A pro-life — and pro-love — ministry
STERLING HEIGHTS, MICH. — A sign declaring that “Abortion stops a beating heart” no longer hangs outside the Metro Church of Christ.
Leaders replaced that banner with one telling neighbors, “You’re VALUABLE! Made in the image of God.”
The Detroit-area congregation has not wavered in its opposition to abortion.
But the suburban church, which previously confronted pregnant women outside abortion clinics, has changed its method.
“Abortion is still the murder of an innocent person,” senior minister and elder Donald T. Eason said from the pulpit on a recent Sunday.
A new banner at the Metro Church of Christ in Sterling Heights, Mich., touts the value of every person to God.
“However, the Bible says that knowledge puffs up, but love edifies,” he added, referring to 1 Corinthians 8:1. “So we want to be loving in our approach to help save innocent life. Amen?”
“Amen!” the congregation responded.
The church’s Embrace Grace ministry — part of a national network of support groups — provides practical, spiritual and emotional care for single mothers.
“We have to take care of all of God’s children, every human being that comes out of the womb,” Eason told The Christian Chronicle. “So we have a different approach, trying to be kinder, nicer.”
That approach connected Metro members — including Phyllis Eason, the minister’s wife and leader of Embrace Grace — with Brooklyn Covington, who learned about the ministry via social media.
From the archive: Picket signs, honking horns and sidewalk sermons: Inside an anti-abortion ministry
“I don’t know what I’d do without my baby and, like, all the support that I got from here,” Covington, 24, said of the church.
“It was a really hard pregnancy — not, like, physically, but mentally — and it was really nice coming here every week,” added the single mother, whose son, Bronx, is nearly four months old. “It was just, like, a good feeling.”
Sue O’Bryan, an Embrace Grace volunteer, greets Brooklyn Covington and her baby, Bronx, at the Metro Church of Christ in Sterling Heights, Mich. Also pictured is Metro elder Doug Edwards.
U.S. abortion trends
The Chronicle previously featured the Metro church’s anti-abortion emphasis in a front-page story in 2021, highlighting members’ sidewalk protests and use of bullhorns to urge women entering abortion clinics not to end their pregnancies.
The next year, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision that legalized abortion nationwide.
Since the 2022 overturning of Roe v. Wade, more than a dozen states have banned abortion. Others have placed new restrictions on it.
But the practice remains legal in a majority of states, including Michigan.
The nation’s overall number of abortions has risen — topping 1 million in 2023. That’s the highest level in more than a decade, according to the Guttmacher Institute, which supports abortion rights.
In the 2024 presidential race, Democrat Kamala Harris supports the protections of Roe v. Wade, while Republican Donald Trump favors deciding the abortion question on a state-by-state basis. Earlier this month, Trump said for the first time he would veto a federal abortion ban.
Sixty-three percent of Americans believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases, according to the nonpartisan Pew Research Center.
From the archive: Two adoptions, two differing views: Christian women reflect on their experiences
But a majority of women who seek abortions would prefer to continue the pregnancy — “if they had more emotional support or financial security,” said Tessa Cox, senior research associate for the Charlotte Lozier Institute, which opposes abortion.
“So there’s an enormous amount of room for progress and the work of pregnancy centers — the work of the pro-life movement — to reach out and be the support that so many of these women are looking for,” Cox said earlier this year on the Chronicle’s podcast.
“So many of them, if there had been someone there that could offer them that real support,” she added, “they could have been encouraged to make a better decision and to choose life.”
A turning point
The year was 1987.
Phyllis was 20. Donald was 22.
The future minister’s wife was a Christian. The future minister was not.
She became pregnant, and the unmarried couple found themselves at a crossroads.
Thirty-seven years ago, that was the Easons’ story.
Before they married, Donald and Phyllis Eason experienced an unplanned pregnancy. He’s now a minister, and she leads the Embrace Grace ministry at the Metro Church of Christ in Sterling Heights, Mich.
Within a few months, the couple exchanged wedding vows. Phyllis’ father taught Donald the Gospel, and he was baptized.
And Phyllis gave birth to daughter Kirby, the oldest of their three children. Now 36 and married, Kirby has three daughters of her own — the Easons’ grandbabies.
Decades have passed, but memories of their own experience remain vivid for the Easons.
“I did have a family that I could turn to,” Phyllis said, “but that’s not always the case for other young women.
“Women are sometimes ostracized in the church,” she stressed. “They don’t even feel comfortable coming to the church if they have a pregnancy outside of marriage.”
Phyllis Eason, wife of minister Donald T. Eason, sings at the Metro Church of Christ in Sterling Heights, Mich. Beside her is Embrace Grace graduate Brooklyn Covington, with her baby, Bronx.
Reasons for the change
Two factors inspired the Metro church’s new approach to fighting abortion.
Donald and Phyllis Eason’s arrival at the congregation three years ago was one.
The other was the arrests and prosecutions of seven anti-abortion activists accused of blockading an abortion clinic in Sterling Heights, a city of 130,000 about 20 miles north of Detroit.
“They’re being persecuted,” said Shannon Filipiak, one of the founders of Metro’s original sidewalk ministry. The other founder no longer attends Metro.
Shannon Filipiak, a member of the Metro Church of Christ in Sterling Heights, Mich., holds a “Babies are murdered here” sign while picketing a Flint, Mich., clinic in 2021.
None of the charged activists is connected with Metro, but their convictions got church members’ attention.
“Our approach to pro-life has changed by design and also for safety sake,” said Doug Edwards, an elder of the congregation, which averages Sunday attendance of about 170.
Embrace Grace’s program involves regular Bible study and personal encouragement.
“When babies are born, the local congregation gives a shower with lots of gifts and continues to work with these young mothers,” Edwards said. “Our preacher is asked to speak at the Bible studies to offer some direction. The ultimate goal is to get them involved attending the local church, but that takes time.”
“When babies are born, the local congregation gives a shower with lots of gifts and continues to work with these young mothers.”
God’s sense of humor
Through Embrace Grace, single mothers attend a 12-week program at Metro during their pregnancy.
The ministry started with two pregnant women last year.
Both gave birth to sets of twins.
Wendy Burcham volunteers with the Embrace Grace ministry at the Metro Church of Christ in Sterling Heights, Mich.
“We were thinking, ‘God has a sense of humor,’” ministry volunteer and retired nurse Wendy Burcham said of the sudden influx of babies.
Three single mothers, including Covington, participated in the next group.
And a third group has launched. One of those women gave birth to premature twins. The entire church is praying for them.
Embrace Grace’s volunteers include Sue O’Bryan, a 74-year-old Metro member. A licensed professional counselor, she was raised by a single mother and then became a single mother herself.
“As a single parent, it is very hard fitting into a church family,” O’Bryan said of her motivation, “because everything is precipitated on God’s plan for a husband and a wife and children.
“Jesus is the groom, the church is his bride, we’re all his family,” she added, “and we’ve got to be more inclusive.”
Church member Tara Winters, 33, coordinates social media marketing for Embrace Grace.
She has a background in interior design. That experience comes in handy in planning the baby showers.
“So I’m able to kind of use that knowledge and all that schooling to help be a blessing here,” said Winters, who is married and has a 5-year-old son.
The Metro Church of Christ in Sterling Heights, Mich., stands to sing.
‘Conscience of the state’
Metro members pray that Embrace Grace can help reduce the number of abortions.
Despite Roe v. Wade’s demise, the number of abortions in Michigan increased again last year — including thousands of pregnant women who came from other states for the procedure, according to a government report.
“It’s no longer the law of the land,” Donald Eason said of legalized abortion. “However, it’s moved into the different states to fight this.”
Donald points to a quote from the late civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., who said, “The church must be reminded that it is not the master or the servant of the state, but rather the conscience of the state.”
“So we have a responsibility as a church community to be a conscience to the country,” said Donald, who has participated in the national March for Life in Washington, D.C.
Donald T. Eason, right, makes an announcement at the Metro Church of Christ in Sterling Heights, Mich.
“The Bible says that righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a reproach,” he added, citing Proverbs 14:34.
Protecting the lives of the unborn, the Easons believe, starts with caring for vulnerable mothers.
Women with unplanned pregnancies need to know, Phyllis said, “that God still loves them — and that we love them and want to be of support.”
Brooklyn Covington, 24, feeds her baby, Bronx, during an interview with The Christian Chronicle.
BOBBY ROSS JR. is Editor-in-Chief of The Christian Chronicle. He traveled to Michigan to report this story. Reach him at [email protected].
The post A pro-life — and pro-love — ministry appeared first on The Christian Chronicle.
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