Building An Effective Social Ministry
Compassion in Action

Good morning.  

Thank you for your warm welcome. I am often in situations where the audience doesn’t share quite the same value system I have; but this is like being supported on angels’ wings.  

Today’s topic is “Building a Successful Social Ministry — in a word, “Marketing Your Ministry:  Moving a Good Idea Off the Drawing Board and Into Action.” Clearly, the social ministry that I’m most aware of, most comfortable talking about, is the one that I’ve dedicated my life to for the last 18 years -- and that is the Nurturing Network.  

So today, I’m going to begin with the seven points, the seven steps, that I think are the most important in building a successful social ministry and I’m going to use the ministry I’m most familiar with — The Nurturing Network — to illustrate those points. 

I. If you are interested in dedicating your energies to a social ministry, the first thing you must do is to identify the social need to which your heart is going to respond most directly.  I strongly suspect that if we had time to go around the room and pose this question to each one of you, we would probably find as many different social needs as there are people in this room.  

It happened that my heart was lead to respond most poignantly to women who have suffered crisis pregnancies and to the unborn child who needs to be loved and represented by someone in this society. I felt called to the mother with the crisis pregnancy because at this time in history, she’s very much misunderstood.  She too often receives judgement. She is too often reduced to a political speech.  Somehow in the process we lose touch with her, the person who is suffering, carrying an unborn child without economic, social, or emotional support. 

Now you might ask, “How do I know to what my heart is going to most respond — what social ministry I might be uniquely called to do?”  What I am going to suggest to you may sound paradoxical but I have found it to be true.   So often when I have sought the handwriting of the Holy Spirit in my life in order to recognize what would be most pleasing to God, I am guided to reflect upon moments or periods of profound suffering.  It is in times of suffering that we are reduced to our knees.  It is in these moments of suffering that we put aside our intellect long enough to hear the cries of other human beings that are perhaps feeling the same anguish as we are at that particular moment.  It is in responding to those moments of suffering in a positive way that we are invited to experience and receive a kind of grace that we might not otherwise know. I might illustrate this point with three very personal experiences in my life.  Given your generosity of spirit, I feel comfortable doing that.  

I’d like to start with the first suffering that actually launched the Nurturing Network. My husband and I lost our first baby in a late miscarriage. I can still remember how much I was looking forward to the birth of that child. I did all of the things they tell you not to do. I had decorated a room.  I had made the quilt. I had prepared for this arrival in every possible way.

But on January 8th, this child was taken. It was a very, very difficult dealing with that suffering and trying to understand what the Holy Spirit might be asking of me as I healed from this loss. What might I be called to do through this heartache that I would otherwise not have had the vision and dedication to do?

I found myself closely drawn to the feelings of the woman who is driven to an abortion clinic and told that this is her “freedom.” Even though she knows the boyfriend isn’t going to stay otherwise.  Even though she knows that her parents have said, “Don’t come home pregnant.” Even though she knows her friend will say, “You should have been smarter than that.” There’s a loneliness that these women experience that has nothing to do with freedom.  There are pressures brought to bear on them that are hard to describe unless you have sat face to face, as I and as many of you have, with thousands of women who have experienced this very problem.  

Out of the nightmare of my miscarriage, the Holy Spirit softened my heart — opened it to the possibility of a fare deeper empathy with women who lose their children in a much, much more traumatic way. They don’t have a husband by their side to comfort them. They don’t have family to console them.  They often don’t even have a friend who will accompany them to their hour of agony.  And so I began to see the rough outline of the Nurturing Network forming out of this very deep sadness that happened in my life.

Another kind of suffering that at the time made no sense to me, was the loss of my privacy. In 1980, if you’ve read my book Powerplay, you know that the media had a good time with a young lady named Mary Cunningham. That lady was me. I had done everything that I’d been taught to do, to achieve, to accomplish in business. But unfortunately I look very feminine, was promoted very quickly and the media had a very good time speculating with gossip and rumor on how I achieved my success.  

I was in a complete state of shock that just out of gossip and rumor alone, I could be rendered so ineffective. I could not imagine what good was going to be produced through this unfair and very painful circumstance.  But again, I believe that there must be something in that suffering that the Holy Spirit was trying to say to me. I don’t think He was trying to tell me to be less feminine.  I don’t think He was trying to tell me to be less effective. I think He was giving me a gift that at the time seemed like the cruelest gift, the turning of me into a public figure.  But that very creation of me as a public figure gave me the invitation to communicate with many people at almost anytime I wanted to. Time magazine or Newsweek or The Today Show would get an interview that they wanted with Mary Cunningham; but I would get a chance to talk about the Nurturing Network. 

I must admit that in 1980, this experience made little or no sense to me, but it was an invitation to grace. To accept the rash judgment and ridicule, to embrace the cross of losing my personal privacy, of never being able to just be plain Mary Elizabeth Cunningham again.  In humbling accepting God’s will and trusting God’s Providence, I received a profound blessing.  

Let’s track back even earlier in my life at 5 ½ years old when my father left our family. At 5 ½, I couldn’t understand the pain. I saw my mother hurting. I saw four children who had to be raised and fed and clothed by someone who had not learned the skills to do that. And I didn’t see a lot of people there to help her.  So perhaps even at that young age, the Holy Spirit was already starting to sensitize me to the needs of single women — women who are raising children alone — women who are going to need love and compassion and tenderness in the absence of those people whom you would like to think would be there for them.  

These three illustrations, very personal in their nature, all involved profound suffering and tears. Yet all three were invitations to grace and empathy and compassion for other people. How did this experience lead to the formation of the Nurturing Network?  The next step will make that even clearer.  

II. The second thing I would encourage you to do if you want to engage in an effective social ministry is to prepare your heart, to purify it, through prayer.  In today’s world that sounds almost funny.  But if you think about it, we know that most people when going out for a sporting event will warm up.  They do their exercises. Well, there’s something comparable to that in terms of preparing to perform an effective social ministry.  I consider those spiritual exercises to be accomplished through prayer.  We can’t have too much grace.  Therefore we need to invite Grace in at every step along the way and prayer is the most effective means I know of to make this happen.  

As a mother of two very active teenage children, and I suspect I’m looking at others in this room with similar challenges, it is often very difficult to find even a quiet moment in the day, much less an hour of prayer.  My time is three o’clock in the morning.  You may see circles under these eyes but they are worth it. This is my time when no one else is awake in the house.  It’s my time to bring out the sacred scripture. It’s my time to write in my daily journal and to really listen, Am I on the right track?  Am I losing touch with what I was really called to do?  Am I being a good mother, and a good wife, even as I do this social ministry? We need these quiet times. I don’t care how bright you are, or how good you are, without those quiet moments in prayer anyone can get off track. And so I would recommend that you find a period of time — it doesn’t have to be 3:00 a.m. in the morning, but it needs to be sometime that’s just your time, alone with God, to talk about whatever it is on your heart.

III. The third very important step in a successful ministry is to clarify your vision, to refine your goal. Perhaps you can recall one of the many interviews that you recently heard with the Winter Olympic athletes in Salt Lake City. If you listen to what they’re saying, the successful ones, they don’t have a general goal. They have a very specific goal – “I want to win a bronze medal.” “I’m here in Salt Lake City to be #1.”  They know what their goal is. All of us have the goal of winning our salvation, but I’m going to suggest that you if you’re going to be effective in social ministry, you’ll need to be more specific than that. You will need to translate that very general goal to be a good person and to be close to God, into something more concrete and specific.  

Take your vision, take what your heart is especially drawn to, and focus it into a very concrete goal. Ask specifically, “What is the particular need that I feel moved to respond to? What specific human suffering might I be able to alleviate? What specific goal do I have in mind?  What would success look like as it relates to this task?  Is there a genuine unfulfilled social need that I’m trying to do something about or am I reinventing the wheel? These are the kinds of questions that will help you to become much more concrete and much more specific about what you’re trying to accomplish.  

To use the Nurturing Network as an illustration again for a moment, just when I would begin to think that I clearly understood the goal, it would become further refined for me. What I thought was going to be my social ministry 18 years ago actually evolved into something quite different because of this prayerful process. In preparation for this talk with you today, I looked up what had I written down as my specific goal when I founded the Nurturing Network. I had stated that if I could help just one mother each month for one year to complete her pregnancy and clearly see her own strengths that I would have succeeded, that I would have done what I felt the Holy Spirit was calling me to do.  

In the first month alone I was able to help 12 women and we have experienced exponential growth ever since then.  The Nurturing Network has in fact been able to help over 14,000 mothers and unborn children since the time this plan was revealed to me. And so, I encourage you to be prepared for a message from the Holy Spirit that may sound similar to the one I received, “You think that helping one person a month is what you’re here to do; but I have news for you, stay tuned.”

Another development occurred that was very different from what I had originally envisioned my goal to be.  I had seen my goal in a very focused way as helping mothers and unborn children embrace the gift of life. As it has turned, the Nurturing Network has actually become three ministries, not one. The first is the obviously life-saving service to the mothers and the unborn children.  The second ministry is to serve the staff of the Nurturing Network.  Over the years, most of our staff has been full-time and unpaid. This is not like working in corporate America where you can offer a raise or different perks to motivate people. When people are working for free because they love what you do, and because they’re drawn to do something about it, you have to keep that environment so good, so positive, so pure that they want to be there tomorrow morning.  No money is going to make that happen. And so a second ministry evolved which had to do with putting into practice those workplace policies that would make our headquarters a wonderful place to work. 

The third ministry, which came as a surprise to me, was a ministry to serve our society at large. Our society, in my opinion, is really broken over this issue. There is a tremendous amount of hurt and confusion, families are torn apart, friends no longer can even talk to each other about “life” versus “choice.”  People are realizing that profound issues are at stake — like life and death.  They feel uncomfortable with the underlying questions like, “Are the unborn really going to be safe in the womb? Will the elderly really be safe in a hospital?” These are clearly questions that reveal to the very heart of what kind of society we’re going to be.  

And so the Nurturing Network stepped forward in another way that I believe was completely guided by the Holy Spirit and that was to forge a common ground and to build a bridge to more people to make it possible for them to participate in something genuinely constructive. The Nurturing Network was something inherently positive that didn’t require them to argue with people. It just required them to give of their time, their talent and their treasure to something very good.  And so we work side by side with people who would sometimes initially feel more comfortable calling themselves pro-choice.  In their hearts, they are really pro-life; they just haven’t had the invitation to admit it yet.  

We have, of course, engaged the help of many, many people who are pro-life deeply and adamantly. And what is happening among our 32,000 volunteers, people in all 50 states and 25 foreign countries, is that caring friends who will roll up their sleeves and put aside the rhetoric long enough to touch a human life actually discover that they essentially agree on the most important issues.

And conversions occur in this process. I must admit that I have I have never seen a conversion of the heart occur through argumentation. As much as I’ve studied to try to learn how to speak of this issue, I have to tell you that I have never successfully convinced someone to change their opinion about abortion through a persuasive argument or weighty discussion. For there are no words that reach the part of a human being that’s off track. What reaches a person who is in pain is love and compassion; and that’s what the Nurturing Network is about.  It is an invitation to society at large to heal, to come together and to work on behalf of the unborn and their mothers who are at risk to being swallowed up by a culture of death.

IV. The fourth very important step to an effective social ministry is to examine your own unique talents and abilities to determine if there is a fit between what you’ve defined as a social need and what you have to bring to that solution process.  Sometimes it’s very painful to realize that for whatever reason your heart may be moved to respond to a particular set of needs that you do not have the personality, the skills, the education or the ability to solve.  And so, through your active prayer life, this realization will become very clear to you and in humility you will find your way back to the drawing board.  Listen some more.  Again, watch closely what insights suffering has brought into your life.  Probe what suffering you respond most acutely to and then go back to evaluate your unique skills.  

As an example, I have a very difficult time being around any kind of physical pain or injury. Therefore, working in an emergency ward in a hospital would not be a good option for me. Mental injury or emotional trauma on the other hand does not frighten me. I see this kind of anguish as an invitation to offer my unique gifts. Each of us has our own set of strengths and weaknesses and with them those activities that we’re properly drawn to do and those we couldn’t possibly do. And so it’s very important that you honestly assess your skills and your talents. Sometimes you may be brought close to an issue not to act on it but to pray about. At other times you will focus on an issue in order to actually put into action some concrete ministry. You must be able to assess the difference.

Another funny story about the Nurturing Network comes to mind to illustrate this point. In the first six months after I lost our baby, I started to receive this very clear sense in my prayer life that I was meant to translate this suffering into something very positive. I kept hearing the question again and again, “Who is it that is hurting more than you are right now?”  And I kept be riveted to the face of the mother who is about to abort her own child.  How much greater her suffering was.  But I kept thinking, “I really don’t want to do this right now. I want to build my own family.  I’m very busy, and I don’t want to do this.”  

However everywhere I went, whether it was at a dinner party, whether I was in the grocery store, whether I was sitting at a convention, I would inevitably end up sitting next to someone who would start talking about this issue. It got to the point where I would start laughing, and finally I’d walk out saying, “Okay, I get it; I will do it.”  Gradually, it becomes very clear in a way that is almost unavoidable. Remember when you were growing up and you would say to your mother, as I did, “How will I know the person I’m meant to marry?’ And she would say, ‘”It will be very clear to you; you’ll know when the time is right.”  It’s like that. When you’re “called by name” to do a social ministry you really won’t have much difficulty recognizing the signs. And you won’t have a lot of choice if you’re really called to do it! 

In Holy Scripture, we are reminded that we are “called by name.”  God didn’t say, “I’ll call you in general; you’ll have sort of a sense that I’m interested in you.” He’ll call you by name. You’ll know it’s you that he’s trying to reach. It will be so clear and so undeniable that no matter how many barriers you may try to put up, and no matter how many stall tactics you may employ, you will not be able to help but move forward.

V. The fifth very important component of this process, perhaps the most analytical, is to put together a clear action plan of how you want to get from where you are today and where society is today to where you see the need to be.  This is called, in business school, a “Strategic Marketing Plan.” 

You might say, “What does a Strategic Marketing Plan have to do with building an effective social ministry?’  And I will tell you, “A lot!” I was fortunate enough that when my dad left our family, a wonderful priest, a Monsignor, stepped into my life, and the lives of my brothers and sisters, and became a father figure to me. I was very fortunate.  If I could have picked a father figure, I would have chosen Father Bill.  Father Bill used to say to me, “Mary Elizabeth, as you put together your plan of life, I want you to really be clear about what success is going to look like.” And he added, “I won’t consider you to be successful at all if you’re at the top of your class, if you earn a big salary or if you live in a great house. That is not success. Success will be becoming a “practical idealist.”  

And so he introduced me early in my life to those two words that sound initially to be antithetical. But they are not. Let’s take a moment to think about it. You may know many people who are idealists, but they don’t have the foggiest idea how to implement their dreams. And you may know many people who are pragmatists, very practical, they may have all the skills in the world, but they’ve lost their ideals along the way. The goal of an effective social ministry is to be a practical idealist.  

For me to become a practical idealist meant that at one point in my life I had to put moral philosophy aside and pursue a graduate degree at Harvard Business School. That was one of the hardest things I ever did.  I can still remember the ridicule in the classroom; I was called “the poet” of Harvard Business School. We would be discussing a plant closing and I’d want to talk about how many families were being put at risk, how many people wouldn’t have paychecks to bring home.  

Going back again to that process of personal assessment: right now if you had to evaluate, are you more of an idealist or more of a pragmatist?  Whichever side of that equation you’re on, you must work really hard to build the skills on the other side so that as you move forward, you will constantly be balancing the practical with the ideal.  For example are you working so hard at the Harvard Business School side of things that you’re letting go of your ideals?  Are you working so hard on the ideals that you no longer are able to reach human beings; you’re no longer in touch with how to effectively get things done.  During those two years at Business school I also learned a very valuable test that could easily be applied to any social ministry.  It is called the “Five P’s of Marketing.” I will now try to reduce two years of instruction to about three minutes.  

In order to apply the five P’s of marketing to your social ministry, you will first need to identify your Product.  In other words, what is this product that you’re trying to bring to society at large?  You must be very clear about the product is. At what Price are you going to bring this Product to society? Third, what Promotion can you bring to bear so that people can really learn about your Product? Fourth, what Packaging can you put around this wonderful product in order to make it even more attractive. And fifth, what Premise or distribution are you going to use to get your product out to the people who most need it?

Let me take the Nurturing Network for a moment and show you how the five P’s really do apply. (Harvard Business School would be really upset with this; I suspect that this is not at all what they expected me to do with the five P’s!)

1. First, what is the product of the Nurturing Network?  The P, the Product that is, after all, would be the gift of life.  The product that we are giving to these mothers is the freedom, the opportunity to see this child within them in the most positive light no matter how bad their circumstances may be.  To give them all of these resources they need when their own network has let them down.  Giving each mother all of the practical resources she needs so that life within her can survive is a very valuable product.  

2. During the next step, I did the ultimate marketing  “no-no;” I decided to Price my product at nothing because I wanted to make sure that there was absolutely not one woman who needed this product who would say that because it cost $25 or $100, or whatever price we might come up with, that she couldn’t afford it.  So I place no price on this product.  All that a prospective client of the Nurturing Network must do is complete a questionnaire.  

I might mention that the questionnaire is extensive.  It is about 15 pages, but it’s the one thing I ask of each client so that our counselors and I might know her a little bit better and be that much better able to put her in touch with our resources.  

What are these invaluable — but free — life-saving resources specifically? There are five core resources in the Nurturing Network.  The first core resource is a Nurturing Home.  Would it surprise you to know that today, this very day, we will receive on average, five phone calls from women all around the country, whose own families have told them not to come home if they’re pregnant.  “Either get rid of the evidence or don’t come home.”  Sadly many of them come from good Christian families.  “You can’t do this to your father; this would break his heart.”  “Your mother doesn’t have to know I’ll take you to the clinic myself.”  You don’t think that’s pressure?  If she doesn’t have an 800 number to call at that precise moment, she may indeed end up at an abortion clinic today — and not out of “freedom of choice” but out of a sense that she had no other choice!

Would it surprise you to know that when it’s not the mother and father or the brother and sister applying pressure, it may be the person she’s engaged to saying, “This isn’t the time for us to start a family; get rid of this one and we can get married properly.  Then in another two or three years, we’ll have a baby.”  Can you think of a more horrible way to begin a marriage?  Can you think of more pressure that could be brought to bear on a woman than this?  She urgently needs our 800 number.  

So these are the women for whom the Nurturing Home process is set up. When a woman calls the 1-800-TNN-4MOM number, she is immediately given a counselor who will go through that questionnaire with her either orally or ask if she has time to receive it in the mail, complete it and send it back to us.  If she needs us to go through it right then and there, we are willing and ready to do that.  We can bring up on our computer literally thousands of resources that are in place all around the country.  Nearly 700 are Nurturing Homes that have completed their questionnaires and have had their references checked.  They have said on a moment’s notice, “If you call me, I will meet a woman who is pregnant at the bus terminal, at the airport, wherever you tell me to go and she has a place in our home.” That is such a blessing to be able to share with someone who that day has been told, “Don’t come home.”  It is a blessing to be able to say that there is a family waiting for you right now, and you may move in today.  It can often make the difference between life and death, hope and despair.

Holy Spirit they will want to do it tomorrow and they don’t realize that there may be some real problems with them offering this support right away.  If I could share one brief anecdote with you:  My husband and I had the good experience of being a Nurturing Home several years ago and I can remember at the time all of the reasons coming to mind that maybe we were the last people who ought to do this. I mean I could think of reasons like “Here I am running the Nurturing Network, raising two small children, I just don’t have time, I can’t do this.” And again I kept hearing. “Yes you can.  Not only can you, but you will.”

This particular client raised many special issues because she was recognizable as a TV personality.  And when she called she said, “You know, I have to abort this baby because this will be used in the pro-life movement to hurt our cause.  Do you see how the devil works?’  I reassured her in the only way I knew for sure would meet her needs. I invited her to come and live in our home.

Now, in case you missed the timing on this, I had not gone to my husband yet.  So when he came home that night, I said, “Bill, I hope that you’re not going to be upset with me, but I really felt called to do something today and this is what it is.”  And I gave him a full description of the situation.  He said, “We’re ready.”  In today’s lexicon, he might have said, “Let’s roll.”

And so we went through six months with this particular young lady who wore my maternity clothes and ate dinner with us every night.  We sat up for late night chats on many occasions and cried together over hot chocolate together.  These times brought me even closer to what it is that I was trying to do at the Nurturing Network. It took me beyond the paperwork, beyond the fundraising, beyond the speech giving and it put me even more closely in touch with the woman experiencing the loneliness of this situation.

Toward the final weeks of her pregnancy, this client asked me if I would help to deliver her baby as her birth coach.  Interestingly enough, the day that she went into labor turned out to be our son’s 5th birthday, June 10th.  I don’t know about you, but if you have a five-year-old or you’ve ever had a five-year-old, you know that they are not known for selflessness on their birthday.  So I waited as long as I could as her contractions were became closer.  About 7:00 in the morning, I went into my son’s room and said, “Billy, I am really sorry, but our client has gone into labor and I’m going to have to leave for the hospital with her right now.  I can’t tell you that I’m going to be back at all during this special day, she may be in labor for 24 hours like I was, and so I just really want to apologize for missing your birthday.  He sat straight up in bed and he said, “Mom, this is a sign from God that he loves what you’re doing.”  Wow!  

So there we have one of the blessings that came out of responding to what I think the Holy Spirit asks of us.  That little boy will go through life with such a keen understanding of what it is to walk the talk, to put your values into action.

And so that’s what Nurturing Network really has done in terms of society at large. It has invited lots of people to put aside the argument long enough to roll up their sleeves and touch a life.  Help someone. We have said, “There is a place for the argument, but let’s put it aside for a while.”  So the first specific resource in that product of the Nurturing Network is the Nurturing Home itself. The greatest gift of time, and, in my opinion the most sacrifice, is asked of a person who’s willing to be a Nurturing Home.  

On the other end of the spectrum, but every bit as important, is volunteering to be an Inspirational Counselor. An Inspirational Counselor does not need to have a degree is psychology or sociology.  To fulfill this role, you need to have life experience with these issues that would enable you to speak with authority and with considerable compassion on the phone or in person with one of our clients. Sometimes it’s just a matter of two phone calls during a nine-month period where a mother is particularly down and she knows that you are there. That little bit of time, believe it or not, can make all the difference.  

And I again rely on the Holy Spirit to tell me who it is that ought to be this client’s Nurturing Network Inspirational Counselor.  It’s quite remarkable.  Even with our large database of volunteers, even with all the matching we try to do where we evaluate homes in terms of “Do you have pets?” Is yours a rural environment? Are there other little children in the home?  Do you have lots of Ph.D.’s?” All of those things are dovetailed with the client in mind so that she fits right into a particular Nurturing Home.  

Even with all of that preparation however, I have to tell you, that it’s not the database that’s making these fits happen. I’ll give you a very specific example.  

We had one particular client come to us; she was six months pregnant and she was having a difficult pregnancy from the medical point of view and she was living in an abandoned apartment. She didn’t know about Nurturing Network until someone mentioned our program to her in a Laundromat.  And so she called the 800 number and said, “Can you help me, I need a place to stay?” And I said, “Absolutely we can. Would you tell me a little bit more about yourself.”  

Well she gave me a little more information, she was Hispanic, she needed a Spanish speaking home. She was Catholic and she preferred a Catholic home. She was allergic to pets, she couldn’t go into a home with animals. She grew up in a family where they didn’t have lots of education, but they had lots of love, so I knew the kind of environment we were looking for. I drew everything up on the computer screen that seemed to fit those criteria, and there were six names.  I pulled one, I don’t know why I pulled that one but I called and I said, “We have someone that needs you.  Can you meet us at the bus terminal? This client will be there this afternoon.” And her response was simply, “I’ll be there.”  

So she moved in with this particular young lady who was a single head of household. The baby was born six months later with a rare chromosomal defect. It was exactly the same special challenge that this Nurturing Home mother had experienced when she lost her own child immediately following the birth. She already knew the medical specialists that could help this particular child. She had those numbers readily available – and this child lived.  This child, unlike her own, survived this illness in part because this Nurturing Home happened to know which doctors to call on.  When I say that miracles are worked, I mean many different kinds of miracles. This is just one example.  

Another example, a woman called us and said she wanted to be a Nurturing Home. There was a certain urgency about her, I didn’t know what the urgency was so I asked.  She responded, “Oh I just really feel called to do this.” So I sent her the questionnaire.  She, too, was a single head of household. The questionnaire was fine; the references were excellent, so we sent her a client.

It turned out that two to three years prior to this time she had a form of cancer that was supposed to have been terminal but it was now in complete remission. During the time that he client was living with her the cancer came back and it started to claim her life.  She called us as soon as this happened.  She said, “I would like to have my very last act of kindness and goodness be this Nurturing Home experience.  Will you allow the client to stay?”  We spoke with the client and the client said, “I’ve become so attached to this woman; my own mother died of this particular type of cancer and I never had the chance as an eight-year-old to respond to my mother the way I wish I could have. Can I please stay?” She stayed and her baby was born three days before this woman died.  

There’s no way our database did that! The database offered some practical guidelines but the Holy Spirit works the miracles and puts people together who need each other.  So much for the Nurturing Home program, all I can tell you is that it does great things -- not just for the clients that need a home to stay in but also for the people that are offering to open their hearts and lives to these women.  

The second core resource within the product definition or first “P” of the overall marketing plan is counseling.  We have over 1,100 counselors who are ready to serve on a moment’s notice all around the country. They offer to provide much counseling as a woman may need, often free of charge, and if not, on a sliding fee scale for the Nurturing Network. Again, the goal is that money is not an issue.  

As a third core resource, we also have nearly 900 medical services providers, primarily OB-GYN’s, who are prepared deliver the babies of these mothers.  These doctors are not simply clinically, medically competent; they are compassionate and are chosen for their compassionate qualities.  There’s nothing worse than going to an OB-GYN as a single mom, in trauma, and find someone who is technically competent but with no compassion or bedside manner.  I wish you could meet the medical doctors in our Network; they are simply wonderful.  And so that’s the third part of the product.  

In addition to Nurturing Homes, counselors and doctors, we have in our Network educational institutions.  Within this fourth category, we have over 400 institutions of higher learning that are prepared to admit our women on a streamlined basis.  A woman in college who’s suffering from a crisis pregnancy and does not want to be discovered and does not have three months to wait for a normal admissions process.  She needs to be transferred in more like three weeks.  She needs to have a faculty advisor who will help her adapt into that new institution and ensure that her course credits apply when this pregnancy is over.  

The colleges in our Network run the gamut from Christian colleges to high-tech junior colleges to state universities.  Over the years I have been asked to speak to many educators who do not necessarily come to their education role from a spiritual perspective.  These individuals include deans of students, health center staff and faculty groups.  In some instances when I talk about the Nurturing Network in these settings, I have to use my words very carefully.  I have to remind my audience, that in their counseling and through their Dean of Student’s office, they are making Planned Parenthood available.  They are making sure that this choice is available but not necessarily the other choice.  

I might say, “I would hate to have the students at your university think that you are only making one option available; that doesn’t sound like “choice” to me.  So if you would make this alternative also available, then at least you are what you say you are; you’re not pro-abortion, you’re pro-choice.  And when I express it that way, they never say no.  At that moment, the Nurturing Network becomes a resource for their students.  So yes, educational institutions have made the difference between life and death for many college women.

The fifth part of our nurturing Product is employment.  We have jobs to offer these women.  You might say, “Gosh, what does a job have to do with the equation when she’s facing a crisis pregnancy?”  It has a great deal to do with it for the clients we serve.  If you look at the statistics, you’ll find that for many women, as crass and sad as this sounds, what really stands between life and death for their unborn children is whether or not a woman can keep her job, whether she can continue to work gainfully and maintain the integrity of her resume.  

A lot of employers, even though it’s illegal, will still fire a woman for being pregnant.  “You’ll make the customers uncomfortable.  We don’t need someone with that kind of problem in this environment.”  And so they find a way to let her go.  They don’t say that the pregnancy is the reason; but sure enough, the performance reviews start to go downhill for some sudden reason -- and they’re out the door.  

At this moment we want the ability to tell a client, that she not only has a Nurturing Home to move into but in the same community we can offer her a job that is very much like what she was doing before.  We have jobs that range from being freelance writers to being nurse associates.  We have jobs that involve working in investment banking; we have jobs working as short order cooks.  We have jobs as secretarial assistants and legal assistants.  We have over 250 jobs where the employers are already pre-screened, and again, like the doctors, they don’t just have good jobs to offer, they are compassionate believers in what we’re talking about. And you don’t think that they’re going to have a motivated employee out of that young lady who goes to work for them?

Something surprising and wonderful often happens after a client goes to work for one of our Employer members.  I can almost predict the employer saying, “Can she stay after the baby’s born, this is a wonderful employee.”  Look at all of the expensive studies that are being done on how to motivate an employee.  You don’t motivate employees primarily with paychecks; you do it by caring about them.  Can you think of any more profound kind of caring than what that employer has done for this young lady?  So of course, they have a motivated employee, and of course she is often invited to stay.  

Those are the five core resources that are part of the “product” that is the Nurturing Network. As I mentioned the second ‘P’ is Pricing. We made the decision right from the start there would be no price for the Nurturing Network.  It would be offered free of charge to make sure that everyone could receive it.  

3. The third ‘P’, is the concept of Promotion. This is one where unfortunately in the pro-life movement we don’t spend enough time.  It’s not enough to have a good idea; we have to communicate it effectively.  We have to package it in such a way that a world that is not always friendly to our ideas can understand its value. That bias is what I was describing when I mentioned talking with secular college educators.  They wouldn’t accept my message if I put it purely in pro-life terms. But when I step aside from rhetoric and focus on alternatives and resources, they will listen. Do they want this resource or not for their students? Do they not consider this, too, an alternative? That’s promotion.

One of the most effective tools we have, and must remember to use, is the media.  Now that’s tricky, as you know, because the mainstream media is not friendly.  The media does not believe as we do.  This means that we have to respond effectively to their screening efforts that often filter and even distort what we’re saying.  

Let me give you an example.  Several years ago, I was invited to be on CBS 48 Hours.  It’s a prime time television program as you may know and as such provides a tremendous opportunity to reach mainstream America.  You know the America that doesn’t come to conferences like this.  The American person who does not know our 800 number.  The person out there who is looking for a way to help but doesn’t know where to go to roll up her sleeves and make a difference.  

And so I had ten minutes on prime time to talk about Nurturing Network.  But do you know what I went through to get that ten minutes?  They filmed me for twenty hours, and the questions they asked were not nice questions. The ensuing inquisition took the form of a modern lion’s den.  I wish you could have seen what no one was permitted to see because it ended up on the cutting room floor. I wish you could have seen the facial expression of the person conducting the interview, it was something to behold!

My best advice is to not allow that person, the person interviewing you, to change your manner.  Stay positive.  They’re often just waiting for the moment that you drop your guard.  They’re waiting for the moment that you look angry back.  They’re waiting for you to be sarcastic, to sound extreme. You just have to keep in front of your eyes the face of Jesus, the face of the woman who’s suffering.  Your face will not be an angry face then, even as you see through exactly what they’re doing.  

After one five hour filming session – the final session of several, do you know what the program host said to me?  The cameraman turned off his camera.  She turned, looked me straight in the eye and her first words were, “You’re good.  You’re damn good!”  Isn’t that classic?  I mean, don’t you think they may have had an agenda?   The good news is that the 48 Hours segment went very well and hundreds of clients learned of us on that one occasion.

4. Next we have to think about Packaging because we do have a message and the message deserves excellent packaging.  It’s not about tricking people.  It’s about presenting and, yes, packaging our product in such a way that people can accept and receive it in a positive light.  

This would include everything from the look of your brochures to the tone of your letters.  At TNN we consciously choose soft, pastel colors like lavender and peach to convey our nurturing intent and have avoided the more obvious blue and pink so as to lessen the chances of appearing trite or superficial.  Our name, as you may notice, is comprised of two words – one conveys the ideal of nurturing and compassion and the other conveys the practical goal of networking resources.  

Our logo is also part of packaging. It subtly incorporates the woman’s symbol in the “g” of the word “Nurturing.” There is so much more that we could discuss under this topic of packaging but I believe that you understand the importance of this means of presenting your message.

5. And finally there is Premise or distribution. How are you going to get this great product out there to the people who need it? We’re back to the media again, like it or not. It is, truthfully, somewhat frightening when I get those calls, “Mary you’ve got an opportunity to do such-and-such a program.” I think long and hard because they aren’t all Dr. Dobson. My radio interview with him I will never forget. It was actually fun and truly inspiring.   

VI. There are two remaining points that need to be made in order to achieve or build an effective social ministry.  The sixth one is to be “inclusive” in your social ministry. It’s kind of a buzzword so let me be very specific.  When Christ asked us to love one another he wasn’t just talking about loving Dr. Dobson or loving one another in this room because we all share the same values and goals. He asked us to love our enemies.  

And there again we have such an opportunity. It’s difficult. When you know that you’re facing an adversary that would rationalize aborting a child, it’s very difficult to smile at that person and to be pleasant and loving, but that’s exactly what we are asked to do. And it is absolutely the most effective means I know of bringing about change in our adversaries. The conversions come about through a loving, compassionate stance, through a smiling facial expression and not from an angry, back you into the corner style that says, “I’m going to show you you’re wrong.”  We never saw Christ do that. After all, Christ, as he lay dying on the cross was saying, “Forgive them for they don’t know what they’re doing."  That is exactly what I think about when I’m facing a CBS 48 Hours interrogation. We can out-love our enemies much more than we can out-talk them.  

So it is out of that space of love, out of being inclusive that we’re going to get a lot closer to making some real gains. And that’s what the Nurturing Network tries to do.  

We need to network better.  Our movement doesn’t do that very well.  Even among ourselves, I hear of and experience people who are competitive. “Well, I have a great Crisis Pregnancy Center and I’m not sure why we need to do anything with Birthright or anything with Nurturing Network.” My response to that mentality is, “Hey, this is not peanut butter or Jell-O we’re making; there’s enough work and pain out there to go all the way around and back again.”  

We need to link arms.  We need to see the strengths in one another and we need to find a common ground when it exists.  We need to affirm one another.  Do you know I made a commitment at Nurturing Network to spend one of my hours each week writing letters to people who simply need to be affirmed for the good work they’re doing in their own community.  And you know out of that affirming time comes many blessings.  It is helping to build bridges.  It may be the very thing that kept just one person breathing.  I had someone come up to me recently and say, “Thank you so much for that letter I received six months ago. It came on exactly the day I most needed to receive it.”  We’re back to the Holy Spirit. Why did I write to her at that particular time?  You know I could have done sixteen other things with that hour, but God moved my heart to write to her.  

So let’s look for ways to affirm one another, to be inclusive, to build one another up. Spend a little less time questioning and judging one another.  When I hear people knocking Operation Rescue, or knocking people who are working on a legislative agenda or lobbying, or knocking people who are working in the trenches like we are at the Nurturing Network, I am saddened. There’s no room for that.  We need to see that this is a multi-lateral battle. We need to fight it on every front, and there’s room for everybody, so be inclusive in your social ministry.

One of the greatest gifts that came to me this year when I put together my presentation for our annual Board meeting was the realization that over 50% of our clients during this past year came through other organizations.  Counselors and directors of CPC’s are now calling our 800 number when they find that they don’t have the local resources they need to help a particular client. I’m pleased by that. I’m pleased because it means that Nurturing Network is being seen by local Crisis Pregnancy Centers as the arms and legs they need particularly as they serve college and working women who often need to relocate.

VII. The seventh and the final important step in building an effective social ministry is to be a good steward.  I'll tell you a funny story; this is a personal anecdote.  Being a good steward has to do with raising funds. It’s probably my least favorite thing to do in the whole world -- but you can’t offer a product for free and not realize that there’s fundraising involved. 

When I was a little girl and I was a Girl Scout, and as you might have guessed, I would happily go out and sell many orders.  However, when it came time to collect the money I would say, “It’s okay, you don’t owe me anything.” I had the hardest time with it.  How ever did I end up going to Harvard Business School?! The Holy Spirit surely has a sense of humor.  

And when I would baby-sit, the same phenomenon would show up.  Because our family did not have economic comforts, my mother would encourage me often to baby-sit.  When I’d come back, she’d ask, “Well how much did you earn Mary Elizabeth?”  And I’d say, “I told them I didn’t need anything, I just loved their children.” So I am a person who is incredibly uncomfortable at my very roots asking for money.  What a divine sense of humor there is that a big part of my job description is to raise funds for these mothers.  

So I would say to you that if you’re thinking about an effective social ministry you’re going to have to pull out of you that space of humility, that space where you can identify so closely with the faces of the people you’re trying to help that it’s not difficult to ask for them.  I’m not asking for me, I’m asking for them. And that’s what I remember as I sit down with someone and have to tell them that we’re raising funds for the Nurturing Network.  

The other thing in being a good steward that’s worth remembering is that the challenge is not always about raising money.  If you can raise people to give their time, it’s just like money. The Nurturing Network has been a wonderful opportunity in my life to experience this.  We leverage every dollar that comes to us by using people’s time and quantify these gifts each year.  When we totaled the number of hours that have been given in free counseling, free deliveries, free room and board and all of these gifts that have been given to our clients over the past seventeen years, it was worth over $8 million dollars. I didn’t raise $8 million dollars, but I did draw out of people’s time and talent $8 million dollars worth of good.  I did have to raise $250,000 last year which, thank God, I was able to do.  So I would say to you, you cannot be afraid to ask for donations if you’re interested in going into any kind of effective social ministry.’  

In closing, I would like to share with you a few reflections about placing our energies in social ministry within the larger context of our Christian faith. Once we have a clear understanding of what we hope to accomplish, I have found that it is helpful to also be very clear on why it matters.  When we cut through everything that we ever hope to accomplish, is not our gratitude for the gift of eternal Life won for us on the cross by Jesus Christ our truest prayer? When all is said and done, are we not essentially called to translate our profound appreciation for the gift of Life by building a culture of life?

I cannot recount for you all that this apostolate has come to mean to me, but when I call to mind and heart the thousands of innocent children whose physical lives have been saved and the equal number of courageous mothers whose spiritual lives have been nourished, I cannot imagine a more enduring or more meaningful way to help communicate and build a culture of life. My dear family and the staff of the Nurturing Network have heard me say more often than they may wish to recall, “It is not enough to say that we are ‘for life’ unless we are willing to provide the practical means to support it.” This is not just a catchy slogan but a heartfelt conviction that is lived out every day in the courageous, sacrificial actions of our volunteer members worldwide.

I need only to reflect upon the thousands of contemporary Mary Magdalene’s whom I have had the joy of serving since founding the Nurturing Network to say with conviction that the binding of deep wounds and the healing of broken hearts is an intensely intimate and essentially practical experience.The simple but profound truth is that there is no efficient or effective substitute for the private, personal, time-intensive conversations that translate beyond words into the most life-saving message of all: “You are a beloved child of God. No matter what mistake you may have made or sin you may have committed, you are infinitely valuable and precious in God’s sight.”  

I believe that these are the healing words that will help to communicate a culture of life. They ring true and find their way home in every human heart.  And when enough voices in gatherings like these proclaim this truth with genuine compassion and unwavering courage, Christ’s love will become the leaven in the bread of new life that will, indeed, “renew the face of the earth.”