In the inaugural episode of The Pro Life Team Podcast, Jacob Barr shares, “We want to provide encouragement and resources to pregnancy center leadership without the cost associated with attending conferences.” Co-host Isaac Ruiz adds, “Our intention is to share various ideas and strategies to support pregnancy centers.” They emphasize the importance of collaboration, stating, “Pregnancy centers and churches can work together, with centers focusing on the physical aspects and churches on the spiritual.” The episode underscores their mission to be a beacon of hope, extending the concept of ‘pro-life’ beyond the unborn to encompass a full, abundant Christian life.
Summary of Episode:
In this podcast transcript, Jacob Barr and Isaac Ruiz introduce their new venture, the pro-life team Podcast. Jacob Barr, owner of iRapture.com, explains that the podcast aims to provide encouragement and resources to pregnancy center leadership without the cost associated with attending conferences. The content will highlight stories from national conferences and present them in an accessible, convenient, and helpful way to support those on the front lines of the pro-life movement.
Isaac Ruiz discusses the challenges faced by the pro-life movement, such as being underfunded and under-resourced, and expresses the podcast’s intention to share various ideas and strategies to support pregnancy centers. The podcast aims to be a platform for sharing how God’s work impacts communities and to offer potentially impactful ideas for pregnancy centers and the pro-life movement.
Jacob Barr shares a story about a prayer request fulfilled at a Texas center, illustrating the type of encouraging content they plan to provide. He emphasizes the podcast’s goal to be a source of comfort and support for those helping women in difficult situations, acknowledging the spiritual battle they face.
Isaac Ruiz praises the dedication of executive directors at pregnancy centers, emphasizing their passion for both unborn children and their mothers. The podcast aims to be a resource for these leaders, providing encouragement, messages, and strategies to enhance their work.
Both hosts stress the importance of engaging the church in pro-life efforts. They discuss how pregnancy centers and churches can collaborate, with pregnancy centers focusing on the physical aspects and churches on the spiritual. They share a story of a pregnancy center partnering with a church to provide a free wedding for a couple, highlighting the synergy between these two entities.
Listeners are encouraged to share their stories and ideas with the podcast hosts. The overall goal of the podcast is to encourage and support the pro-life movement, emphasizing the importance of both physical life and spiritual life in Christ. The hosts express their desire for the podcast to be a beacon of hope and to extend the concept of “pro-life” beyond just the unborn, encompassing a full, abundant Christian life.
Podcast Transcript:
The transcript was automatically generated and may contain errors.
Jacob Barr :
Hi, my name is Jacob Barr. I’m the owner of iRapture.com i’m here with my colleague Isaac Ruiz, and we’re beginning this new venture by creating our very first introduction podcast for the pro-life team Podcast. So Isaac, we’re in this like introduction podcast where our goal is to describe like what are what we’re trying to achieve with this new series, what kind of content we want to create and deliver. And along with also sharing the purpose or the goals that this content will have. Such as trying to be a blessing to pregnancy center leadership so that we can provide encouragement and resources that don’t come with a normal like conference and price tag. That with you know price tags that would include like hotel and travel and the all of the time required to go to like a three day event. We’re trying to essentially highlight some small stories and then stretch them out in order to make them even more enjoyable and more helpful. And there’s so many good stories that we’ve heard over the years that often get presented at these national conferences by really caring, intelligent and helpful people. And we’re just going to try and bring out a few of those stories through this video podcast series in a way that is accessible and convenient and helpful and hopefully a blessing to leadership teams who are, you know, on the front lines engaging, you know, the opposing Planned Parenthood force in different spaces in this pro-life world.
Isaac Ruiz :
Absolutely, yeah one of the things that we face with a lot at iRapture.com is we get to experience talking to a lot of executive directors, a lot of staff members and a lot of volunteers and the one thing that we understand fundamentally is that. The pro-life movement is very much underfunded and under resourced. So we try to, we try our very best to try to think outside of the box, do a lot of different testing if you would on different types of marketing strategies and a lot of different things. So having a platform in a place where we can share all these different ideas, whether they’re great ideas or maybe they’re perhaps some really poor ideas, we want to give you guys the space where you can listen in. Lean in into these different strategies and ideas and hear how God’s working in our communities. And perhaps one of these ideas will make a huge impact in your pregnancy center or in your pro-life movement. So I hope you guys enjoy.
Jacob Barr :
Yeah and the this morning we shot our very first episode and then here we are trying to introduce this podcast series. In the very first episode we shot with Lori out of Texas and we asked her some questions about this story of prayer of how God took her request and fulfilled her heart’s desire, her needs at her brand new six month old censor there in Texas. And our goal is to, you know, share these really beautiful stories so that so that you can be encouraged to find a similar story in your world, in your life with God and Jesus interacting with your work. And then and also just to provide you with, yeah, comfort, simply to be a blessing to the people who bless others and so as you’re working to bless and help women in a really difficult situation, our goal here is to try and be a blessing to you by sharing stories that reflect how God’s goodness helped in this area in order for you to then hopefully connect how we can then help in your area. And not to say that you haven’t seen God’s work in your area already. We’re just trying to encourage and support you in that in that work because with good work comes you know attacks from the deceiver, attacks from the distractor, the destroyer of life. And we just want to provide support for this for the work that you’re doing and that you’re involved in. And not to say that we’re trying to belittle what you’re doing or saying we have solutions and ideas that you haven’t come across before but rather we just want to encourage you and support you in the what you’re already doing. Because i believe executive directors of a center are called by God to work in that area like it’s a it’s a unique position to have and it’s instrumental in God’s work.
Isaac Ruiz :
Absolutely yeah. Again, working with the executive directors day in and day out, I’ve been able to kind of feel the hearts of a lot of these wonderful, wonderful people and I got to say, First off, hats off to you executive directors out there because you guys wear a million different hats and you guys are super busy running multiple facets of a business. But most importantly though, the one thing that I know that every and I want to say every executive director has is that they share the same passion for the unborn and also, let’s not forget, but the passion for the mothers. Where a lot of the world has given up on these mothers, executive directors just work their tails off to make sure that these mothers have a place that’s safe, that’s comfortable, that not only embraces the mom but embraces that newborn baby that’s inside of you so again guys, we just, we just hope that we can be a blessing to you guys in any which way, whether it’s through an encouraging word, through a message, through ideas, through strategies we just want to be here for you guys and give you and enable you guys to do the best that you can possibly do at your pregnancy center.
Jacob Barr :
Yeah and so we’re excited we’re actually my wife was praying that we would have a lot of joy during this conference. I mean during this podcast video creation effort and so we’re truly are excited to be able to be in a position where God has LED us to this point of creating this content that will be an encouragement to you. And so you can expect several videos to be coming out after this one and it’s free it’s open source it you know feel free to share this video content with other people, other pro-life team leaders so that they can be encouraged as well. And so there’s no price tag there’s no expectation of donation. This is essentially a gift that we want to give and we feel called to encourage and support the pro-life Jesus loving team that we are working with on a regular basis and so we’re working to do that we’re essentially taking our hearts desire and strategically working to accomplish it. And so we hope that this is helpful to you and that this is something that you would enjoy sharing with other people who might find it helpful.
Isaac Ruiz :
Absolutely and if you guys want to get involved with us and want to help, but maybe you have a story that you feel that God. Wants us to share. Please feel free to reach out to us, whether it’s via email, whether it’s through a phone call, doesn’t matter how just get your Get your story out to us and we’ll definitely take a listen and we would love to again, share God’s miraculous stories with as many people as we can, because we know that sometimes all it takes is just an encouraging word or an encouraging story to really encourage God’s people to do great things.
Jacob Barr :
And that’s where what we hope to accomplish at the end of the day, Yeah so part of how this idea came about was when Lori Devilis was praying with us she prayed for God to increase the territory, increase her territory. And then she defined sort of like how that might meet, you know, how that might come about and essentially that the way to increase the territory is for more people to be invited into this work, into this ongoing battle, into the spiritual battle, into the space of helping women who are facing an unplanned pregnancy, who might be, you know, thinking about abortion or maybe vulnerable to choosing abortion. And for this you know this pro-life team who is working to reach these women and help deliver help helping them deliver their babies and have new birthdays involved and the work doesn’t stop there i and I think that but this is really important because you know as Isaac and I were talking over lunch just before this podcast we were talking about how the you know someone can’t have an evangelistic opportunity to meet Jesus unless they are there to see it and so seriously the goal of trying to help to help babies you know breathe and have life is so important because it lines people up for then meeting Jesus down the road but that second part is just as important as this pro-life effort. That evangelistic part is critical because if someone has 80 years of breath, what does that mean unless they see Jesus, it’s so important for them to find Jesus down that road. And but then again the evangelistic part doesn’t necessarily get the opportunity for someone to meet Jesus unless they, you know if that baby doesn’t get the chance to breathe outside of the womb, then that yeah that gets cut very short and there is no, you know so I think they that’s a perfect marriage of two different parts that need to be worked on and we’re called to support this pro-life team effort that is pro-life leadership team by trying to provide you with encouragement. But I just don’t want, I essentially just want to provide equal importance to the pastors, the evangelist, the priest, the people who love Jesus so that they, you know, that part is just as important and essentially is the next domino in this series of pieces that need to be done for people to define Jesus. Or and there’s many dominoes in this long series of experiences but just in generally speaking, like, you know, having life and then meeting Jesus are just such beautiful things and we’d love to dive in deeper on all these topics of how that plays out.
Isaac Ruiz :
Absolutely. You know, it’s funny because I think about. Whenever I think about the pro-life the word itself, pro-life we so much, we assign it so much to just babies, but realistically we can assign it to the Christian life and the life cycle of a Christian but I mean if you look back at the word of God, it says that he came to give us life and life everlasting so when you say pro-life it should definitely there should be an implication of the babies, right because that that’s the battle that we’re fighting, right the second. But we can’t split that from just the everyday life that he if Jesus came to give us life, then pro-life means a lot more and that word holds a lot more weight to all of us and we should really be considering the evangelistic approach to bring in all people to God. That should be a focus but like Jake said, it’s a it’s a two-part thing that has to happen in tandem, has to happen both at the same time, so. Again, we just hope that we can encourage you guys and help you guys just kind of reach new heights.
Jacob Barr :
Yeah, this weekend I was at a retreat, you know, spending time journaling, you know, trying to talk to God and trying to hear his voice. And one of the other people on this retreat was sharing his story of what he was talking to God about and what he was hearing. And he felt like he didn’t really hear much. But he shared with the group what he wrote down. And all of us could see God’s fingerprints and what he was writing about, even though he was sort of having a hard time seeing it. And one of the things that he pointed out was that he felt like God was inviting them into having a life abundant. And I think, you know, often we think about pro-life as being about the birthday, but really we’re really wanting to call people into not just having life, but having life abundant where the focus is on Jesus there’s blessing, there’s joy, there’s peace, there’s long-suffering There’s an opportunity to minister to others in order to provide accomplishment and you know, being a servant allows you to have an impact on the person you’re serving and all of these things are add up to an abundant life and an abundant life is such a beautiful way of seeing life because life is good. Well, life can be good, but abundant life is beautiful.
Isaac Ruiz :
Absolutely yeah, that’s i couldn’t have said it better. That’s how we pay them the big bucks. No, honestly, though, you know, it’s funny because Jake is we. Jake and I have been talking back and forth for the last what well, I don’t know. Year almost. About starting this podcast and how we wanted to impact the pro-life movement and the whole pro-life world and we’ve received so much confirmation in the past year and individual confirmation, not just both of us in the same room praying but individually god has been speaking into our lives about how we need to approach, approach, the way that we reach out to pregnancy centers and not even just pregnancy centers, just people as a whole, as much as I want this to be. A resource for pregnancy centers in the pro-life movement realistically, i would like this to be much bigger than that because I feel like speaking about the themes of being pro-life and like Jake said, living that abundant life, I want to make sure that we can be a resource for everyone because every pregnancy center that I’ve ever talked to, they really hope to be that kind of like that beacon of hope to their community, whether it, whether they’re dealing with, you know, a. Pregnant mother or just evangelizing the word of God to anyone who walks by the facility. So just like them, we want to be a beacon of hope and we want to be a pro-life to the fullest extent, where it’s not just babies and definitely, you know, yes, babies, but also just offer that abundant life that Jesus Christ offers each and every one of us, whether we deserve it or not. I think the saying that you say is best, Everyone deserves a birthday. But I think that goes way further than just babies everyone deserves a Jesus birthday as well.
Jacob Barr :
Oh my goodness, yeah and one thing that Isaac often will bring up and when we’re eating lunch and just chit chatting about some Eating food is good. So one thing we we’re we often talk about is how important and critical the church, the role of the church is in this work. And just today during lunch we were talking about how a printing clinic, it has a lot of the similar characteristics of a church. You know, they’re introducing people to Jesus, whether through actions or through words or through both the direction is there and then also they’re helping single moms like as a regular staple of what’s being done and in the Bible, it’s very clear that the church is to help single moms, orphans, people who are alone. And the single moms is something that I just think you know what better vehicle is there than a Prancy clinic who is helping single moms during the one of the most challenging times as being a brand new single mom?
Isaac Ruiz :
Absolutely. Yeah absolutely and we talk a lot about, you know, enabling the church or empowering the church to get more involved because again, with the idea that pregnancy centers and we discussed this a little bit earlier as well, pregnancy centers are doing a lot of evangelistic work it’s the perfect opportunity to team up with a church and a pregnancy center and a church teaming up just makes so much sense. Because again, a pregnancy center is dealing a lot with the physical, the actual literal life of somebody, right like a baby. Whereas the church, although, yes, there’s a lot of situations where churches do deal with the literal life of a person, but mainly churches are dealing with the spiritual lives of people. But we evangelize in the same exact way we preach Jesus we try to change hearts and not minds, which is something that we. Had spoken about earlier changing the heart of a young woman, you know, by being kind to them, by providing services that are free where, you know, in this day and age free things, they’re kind of uncommon. Everyone wants a dollar and the fact that these pregnancy centers are doing everything in their power, raising money, I mean the fundraising efforts that we help irapture.com helps a lot with fundraisers, websites for fun, you name it we try to do everything in our powers to. Help these pregnancy centers make some money, but they do all of that all the pregnancy centers do all this and put so much money into raising funds so that they can give something for free to their clients to give something out of their out of love and out of their goodness of their hearts. Give something free to young women who are struggling with probably one of the most difficult decisions that they’ll ever have to make in their lives. And we just feel that the partnership between churches and pregnancy centers is one of those vital things that has to happen. I think the church and pregnancy centers, they should be the words be synonymous, you know.
Jacob Barr :
They should be able to fit within within the same frame of mind, yeah one of the things I’d like to encourage you as you’re listening to this podcast, this video podcast is I’d like to encourage you to contact us or put into the comment if there’s a comment option on what you’re watching. Let us know how your Princey clinic has engaged the church and we would enjoy hearing your ideas because we want to promote those good ideas of how churches and princey clinics have come together to work together to accomplish these shared goals. 1-1 Princey Clinic here in Tucson answers for Life. They had this beautiful idea. I think it was like.
Isaac Ruiz :
Five years ago where they a young couple who just decided to they chose life for their child and they wanted to get married but they didn’t have the 50$ for the for the justice of the peace And so they contacted a church and the church donated the pastor’s time to be the preacher or the you know the person who would provide the wedding along with the wedding venue they had all the people don’t put people donated the items for that wedding and essentially a church came alongside this couple and help them have a wedding and it was all for free and then that couple ended up actually joining that church not that they had to but after seeing so much love and care poured out it made a lot of sense that they would want to and since then I think they’ve done about five or six maybe even seven of these weddings partnering with a church and I think that’s a really interesting way where a church has like the you know what someone needs to get married and apprentice clinic office obviously has people who need to get married and so if it was a really interesting way to come together and so yeah please feel free to take that idea is if you if you feel led to or and please share your ideas we would love to hear what ideas you have come up with so that we can amplify the voice of those ideas and share that with other clinics so that’s one of the things that we really enjoy doing is finding someone who has a really good idea and then trying to then share that with other people who might benefit from that idea like that’s a staple of what we do absolutely it’s recycling good ideas It’s funny because that’s, I mean that story that resonated so much with me because I actually, I come from a small church, My dad’s a pastor he’s been pastoring that church for over 30 years now and we’ve helped at that capacity with our members so, like, if there’s a member that wants to get married, we’ll provide the venue for free we’ll do the ceremony for free. The only thing that the couple has to do it, and usually that’s not even the case because we’ll try to donate money towards the cause but is basically pay for the food. But it’s such an awesome idea and that’s what I mean when I say the partnership between church and pregnancy center has to be tight like that, because that’s such an awesome idea. The resources are all there but you know, as a father, my wife and I, we talk a lot about positive reinforcement with our kids, like when they do something good. Make a good decision we give them a treat, a candy or something like that and what better way to show positive reinforcement in regards to family values and the family value that the life share that the churches share with pregnancy centers? Then by basically saying if you guys get married, we’ll help you, we’ll have your back as a church, we’ll have your back as a pregnancy center, We got your back. What an awesome way to show that positive reinforcement and more importantly, to really show the love of Jesus. In a very practical way, it just makes sense. But those, that’s what Jake’s saying like there’s so many great ideas that, you know, people like Jake and I that we just don’t come up with them. So we need your help.
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