Pastor Jim Kirkland is Executive Director of Christian Chaplains and Coaching. He joins us to discuss his own story and his own experience with abortion.
Jim was not a Christian as a young man who opted for abortion to protect his vision for the future. He outlines the sequence of events of coming to faith through the friendship of other Christians. Discipleship followed, then marriage and then repentance of that early decision to end the life of their first child. Faith leaders should understand that trying to disciple people without first building relationship, or expecting repentance to spark the journey of faith, may be an exercise in futility.
Jim shares how the journey of forgiving one another has been a fairly recent development–in the last five years of their forty-four year marriage. Jim says,
“I always think with regret over my little girl that we don’t have now because of that decision. To this day we regret it. We wish that we had our daughter with us. She’d be forty-four years old this year.”
Jim’s story demonstrates how, after abortion, a child’s own witness to our hearts informs us of our loss.
The role of the church should be key on the issue of abortion, but Jim says the church is failing to influence. This can result from having too broad a desire to please the prevailing culture and fit in, or a having too narrow a focus on the members of the church existing as an island apart from a hostile world. The answer is relationship, creating and nurturing connections with others, where our personal witness has an actual impact with real influence.
From his bio:
PASTOR JIM KIRKLAND MTS BCC CPES, spent more than 25 years as an executive and CEO of a financial services and business consulting firm. Feeling called to ministry later in life, Jim attended Moody Theological Seminary and graduated with a Masters in Biblical Theology. He was ordained to pastoral ministry in 2007 and has been a senior teaching chaplain since 2010. Jim is a Board Certified Chaplain, dual registered with both the Association of Certified Christian Chaplains and the Spiritual Care Association. He is a Clinical Pastoral Education Supervisor for the ICPT.EDU. Jim is happily married to his wife Virginia of 40 years. They have four children and four wonderful grandchildren.
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