Several years ago, Christine Shaw, the founder and director of Pregnancy Loss Recovery Assistance in Pittsburgh, said to me, “The reason abortion is so prevalent in this country is that the Church has never treated unborn children as unborn children.” Her words were shocking. As I reflected on them, however, I concluded that they were also true.
One hospital chaplain observed that clergy feel much less urgency to go to the hospital and minister to the parents in the loss of a preborn child resulting from a miscarriage than in the loss of a full-term child.
Often families receive no church family support because they have not told family and friends about the pregnancy. Parents are often discouraged from having a memorial service. The costs of funeral homes and burials may dissuade them from burying the child and so they may opt for hospital cremation. The family may leave the hospital and find that pastoral care is totally absent or minimal, no one knows about their loss so family and friends offer little support, a worship service which witnesses to the resurrection and gives thanks for this child’s life doesn’t happen, and there is no committal service.
Parents are left to suffer alone with little support either from the medical community or the church. That is changing, however. As the previous article by Cleo Williams and Rhonda Lindamood describes, some hospitals are beginning to help parents celebrate and acknowledge their child’s life however brief it was. Pastors and churches are beginning to respond with pastoral ministry including memorial services.
Our congregation has begun to offer semi-annual memorial services (always the 4th Sunday of April and October) for families who have lost a child before or after birth. We have partnered with three area hospitals that tell families about our service when they lose a child.
Still, the service has not been well attended. When I ask mothers who lost children 50 years ago, why they have not come to the service, they tell me, “Because it’s too painful to open old wounds.” The language of “opening old wounds” perhaps is an indication that the wounds have never healed. For too long the attitude in the culture and church has been that the miscarriage was not really a child and parents should just move beyond the event as quickly as possible—“put it all behind them.” Those parents have been denied the hope of the resurrection for their child. They have not been able to grieve or to receive God’s assurance in the midst of their grief. The Church’s historic failure to minister to families that have lost a child before birth has left generations of families who continue to need the ministry of the church in order to celebrate the lives of their children and to affirm God’s loving care for them throughout eternity.
Here’s our worship service:
Worship Service to Celebrate the Resurrection of Jesus Christ and Give Thanks for the Life of our Preborn Children
- Prelude:
- Call to Worship: Romans 6:23, John 11: 25-26
- Prayer of Invocation:
- Hymn: Great is Thy Faithfulness
- Old Testament: Psalm 139: 1-18
- New Testament: Revelation 21:1-6
- Personal Testimony:
- Gospel: John 11: 17-45
- Meditation: I Have Called You By Name You are Mine
Litany: (from Falling Spring Presbyterian Church, Chambersburg, PA, used with permission)
Blessed Jesus, lover of children in lowliness of heart we cry to you for help. Expecting the life of a child, we have witnessed its death. Our despair is profound, and we know you weep with us in our loss. Help us to hear your consoling voice.
Pour out upon us your gracious healing.
Life-giving God, your love surrounded each of us in our mother’s wombs, and from that secret place you called us forth to life. Our hearts are heavy with the loss of promise. We grieve the death of the hope we anticipated, the dreams we envisioned, the relationship we desired.
Pour out upon us your gracious healing.
All-loving and caring God, Father of us all, you know our grief in our loss, for you too suffered the death of your child. Give us strength to go forward from this day, trusting where we do not understand, that your love never ends.
Pour out upon us your gracious healing
Give us the courage to admit our pain and confusion. Allow us to grieve, and then to accept this loss. Warm is the embrace of your arms. Knit together our frayed emotions, and bind our hearts with the fabric of your love for us.
Pour out upon us your gracious healing.
Sometimes the burdens of life almost overwhelm us; yet, we put our full trust in you, knowing that through your Son Jesus Christ, you are with us always. Let not our limited understanding confine our faith, but may our faith be renewed in the days ahead. Draw us closer to you and closer to one another.
Pour out upon us your gracious healing.
Help us to accept what we cannot understand, to have faith where reason fails, to have courage in the midst of disappointment. Help us to see the hope of life beyond grief. Let us feel that presence now as we seek to live in faith.
Pour out upon us your gracious healing.
We thank you for the life and hope that you give through the resurrection of your Son Jesus Christ. Keep true in us the love with which we hold one another. And to you, with your Church on earth and in heaven, we offer honor and praise, now and forever.
Our God, we give you praise. Amen.
- Lighting of Candles and Writing of Prayer (we invite people to come forward and light a votive candle from the Christ candle and if they chose to name their child and say a word about the child)
- Special Music:
- Prayer:
- Hymn: Jesus Loves Me This I Know
- Benediction:
- Postlude:
A bulletin insert invites parents to name their child and give thanks to God for the gift of their child.
This service first appeared in Theology Matters, Vol. 9, No. 3 (May/Jun 2003).
