Lutherans for Life

Lutherans for Life (LFL) is a group within LCANZ, joined together by a common desire to promote the sanctity of God’s gift of human life.

LFL was established by the LCA at its General Convention of Synod in Adelaide in 1987 and is accountable to the LCA through the Commission on Social and Bioethical Questions (CSBQ). A national committee supports and oversees the work, while a number of regional branches operate at the local level.

LFL supporters believe that human life begins at conception and seek to promote this understanding. We seek to gain public support for the protection of human life. Thus LFL supports those pregnancy support service centres which do not refer women for abortion but provide them with positive help during and after their pregnancy.

Lutherans for Life (LFL) seeks to:

• educate and equip Lutherans in Australia and NZ with resources that enable them to defend the dignity of every human life, from conception until natural death; and
• foster community responsibility for the defense of God's gift of human life, especially those whose life others would categorise as unwanted, lacking quality, worthless or otherwise dispensable.

LFL prepares suitable educational materials dealing with contemporary life and death issues, provides speakers, and organises seminars and workshops with the purpose of creating and/or maintaining a deep appreciation of God's gift of human life, along with the community's responsibility for the ongoing care and protection of human life.

We achieve this through:

• this webpage, which provides information and resources for you to use and adapt to your local setting
• our biannual newsletter Life News, which goes out to every pastor and parish of the LCA, as well as to individual subscribers
• our Facebook page where we share articles, videos and other resources of interest
• our annual dinner for graduating pastors of the LCA, where we speak about the work of LFL and encourage them in their future ministry
• providing or recommending speakers upon request and running conferences or other events.

In addition to the above, LFL seeks to support other organisations in Australia with goals similar to ours.

Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love' (1 John 4:8). These words are taken from the Bible and provide much of the motivation behind Lutherans for Life’s (LFL) work.

Love is a word that gets thrown around a lot these days, and sometimes examples of love are pretty thin. The type of love we’re talking about is not just a feeling. True love involves shaping our choices and actions in a way that requires us to give of ourselves, even if it hurts.

We know this because God himself, who is love, came down from heaven in the person of Jesus Christ. Through his life and death, Jesus is the perfect expression of love. His love was never selfish but always motivated by the needs others, and especially the most vulnerable.

We are not capable of loving in the same perfect way that Jesus did. Nevertheless, he leads us to live lives that reflect his love. Jesus guides us to love God first and foremost, and also those around us. He says:

Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength ... Love your neighbour as yourself (Mark 12:30,31).

We must again look to the example of Jesus to understand what it means to love in this way. The two commandments given to us by Jesus are ultimately connected because one of the ways we love God is by loving and serving our neighbour. This is the very thing God created us to do in the first place!

In his life here on earth, Jesus showed a special kind of love and attention to those at the margins of society. He wants us to do the same.

LFL has developed a special ministry which seeks to bring community awareness to the dignity of all human persons, born and unborn, and especially those whose lives others might be tempted to call 'useless'.

We are a ministry motivated by God’s love, knowing that we can only love because he first loved us (1 John 4:19).