Sean Lippman and I stood out in front of the Thrive 2025 Farmington Valley Conference, held at Valley Community Baptist Church in Avon, Connecticut on Friday evening, November 14, 2025. I went back the following morning early all by myself. The theme printed across the materials and workshops was simple and searching:
Do You See Me?
The question was directed toward immigrants, the elderly, those with disabilities, the traumatized, the deaf, and others on society’s margins. The workshops included:
Do You See Me?
Discipled by Jesus at the Table with the Outcasts
How the Church Can Care for Immigrants in Our Community
“I’m Still Here!” Caring For and Activating Older Adults
Welcoming and Including People with Disability in Your Church
Trauma-Wise Ministry with Children and Youth
Reaching Out to the Deaf Community
Parenting Against the Current
Biblical Peacemaking
Theology of Work
Research-Based Drivers of Lifelong Faith in Teens & Young Adults
Compassion saturated the schedule. Concern for suffering was everywhere.
But one group was not mentioned. Not once.
The preborn.
The smallest, most vulnerable humans in our midst. The only class of human beings in America who can be legally dismembered, crushed, suffocated, or poisoned without consequence—provided they are still in the womb.
For a conference built around the plea, Do you see me?, it was impossible not to notice that the most invisible victims of all had no workshop, no speaker, no breakout session, and no recognized place in the conversation.
So Sean and I stood outside with signs calling the Church to abolish abortion in Connecticut, and we prayed for opportunities to speak.
We had four primary encounters.
Encounter #1: Travis — “We care, and we’re doing a lot of good things.”
The first person we spoke with was Travis, serving in outreach at Valley Community Baptist Church. He was respectful, thoughtful, and genuinely interested in conversation.
He affirmed that the church cares about abortion and listed ministries they support. But when we asked what is being done to legally abolish the killing of preborn children in Connecticut, there was no clear answer. The response reflected a common assumption in the Church today: that because we care emotionally and serve in various mercy ministries, we have fulfilled our duty.
Yet as we explained, many good ministries—though truly good—do not interfere with abortion nor do they do anything to end it legally. They comfort where they can, but they do not halt the killing.
Proverbs 24:11–12 commands:
Rescue those being taken away to death; hold back those stumbling to the slaughter.
We cannot obey that passage with sentiment alone.
Encounter #2: Josh — “What does abolition require of the Church?”
Next morning, I spoke with Josh from 180 Life Church. He was courteous, engaged, and willing to consider the biblical argument for abolition. I explained that abolition is not a political slogan but a demand for immediate legal protection for preborn children as equal image-bearers of God.
I explained the need for evangelism and bold Christian witness. I emphasized that Scripture calls not merely for compassion around injustice, but for justice against injustice.
Josh asked good questions. We pray that this conversation may lead to further reflection and, Lord willing, future partnership in the work of abolition.
Encounter #3: Two Church Ladies — “We care. We really do.”
Later, two church ladies came outside to ask who we were and why we were there. They were kind and receptive. They told us they were against abortion and that the church does care.
We hear this often.
So we asked:
“If the Church says it cares, yet does nothing to stop the legalized killing of children, is that what the Bible calls care? Or is that simply an emotion?”
They paused, considered, and thanked us for being there. It was a good and necessary exchange. But the central moral question remains for every congregation in the state:
Does biblical compassion end at the border of legality?
Encounter #4: “Pastor” Bryan Bywater — A Tragic Display
Our final encounter was with a man who identified himself as “Pastor” Bryan Bywater of The Street Church in Hartford. Unlike the others, his response was openly hostile. He hurled profanity at us, including the f-word, and cursed us for speaking against abortion outside a Christian conference.
I will not dwell on him, except to say this: when someone who claims the office of shepherd shows more outrage toward those pleading for the lives of preborn children than toward the shedding of innocent blood itself, something is deeply wrong. It was a brief moment, but a revealing one. A pastor is meant to protect the flock, not curse those who seek to defend the weakest lambs of God.
The Unspoken Victims of Thrive 2025
I want to be fair. Many workshops were thoughtful and compassionate. The Church should indeed see immigrants, the elderly, the disabled, the abused, and the forgotten. These are real needs.
But here is the unavoidable truth:
A Church that sees everyone except the preborn has not yet learned to see as God sees.
While the conference addressed the wounds of many groups, children were being scheduled that very morning for death in Connecticut clinics and through mail-order abortion pills.
And the Church, gathered under the banner Do you see me?, said nothing.
If we did this during slavery, history would condemn us.
If churches during American chattel slavery had responded like this, saying:
“We do not support slavery, but our calling is to provide blankets and better living conditions for those enslaved,”
history would not call that righteousness. It would call it complicity.
If during the Holocaust churches said:
“We oppose the camps, but we are knitting mittens to make the prisoners more comfortable,”
we would not praise such ministries. We would lament their failure to confront the evil itself.
Likewise today, while I support Crisis Pregnancy Centers, adoption, foster care, and caring for vulnerable mothers:
These efforts ease suffering, but they do not abolish abortion.
They are mercy, but they are not justice.
They polish brass on the Titanic.
The Biblical Mandate
The Church is not called merely to care that injustice occurs, but to stop it:
Psalm 82:3–4
Rescue the weak and the needy; deliver them from the hand of the wicked.
Proverbs 31:8–9
Open your mouth for the voiceless… defend the rights of the poor and needy.
Isaiah 1:17
Seek justice, correct oppression.
The preborn are the voiceless. The womb has become the place of oppression.
A Call to Connecticut Churches
To the leaders of the fourteen churches represented at Thrive 2025:
If abortion is the taking of innocent human life, then the only righteous response is abolition.
Not gradual regulation.
Not sentiment.
Not silence.
Abolition.
We are ready to meet, open Scripture, and seek faithfulness together.
Conclusion
Sean and I did not go to Thrive 2025 to oppose compassion. We went because compassion that refuses to defend the weakest among us is not Christianity—it is sentimentality dressed in religious language.
The Church must open its mouth for the children no one sees.
If you would like to speak further about abolishing abortion in Connecticut, I am willing and available.
For Christ,
For His little ones,
For the purity and witness of His Church.