Member Spotlight: Justice For All’s Stephen Wagner

May 2010’s Member Spotlight is on Stephen Wagner, director of training at Justice For All, shown with his wife, Rebeccah, and their daughter, Elisabeth.

Stephen Wagner teaches pro-lifers how to talk respectfully—and maybe, as a result, more persuasively–with those who disagree with them.

The 34-year-old director of training for Justice For All, a Wichita, Kan.-based pro-life organization that teaches volunteers how to effectively present the pro-life message on U.S. college campuses, says the key way to change minds about abortion is to reach hearts.

“JFA trains thousands to make abortion unthinkable for millions, one person at a time,” Stephen says. “The first thing we teach people about engaging in abortion discussion is this: Go do it.”

Once they make the decision to “go do it,” volunteers are taught by Wagner and others at Justice For All how to engage people on the other side of the issue by listening to them. He says JFA’s motto is, “It’s not my job to tell people what I think. It’s my job to ask them what they think and then listen … and ask another question.”

“So much can be accomplished in a conversation if we shift from being ‘people telling people all of the good things we know’ to being ‘people who care about people so much that we’re willing to go find them, listen to them, get to know them, and see if they’d be interested in walking some of the journey together,’” Stephen says.

Discussion opportunities are provided by exhibit kiosks set up on college campuses. The exhibits include large photos of aborted babies’ remains accompanied by statistics, quotes and facts that demonstrate the physical and emotional desolation of abortion. (A virtual exhibit can be viewed at jfaweb.org, but the organization warns there that “This exhibit contains disturbing photographic images of real victims of genocide.”)

Yet as confrontational as the use of the graphic photos may seem to be for some, Stephen says that it leads to genuine, heartfelt discussion about abortion. It’s a reality check.

“Some people have had experiences with abortion, but didn’t realize what it is,” he says. “They think it’s an innocuous surgery that helps the mother, but the pictures show that it’s a harmful surgery that kills a baby.”

Stephen also asks those who are upset by the images why they are upset.

“Some simply object to showing the images in public,” he says. “Some are troubled by their experience. All of them are struggling at some level with the possibility that the unborn is a human being whose life and death matters as much as that of people outside the womb.

“The pictures produce cognitive dissonance in us: Could these be human beings we’re killing through abortion? Could something as serious as genocide be happening again here in the land of the free and the brave? Is it possible I’ve been mistaken about the value of the unborn child all along?”

But the exhibits challenge not only the unbeliever, but Christians as well.

“One reason Christians and non-Christians are really in the same boat on this is that many churches have avoided the topic except for a few vague platitudes on one Sunday each year, if that,” he says. “Consequently, few Christians have a Christian worldview on abortion. So, when we train Christians, many times we have to do the same re-education we do with a typical pro-choice agnostic on a college campus.”

Stephen, a former choral music teacher at the middle school and high school levels, has been in the apologetics area for some time. He started last year at JFA after working as a speaker in bioethics for Stand to Reason (www.str.org) for seven years. His job entails “training trainers.”

He gets help from his wife of 2½ years, Rebeccah, who works as a mentor during training seminars and outreaches and support Stephen in his work. Before they married in 2007, she was a speaker—an “excellent speaker” in Stephen’s words–and staff member at JFA. Since their marriage, and especially since the birth of their daughter, Elisabeth, in June 2008, she has been a full-time homemaker.

“There are a few organizations who focus on giving good arguments for the pro-life position, but JFA has been the most ambitious about specifically attempting to create lots of skilled pro-life trainers. Justice For All’s emphasis on outreach-based learning, pro-life apologetics, sensitivity to the emotions and good ambassador skills were also a draw for me.”

The goal is to help pro-life trainers “master one-to-one dialogue skills and public speaking, and who are giving reasons for the pro-life position that make pro-choice people want to hear more.”

Those trainers train others to engage in dialogue with abortion rights advocates.

“JFA trainers dialogue in such a way that pro-choice people discover for themselves that abortion is wrong,” Stephen says.

Stephen also oversees the creation of new tools to create good dialogue on abortion, including his own book Common Ground Without Compromise and a JFA Exhibit Brochure, “a museum-quality, 9-inch copy of the entire exhibit.”

“But the most important tool we have for creating dialogue is ourselves: the pro-life advocate who is trained to ask good questions, listen, and find common ground,” Stephen says. “We move from debate to dialogue to help people move closer to accepting the truth of the Christian worldview on abortion, and other issues that inevitably come up in dialogue with pro-choice people: Does God exist? Aren’t morals relative? Does anything matter?”

In fact, Stephen says, JFA training goes beyond the abortion issue. It’s evangelism training in the sense that it enables Christians to “make an impact for Christ in any conversation on any topic anytime, anywhere, with any person.”

It also helps believers to articulate a Christian worldview.

“Romans 5:8 gives us the core of the Gospel message: ‘But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us,’” Stephen says. “Even though we functioned so badly, Christ believed we are worth saving. We have intrinsic value because the one true God, a being of sufficient power, goodness, and intelligence to create other beings with special value, did that very thing with us. Scripture talks of God creating us special among the animals, in God’s very image. We have that value as part of our constitution, and it is a constant.

“If human beings have their value in virtue of being made in the image of God, and that image is part of their constitution or nature, then the unborn have that value from the moment they begin to exist at conception. If they have the same value you and I have, we should treat them as equals, not as medical waste.”