God has equipped CFL to help your local church grow as a holistic, gospel-driven champion of life.  We do that within a long-term trust relationship in these ways:

1. establish a gospel-driven Life Team within you church that can carefully champion life in and through the congregation under oversight of church leadership,
2. encourage pastors and other local church leaders to provide high-level championing and courageous, gospel-driven oversight of their Life Team and their church’s life-affirming efforts, and
3. equip life-affirming agencies (e.g. a local crisis pregnancy center) to partner with your local church through your Life Team in a healthy, reciprocal relationship where both parties are served.  

At CFL, we place a premium on a long-term trust relationship with local church partners.  We employ tested, biblical principles in pursuing the three goals above, including personal coaching, workshops, preaching, teaching, and more.  Please visit the other parts of this site to get familiar with us, or call our President, Rev. Douglas W. Merkey (314) 267-4238.

Beyond what is described above, we also invest in the future of local churches by equipping seminal institutions (seminaries and Christian colleges) to train upcoming generations of church leaders to lead in the life arena when they arrive on the field in their post-academic calls. To complete the network, we endow life-affirming agencies (crisis pregnancy centers, adoption agencies, etc.) with the skills they need to support the local church, and in so doing, receive reciprocal support.

CFL operates on a set of Biblical core values, especially the primacy of the Gospel of Jesus Christ in all program content and delivery. Lord willing, implementing CFL’s mission will bring God pleasure and cause Him to expand this mission to realize the vision, which is to see America become a life-affirming nation resulting from a life-affirming American Church. CFL will accomplish all these goals with our ministry partners as we walk together in the strength and wisdom of Christ.

The statements below describe in detail the purposes for which God has formed CFL, and the way He intends CFL to follow Him.

CFL’s Vision - the long-term result of God’s working through CFL

A holistically life-affirming America resulting from a Gospel-driven, holistically life-affirming American Church.

CFL’s Mission - the concise and practical, yet broad summation of what God’s wants to accomplish with and through CFL

Churches for life exists to nourish churches as gospel-driven champions of life.

CFL’s Strategies – specific categories of ministry that contribute to God’s accomplishing His mission and vision for CFL

1. Establish Life Teams (LTs) in local churches.
2. Encourage local pastors and church leaders.
3. Embolden denominational and ecclesial leaders.
4. Equip seminal institutions.
5. Endow life-affirming agencies with skills to partner with all the above.

These are the principles that guide how CFL carries out its mission.

1. Gospel-driven

The motive and content of all CFL endeavors is the Person of Jesus Christ as He is specifically revealed in the Gospel of Jesus Christ in the Holy Scriptures. The bedrock assertion is this: CLF champions life because, and in the same way that, Christ champions our lives in the Gospel! (Deuteronomy 24:17-22 17, Psalm 34:8, Romans 12:1, Colossians 2:6)

2. Church-Focused

CFL will focus on nourishing and equipping the local church because Christ has ordained that She is the locus of all that is redemptive. (Isaiah 42:5-7, 49:6, 51:4, Ephesians 1:22-23, Acts 13:47, 1 Peter 2:9)

3. Life-Affirming

CFL values human life at all stages because human beings are made in the sacred image of God. (Genesis 1:26, 3:22, 5:1, 1 Corinthians 11:7, Ephesians 4:24, James 3:9)

4. Relationship-Grounded

CFL values personal relationships and recognizes that ministry flows from them. Relationship is not merely a means to an end; it is an end in itself. This value reflects Christ’s love for His people, not for what they can do for Him or what He can get out of them, but simply because He values and loves them as objects of His divine affection. (Deuteronomy 4:37-39, 7:8, Luke 10:38-42, John 15:9, 2 Corinthians 4:4, 1 Peter 1:22)

5. Grace-and-Truth Balanced

CFL will strive to faithfully share Biblical truth in the context of grace and avoid the errors of “lopsided Christianity” which wrongly emphasize one aspect of the Gospel over another, such as truth-heavy legalism or grace-heavy antinomianism. (Exodus 20:1-17 – note that the preamble in vv. 1-2 and the 10 commandments in vv. 3-17 together make up the entire commandment discourse!, Leviticus 11:45, Mark 10:17-22, John 1:14, John 1:17, Colossians 1:6b, 2 John 1:3)