pro choice people are not going to feel comfortable talking about being pro choice there. Just like you might have hesitations about talking about being pro life in a space where you're surrounded by people you think are mostly pro choices. So if you think you are in communities where there are no pro choice people, I bet you're wrong.
- [19:16]
A
Yeah. So go to that community, because that's still outreach. And guess what? It's a whole lot less scary.
- [19:22]
B
Yes.
- [19:22]
A
If you're that person, that's like, this is my first time trying this. Go to a fully pro life space. My favorite examples of this is the church festival. Like, if your church has some sort of annual summer festival thingy that they do in the parking lot. Love. Great place. To do an outreach or it could even be less formal than that. And you just set up a table in the back of the church. Doesn't even have to be a table. You can be standing in the back of the church. But I personally like tables because they have like a kind of a designated, we're gonna stand around this thing and talk area. But just being at your church and there's a couple different ways I've seen some of my groups do this. I did not come up with either of these ideas I'm about to give you. Okay. These are both ideas from groups that I've worked with and I think they're fascinating. So the first one, I had a group in Michigan. They set up a table at their church festival and it was. There was like a sign on the table and there was also, I think, the same sign on a giant whiteboard. They like wheeled out one of the giant whiteboards from a classroom. And so I think they had like the same little question kind of written in the middle of the whiteboard, but then with lots of open space around it. So the big version of the question was on the table, tiny version of the question in the middle of the whiteboard. And they got whiteboard markers. And it's like a free speech board. There are many people to come up and write on it. And the question is, what is the toughest pro choice question you've heard? Ooh, I know why. I love that. But I want Rebecca to write why
- [20:38]
B
she loves that so much. I love that so much. One, it lets pro choice people come up and interact without revealing that they're pro choice if they don't want to. It lets them bring up their best pro choice arguments without letting people know that they're pro choice. So it makes pro choice people way more comfortable to come up and engage. Two, it educates pro lifers both, like, helps them make better arguments because they can then like hear the tablers responses to those tough pro choice arguments that they've heard and they're not sure how to respond to. And it also helps those pro life people improve their approach by asking them to think about, okay, but what are the smart pro choice arguments? Because they do exist and helps the pro life culture in that space. Not like dismiss pro choice people as all stupid or all evil because they're not. So yeah, helps pro life people with their approach. Helps pro life people with their arguments, invites pro choice people into a conversation in a way that's going to feel really safe to pro choice people. Oh my goodness. I Love that so much.
- [21:28]
A
There's another thing I love. I love everything you just said. That was like my list as well. The last thing is, let's say that you're a church Respect Life committee and you're trying to get more people interested in doing pro life things in the church. It is an amazing way to recruit people to your other activities or your regular meetings. By as you're having conversations with people you're going to start to meet who are maybe other people that are pro life in our church who are passionate about this or maybe just didn't have a lot of information. But once they get the information and you're able to start helping them and see, oh, we know how to respond to some of these hard questions. Let us help you. And they get more passionate, you can start to collect some people's contact information. It's an amazing recruitment tool, and it was for this particular group as well. They were able to recruit new people to go through the Equip for Life course. Because that's one of the things that this Respect Life group did. Did during their meetings is they would go through the Equip for Life course and be training their members on how to have good conversations. So then they took their members out to the church festival. They did this little thing. And then not only did they get to practice going through the arguments with people that weren't like, scary pro choice people, but then they also recruit new people who are like, this is really interesting. I didn't know how to respond to that. You recruit them to start coming to your meetings to go through the Equip for Life course, and it just feeds itself.
- [22:42]
B
Yeah. I hadn't even thought about, like, what that's like for people tabling, because, like, it's not like a practice dialogue where, like, somebody is putting on their pro choice hat, like somebody who just. The learning argument with you. And it's a really, really helpful tool, but also feels kind of artificial. So it is a real conversation, but it's a real conversation, quite possibly with somebody who's pro life and so much, much less intimidating, but you're actually making the arguments to someone who actually doesn't understand them yet. So it's a better form of practice without being a more intimidating form.
- [23:10]
A
That's so cool.
- [23:11]
B
That's so cool in so many different ways. Uh, one question.
- [23:13]
A
See why I love it?
- [23:14]
C
Yeah.
- [23:15]
A
Yeah.
- [23:15]
B
One question that comes to my mind at this point is like, if I put on my, like, listener hat, I might think, okay, Emily, so you're talking about like, if you're part of a respect life reaper, you're part of some other group. Here's something you could set up at your church or at some other place as a group. What if I'm just a single solitary person and I'm not, like, part of a group at my church and maybe I'd like to start conversations at my church, I'm like, okay, this feels a little less intimidating to go to a space that's mostly pro life, talk with pro life people about this kind of thing. But, like, I don't have a group that I'm with or like an in with my church leadership that's like, we have a group at this church and it's normal for us to like, set up a table in the church lobby because we have a group at this church and it's natural to like, invite people to join our group. If I'm just a person who's not at least yet a part of a group, how would I go about doing this form of outreach or other forms of outreach or, like, getting started with that?
- [23:59]
A
Yeah. So if you're doing it in a church setting, which I do think is probably the best setting for this particular kind of outreach, really all you need is approval from whoever it is that would approve it. Your priest, your pastor, your. If it's like an elder situation, who. Whoever that person is, you just need approval to set up a thing in the, Like a table in the back of church, which, at least on most churches I've been at, is more normal than you think. Like, people set up tables all the time for, like, advertising for this event that's happening or whatever. And most of them are sponsored by groups.
- [24:28]
B
That's true.
- [24:29]
A
But you're not going to look weird if you are the only person standing by a table. Because in my experience, that happens a lot. There's like one person standing by a table. So what you need to do is just get approval, request and say, hey, I would like to set up a table and be talking to people about this and maybe use that to start recruiting to start a group at our church. And here's my other reason I love this question is because that question. What is the hardest pro choice question you've heard? I've had other groups try this now. Like, after my one group in Michigan invented it, I have yet to have that not get very easily approved by the pastor, priest, person in charge, because that is not a scary question. If I walked up to my priest, I'm Catholic, and I was like, hey, I want to have a table in the back of church that said, should abortion remain legal? I would love to convince my priest that that is fine and I think I could convince him that that's fine, but that's harder to do. You need some rapport there. He needs to know that you're going to be able to handle that well. Like I could easily see, especially if you don't have a great relationship with them right now, them being like, eh, that's a little scary for us to do that in the back of church. I don't know how that's going to go. That could upset some people. The word abortion is a scary word. The question what is the hardest pro choice question you've heard enables them to feel much more comfortable because it isn't calling anyone out. It's very much helping to educate probably on something that they would love to be educating people on, but maybe just don't know how to. It's like I want to help our community talk and think about this better and I don't want to call anybody out for their beliefs. I just want to like help them think through arguments and be able to share. And maybe we could put a group together that starts workshopping some of these things and starts also workshopping how our parish can be more supportive of pregnant women in our community. And like, I would just love to meet other people that are passionate about this. I think this is a great way to do that. So I have yet, granted I haven't had that many groups try it, but I have yet to have anyone have any problems with this. Whereas I have had pastors, priests, elder groups be concerned about other forms of outreach and not approve them, at least right away. Had it have to take a lot of convincing, a lot of rapport building, etc. This question is so much less intimidating. So I think it's very doable as a single person to get approval to put up a table in the back of your church or be at the church festival and do something like this. Yeah.
- [26:39]
B
And that might look different at your church depending on the structure of your church or what feels normal there. There might be churches where it's not particularly normal for like groups to set up a table and be talking to people after the service in the back of the church. But something else is normal. Maybe it's like before church when everybody's gathered around coffee and donuts. Maybe it's not a table, maybe it's something else. But I think if it's something that your pastor would like, I think a lot of pastors feel like, I would like to talk about this, but this feels like a minefield. I would like to educate my congregation about this, but, man, this feels hard. And so you are solving a problem that they may already know that they have or helping with a problem that they may already know that they have. So you can kind of ask for their advice, too, or ask a couple friends at church what would feel normal here? What would not feel weird, not feel pushy to people? Because your friends know the church culture like you do. Like, we don't because we're not at your church. But think about your space that, you know, brainstorm with a couple friends, even ask the people that you're asking for permission to help you figure out, like, what's the best way to do this, to serve this church community. And obviously, like, right now, we're talking primarily about churches that are mostly pro life, or at least that people tend to think of as pro life or that your pastor is pro life. Right now, we're thinking about, like, how do you do outreach in a pro life space? Obviously, just want to acknowledge there are churches that are primarily pro choice, and that might not be the best way to start with this kind of outreach, particularly if your goal is to start in a primarily pro life space. One other spot that I'd be curious to try this. Emily, I don't know if any of your groups have, but, like, is a Christian college campus. So if you're.
- [28:04]
A
Yeah.
- [28:04]
B
I went to Hillsdale College in Michigan for undergrad, and I went to the pro life club meetings a couple of times, and I was passionately pro life, but I felt like, are we doing anything? I would love to, like, be having conversations with pro choice people, but I. It wasn't clear to me, like, what can we be doing on this campus? And a table like that, I think would have been really effective. Would have been effective. Honestly, recruiting me to that club. Honestly, I don't actually know a ton about what they were up to. For all I know, they were awesome. I just kind of had my own initial preconceived notions about is there really that much to do with that here on this college campus? Because it's a Christian college campus that's primarily pro life. So, yeah, I'd be really curious to see that tried on a Christian college campus, too.
- [28:40]
A
I am really excited to see what you think of the second idea, because I think this also very much targets you as your former college student. Like, if you put yourself back in Rebecca, at Hillsdale College, who's Not involved in pro life things, but is pro life. How would you have reacted to this table? This is a table that was put together. It was completely invented by our affiliate group in Denmark. They're amazing. They were at, I believe it was like a Christian youth festival day thing. So there was like a ton of Christian youth. The majority of them were pro life, but not really sure. Like, it was one of those expectation is to be pro life here spaces, but does not mean everyone is pro life a lot. Like a lot of the churches we were just talking about. And so what they did is they set up a kind of like voting poll table. They had a question. Well, it's not really a question. It had a problem prompt, I'll say. And then four options. And they had like magnets for people to vote with. And so here was the prompt. It said, I don't talk to people about abortion much because. And then there were four options. There were like four columns. I'm afraid that people will judge me. I need more arguments. I haven't decided what I think about it yet. I'm afraid of hurting people. Those were the four options. And so people would come up and put a magnet in one of those categories and then engage with the pro life person talking about that barrier, what was going on for them. And they met, you know, pro life people doing that. They met pro choice people. Because there's other thing about the question is I don't talk to people about abortion much because you could be pro choice into this question. I don't talk to people about abortion because I'm afraid that people will judge me for my pro choice. Like you could be anything and have answered that. And so it was meant to try to like start very personal conversations with people about what was going on personally for them and their beliefs and their views and their experience with what has dialogue been like about abortion in the past for you, all that kind of stuff. I'm going to stop talking. I want to get your reaction, especially as Hillsdale College. Rebecca.
- [30:31]
B
Yeah, that's cool. One thing I'd be curious to add to that table is like an other option to put a magnet on because I think at Hillsdale it would have been. I kind of assume that most people around me agree. And so I don't see a lot of point. We're just all more and more vehemently arguing the same thing. Is there a point like, I don't. I didn't.
- [30:48]
A
Maybe even just that as a category, at least in certain spaces. If you're in a space where you're, like, very confident that everyone at your church is pro life. That could be a category. Be like, why am I bothering? Because everyone around me is already, yeah.
- [31:00]
B
And like, the people voting for that might not be right that everybody at your church is pro life, but if that's what they think, then that makes sense. I think another would be cool. One thing I love about that is it can help everybody feel less isolated because both pro life and pro choice people, because I think oftentimes talking about why we can't talk about a thing can, like, help people relax, help people feel more able to be seen in their community. I think I'm thinking particularly of, like a pro choice person who comes up to that table and says, I'm afraid people will judge me. Then they can have a conversation with a pro life person who doesn't judge them in their church for being pro choice. And that can be pretty great. Like, if you think about what it's been like for you, if you've ever been in a space that was mostly pro choice and that generally assumed that everybody there was pro choice, like, that feels really isolating. That feels isolating for me to not know, like, how much can I talk about this? How carefully do I have to, like, dance around this if I'm going to say what I do for a living, for instance, because I work for a pro life organization. But the same thing goes on the other side. So if you're at a church that's primarily pro life and typically assumes that everybody there is pro life life, I promise you, I just about guarantee you that there are pro choice people in your church. And I think I can straight up promise you that they feel isolated if they exist. So that table can help with that.
- [32:05]
A
I have one other kind of table in this category of the less intense. I think this one can also be done in majority pro choice spaces, though. This last category is a thing that a lot of my college groups do do now in their majority pro choice spaces. And we call this a service table. So a service table is a table where you are sitting there actively doing some sort of project that you are inviting people to come up and help with for a few minutes and make some sort of tangible impact on helping women or other people in your community that are, like, related to the life issue in any way. I encourage my college clubs that do. I'm going to call it, quote, unquote, standard outreach all the time. Like, I have some college clubs that, like, weekly they are out there with a sign, should abortion remain legal? And they're talking to people. And I often recommend to them at least once for every five times you do that, you should do a service table. Because I want to like surprise the people that are walking by who are getting used to this idea of yes, oh yeah, there's those people out there again with that time. And they're talking to people at abortion. They're trying to main minds. They don't actually ever do anything to help anyone. They just talk about this for one of every five times you do that, do a service table. But guess what? You can also do a service table in the back of your church in your majority pro lifestyle space. Here's some very practical things that you can do. You can package diapers. Every pregnancy center I know gets absurd amounts of diaper donations for moms. And what usually happens is people get like giganto things from Costco of 4,000 diapers. And what they need to do is they need to separate those out into smaller quantities and they tie a cute ribbon around it and have a note from the pregnancy center or whatever. So what you can do, I have had so many people do this, is you call your local pregnancy center, you ask them, is that the thing that would help you? And I don't think I've ever had a pregnancy center say no to that. But ask them, is this a thing that would help you? And then you, you can do this as a solo person. You drive your little butt over to that pregnancy center and you load your car up with all of the Costco giant thingies that they have sitting in the back and you find out what quantities do they need? Do they already have a cute little note? Could you help them write a cute little note on it or whatever? And you get some cute ribbon. Maybe they have some already. Maybe you buy some. You take this to your table in the back of church and you have a cute sign that says, help us package diapers for local moms. And you are just sitting there happily packaging diapers. And people, you've got open chair sitting around it, people come up and you've got a little instruction sign. It's very easy. We need to package these diapers into quantities of 20, 40 and 60 or whatever it is that helped the pregnancy center. So you count up that many diapers and you tie the cute ribbon around and you put the little thing and then you put it in a box. And as we're doing this, you can just naturally get into conversation about what their experience has been with women in the community who need help and have they ever heard of the local pregnancy center before? Do they know about what they do? Maybe you could have some little brochures for the pregnancy. You never actually have to say the word abortion at this table, per se. You can just talk generally and reveal the fact that you are pro life by you sitting there and organizing this. And just naturally get people into the idea of, like, hey, it's a good thing to help people that are experiencing an unplanned pregnancy or a planned pregnancy and just need some help. And we do that, too. I, as a pro life person, also care about doing that. So I've had people do that. I've had people make cars, cards for moms. I've had, like, Valentine's Day things where, like, they'll sit down and make Valentine's cards for moms at a local pregnancy center. And the pregnancy center gives them out to the moms who are. When they're at their appointments near Valentine's Day, or Christmas cards or whatever, or cards for moms who just had a baby. And it's like, we're praying for you or we're so excited for you giving some sort of piece of advice or being like, you're gonna be awesome, and just, like, building them up. There's a million different ways you can do this, but some sort of making cards, making little baggies that the pregnancy centers can give out to a mom who just had a baby or putting together diaper diapers, something that's like, actively. I'm just sitting here doing the thing, and there's a cute sign that invites people to come over. This is great for kids in the back of church. Wait for, like, getting the family to come over and sit. Sometimes parents don't want to talk to you about abortion when they're in front of their, like, little kiddos, but they will absolutely come over your table and have your kids draw a cute card. And then you get to talk to the parents. So not scary can happen in a pro life or I think, a majority pro choice space and just kind of not at all what you would think of as outreach.
- [36:19]
B
Outreach.
- [36:19]
A
And if you're a college pro life club, I don't want you only ever doing that. But it is a great place to start. It's a great thing to do for your very first tabling of the semester when you're trying to get some of your freshmen out there for the first time. It's a great thing to sprinkle into your outreach, and it's a great thing to do at your church.
- [36:34]
B
Yeah, that's awesome. And I love that you can, like, set the level of intensity yourself. Like, if what you're comfortable with is not trying to, like, indirectly bring up abortion or indirectly even bring up the pregnancy center and. And talk about what they do. If what you're comfortable with is just sitting there and being kind to people and starting conversation, they may naturally ask you questions about, like, why are you doing this? What group is this? What's this pregnancy center thing that you're doing this for, this for? And like that. At least for me, as an introvert, it's like, much more comfortable, like, answer people's questions that kind of naturally come up than to, like, try to steer the conversation to somewhere that I want to be talking about. And I think you can also do this table and just, like, ask people about themselves and get to know them and, like, treat them like human beings. If you're on college campus, you can ask them what their major is and why they picked it and what, whatever. If you're at a church, you can get to know them and their family. How long have they been at the church? What brought them to that church? I don't care. Just like, typical getting to know you questions. Caring about people. Like, you don't even have to have an agenda. You can just sit at this table making diapers, invite people to come up and then just talk with them like human beings and build relationship with them. And that is effective. And you don't have to, like, be thinking about, I have some ulterior motive or goal here. You can just have the conversation or you can, if you're comfortable with it, take the conversation a particular direction or invite people there and see if they want to follow you there or not.
- [37:47]
A
Okay, so I think we're going to leave it there for this episode. I hope we've completely shattered what you traditionally think of as outreach, because truly, like, you can make a huge difference going even into, like, majority pro life spaces and just opening up this conversation, making a space for people to think deeper about arguments they've heard and reflect on what barriers they've had to talking about it. Get up some courage, meet other pro lifers, do something tangible to help women and families in their community. Like, all of that moves the needle. We're going to get into some more intense, I guess, forms of outreach next time and how to take care of yourself well in that. But please know that outreach doesn't have to be this big, scary thing. You can do it in really unexpected ways that can have a huge impact. Let us know in the comments. Like what unexpected outreach ideas or spaces have you tried? Let's inspire more people to go have some great conversations.
- [38:40]
C
Thanks. Thank you for listening to the Equipped for Life podcast, a project of Equal Rights Institute. Equal Rights Institute uses speaking, writing, YouTube videos, podcasts, online courses, and campus outreach to help pro life advocates in the areas of practical dialogue tips, relational apologetics, pro life philosophy, and sidewalk counseling. If you've been helped by this podcast, please consider supporting it by making a donation@equalrightsinstitute.com.