By John Ensor

Almost since I became a pastor many years ago, I have been involved particularly in the work of pregnancy crisis intervention, helping to start pregnancy help ministries that serve mothers who are pregnant couples to cope with the crisis of their pregnancy and help them find life-affirming solutions. I’ve been doing that directly and actively since 1989 so that means I’ve been at it for about 35 years. At one point in 1991 I, my wife and several others in the inner city of Boston started a pregnancy help clinic. It’s the first one that we ever started and over the years that grew into six pregnancy help clinics. Then I went down to Miami and did the same thing there among the poorer neighborhoods of Miami. Today they have five pregnancy help medical clinics operating in Miami that developed out of that work. And of course if you follow PassionLife, you know that this is what we do as our endpoint in places like China, Cuba, Vietnam, and India. We want to start with pastors in the Bible and end with churches and Christians committed to answering the call to rescue the innocent one mother and baby at a time. Well, of course, this involves a lot of fundraising and it’s no one’s particular delight to try to raise money. In Boston we eventually got to the point we had to raise $1.2 million a year in order to operate six pregnancy help medical clinics and so I began to speak in churches, write letters, talk to individuals and we began to think through how we could do this. Well I had no idea how to begin and as we were starting our first pregnancy center I met with a group of pastors to give them my vision. I thought what if we could as a community of churches start a counseling office that provided ultrasound and services and really followed up with these women to help them find a life-affirming alternative. A couple days later I got a check in the mail for $10 from a pastor in Boston with a little note that said my wife and I believe in what you’re doing and we’ve committed $10 a month to help you start that pregnancy help office. Well that was amazing to me because it had never dawned on me that people could begin to think about serving and helping women like this in a modest but monthly way. So we began to ask people to consider giving monthly. We landed on this idea of giving a dollar a day in order to fight the greatest moral crisis of our times and at one point we actually began to hand out coffee cups to people saying why don’t you give up a cup of coffee in order to help rescue mothers and babies from abortion. Thinking of about a dollar a day of course today I don’t know that you could buy a cup of coffee for $1 and if you go to places like Starbucks you might end up spending four, five or six dollars for a cup of coffee. But nonetheless the point was you were trying to find a way for everyday people of average income to find a modest but monthly way to invest in the mission of rescuing the innocent from being hauled off to death as it says in Proverbs 24. Along the way we need to find some people that could also give significant amounts of money like $10,000 or $25,000 or even $50,000 in order to build a medical clinic and buy an ultrasound. There is no way that you could do that by waiting for enough people to give a dollar a day. It takes a lot of effort to help people get to the point where they can make a monthly modest gift. So along the way you had to find some wealthier people who really had been prosperous and wanted to do kingdom things with that prosperity. And God would send them along just at the right time to help with this and with that. So for the last 35 years it’s been my great honor to invite people to invest as partners in these kingdom missions, particularly in rescuing mothers and couples from the violence and the agony of abortion and to do it in a way that is life-changing to them. Well I want to tell you that one of the most profound things that happened to me in all of my 35 years of inviting people to donate happened on one single day in which I received several donor letters in the mail. One was a check for $10,000 which was amazing and it’s still amazing really but this was back in probably 1998 and that’s a very significant gift in the early years of a ministry. Then I opened up the next envelope and I pulled out a postcard which we don’t even use anymore. It had four quarters taped to it and some words scribbled on it by somebody that was obviously very old which said “please use this to save babies”. I remember just being awestruck because in one hand I was holding this postcard with four quarters taped to it and in the other hand I was holding this check for $10,000. I immediately began to think biblically about this and the scripture that tells us that we never quite know what the amount of sacrifice is in a gift. In particular I began to think about what Jesus said in Luke chapter 21, verses 1-4 where we read: “Jesus looked up and saw the rich putting their gifts into the offering box and He saw a poor widow put in two small copper coins. And He said, ‘truly I tell you this poor widow has put in more than all of them for they all contributed out of their abundance but she out of her poverty put in all that she had to live on.’’’ What a stunning word that is and to receive those two gifts in the same day, wondering whether or not these four quarters represented a higher percentage of her income than the person who sent us the $10,000. Now at a practical level and throughout all my life I’ve needed people who could give $10,000 to help us get to China, help us develop a fetal model or even more to purchase an ultrasound machine which back in the day cost around $35,000 and the ones that we buy now are more like $6,000 or $7,000 which is still a lot of money. So you need those people in a practical sense and people that have prospered need to feel good about what they’ve invested in and so it’s been a wonderful marriage relationship and partnership between their generosity and our fidelity to try to do all that we can with that gift. At the same time how can you not just relish the idea of getting four quarters on a postcard and beginning to realize that there are lots of people of very modest and meager means who nonetheless feel the burden to want to be a part of God’s kingdom. I always have come to really respect when poor, struggling people still insist on partnering with PassionLife around the world because it just seems like that’s extra special that they’re giving it as a sacrifice in a way that I don’t really have to give at this point in my life. My house is paid for, my car is paid for, I live modestly, so I don’t have to give a gift and give up something in order to do it. But some people have and I suspect that this lady, whoever she was, was prompted by God to teach me a lesson 30 some years ago that I’ve never forgotten and that is whether you receive a dollar in the mail or you receive a $100,000 in the mail, everyone who gives according to their means to the things that God prompts them to give to has been a faithful partner with you in the great work of the gospel. This month we’re coming to the end of our fiscal year at PassionLife so I would love to see us reach our budget. It’s a sizable budget now, about $1.5 million per year and we’re pretty close to reaching our annual budget goal. So if you have four quarters and a postcard and that is all that you can give and you want to give it, then send it along because we’ll appreciate it along with the person who can give $30 a month or give up a cup of coffee a day and certainly those people who have donated large and significant amounts of money who love the idea that there are many people of modest means who are also partnering with them. So everybody gets to honor everybody when you answer God’s call to give generously and gladly. In return, know that we always receive these gifts and use it in a way that we want you to be glad that you gave. We don’t ever want someone to be regretful and to feel like we didn’t use their money wisely and honor it as a matter of good stewardship in the saving and the transforming of many lives. So if you have a gift to give in September, please visit our website passionlife.org. Think about becoming a modest monthly donor or if you’ve got some extra gifts to give, this would be a great time to receive them at PassionLife to finish our year in the black as we continue to work now in 30 different countries to mobilize the churches to start pregnancy help ministries that lead to the saving of the innocent and bringing good news to the guilty. It’s a great mission and I welcome your partnership. Thank you.