Sustainability

More than Philanthropy

More than Philanthropy

Our trust in God proved to me the point of this blog, that Biking for Babies is more than philanthropy. It is a community oriented around carrying our crosses, helping each other carry each other’s crosses.

Giving Your First Fruits

Giving Your First Fruits

If we invite the Lord into our finances, it naturally shifts us from thinking about ourselves, to thinking about others. Giving Tuesday is a good day for all of us to take an honest look at our finances. Have I ever actually calculated what 10% of my income is?

Putting Down Your Stone

Putting Down Your Stone

Christ died for us and for our sins, and Lent provides an essential reminder of how much we need Him. But how many of us cast the first stone, automatically, and judge another for the way they look or live? We are the body of Christ, and the more we set aside judgement and actively search for ways to empower others, the healthier the body will be.

An Open Letter to Pro-Life Marchers

An Open Letter to Pro-Life Marchers

I hope the March for Life fueled you for a fight to change the culture this year. Because legislation changes are necessary, and abortion clinics shutting down are gifts. But nothing will truly change if hearts aren’t changed.Help me, brothers and sisters, to change the heart of our world. Souls are at stake, including our own.

2018: What a Year!

2018: What a Year!

Nikki reflects on our 2018 financial year, which includes the largest gift to PRCs we’ve ever given, plus some amazing and unique stories of lives saved through our missionaries.

Biking-for-Babies-Executive-Director-Nikki-Biese

Nikki’s Story: A new face for Biking for Babies

Nikki’s Story: A new face for Biking for Babies

“I reflect on this past year, and I laugh at how our plans are always overruled by God’s. Even more hilarious is that I never stop planning, and neither does He. The path that God is leading me, my family, and Biking for Babies down is clearer now more than ever. He wants our mission to be bigger and louder. He’s bringing us places we have never been before, showing us avenues to increase our impact at exponential rates. In the business of saving lives, we are never satisfied with our results because every soul counts.”

In this first period of formation, the young adults:

Come into the program as Christian disciples in search of the next, deeper step in their living out their relationship with Christ. These missionaries are already in pursuit of Jesus Christ, are passionate for changing the culture, are willing to grow by communal and personal pursuits, and are invested in docility to the Holy Spirit.

Go through formation within a small group of 8-12 who make up their “team:” the groups of missionaries who will be together for the in-person National Ride. This builds a micro-community rooted in trust, faith, pursuit of virtue, and accountability. It is in this community that these young adults are encouraged, challenged and prompted to transform their own lives, turning completely toward Christ and living out the Gospel of Life.

Learn about the Gospel of life through educational and spiritual curriculum primarily communicated through the “Life Guide.” This week-by-week resource focuses on the spiritual development of the missionaries while also helping them go deeper in areas they’re interested, track milestones throughout the program, and have prayerful reflection during their year. Missionaries also engage in spiritual formation, study pro-life apologetics, and grow in Christian community.

Develop 1-to-1 relationships with life-affirming pregnancy centers and maternity homes who share stories from their centers—stories of lives saved, stories of broken hearts healed, stories of untapped opportunity. These centers pour into the missionaries a real world understanding of the culture of death and life from the front lines of the movement. Though this relationship, missionaries become authentic advocates for the work of pregnancy centers in their own communities.

Deepen their understanding of the needs of mothers and families in unplanned pregnancies, connecting the highs and lows these families experience with the highs and lows also found in the spiritual life. For example, understanding that parents who want to choose life for an unexpected child will do so most regularly when they have a network of support can connect to times when missionaries struggle to stay on the bike without their network of teammates and faith in Christ. Missionaries contemplate these spiritual connections as they go throughout formation, offering their efforts in solidarity with pregnant women and families in crisis.

With eyes now opened to the need and Christ-centered solutions of problems, these young adults are sent forth as “missionaries” into the rest of the formation program and into the rest of their lives, committing to live with the truth of the Gospel of life as the lens through which they see every relationship, every decision, and the world at large.

In this second period of formation, the missionaries

Join prayer with physical sacrifice over thousands of miles and hours of training, pursuing a life of virtue, discipline, and greatness rooted in Christ, starting with faithfulness to a training program.

- Riders primarily train physically to be prepared to ride about 100 miles/day for six days in the summer heat. Their training is intentionally coupled with prayer, so that all that they do is fruitful, not just for them but for others. Unification with Christ’s Cross is at the heart of the riders’ missionary role, as, on the Cross, Jesus showed us that life is given meaning when it is sacrificed for others (John 15:13).

- Support crew train by ascetism at the forefront so they are prepared physically, mentally, and spiritually to serve their team selflessly throughout the National Ride week. Support crew take on a “ministry of presence” as they walk with their teams in humble service to their needs. Support crew stand as witnesses to God’s design for our communities: that we belong to one another and that we are to act as our brother’s keepers (John Paul II, 1995, Evangelium Vitae, #7)

- Both roles are imperative to our mission, and people with differing qualities and gifts are often drawn to each role for different reasons. The lessons learned in both rider and support crew training are applicable to all areas of life, first with preparedness for the National Ride, then with their communities, vocations, and relationship with Christ and His people.

Fundraise for the mission by writing letters, making social media posts, giving parish/church talks, etc. Since missionaries understand the truth of the Gospel of life, are invested in and receiving opportunities for transformation from their formation, and see the need to support families served through pregnancy resource centers, they go out to find support to accomplish our two-part mission to both form young adult missionaries and to raise awareness and funds for pregnancy resource centers and the communities they serve.

Share the Gospel of life and grow in virtue on a 600-mile biking mission trip called the National Ride, experiencing further opportunities to practice humility, love, courage, faithfulness, generosity, joy, and discipline.

- Riders, in their bright yellow jerseys, catch the attention of passersby to share that doing something hard, something sacrificial, for others gives meaning and purpose to our lives and works toward our directive to make disciples of all nations while protecting the least of us (Mt 28:19, 25:31).

- Support crew serve their riding teammates by driving support vans full of equipment and nutrition, navigating, and ensuring safe travelling, while remaining the connector for Biking for Babies’ mission to each of the communities we stay with throughout the week.

- As they go, they are stopping in cities across the nation to share and witness to the beauty and joy of the Gospel of life, their personal testimonies, and the joy of pregnancy centers and families served therein.

Having lived through opportunities to connect physical and redemptive suffering, missionaries are equipped, habitually and virtuously, to invite Christ into suffering to sanctify it for the rest of their lives. Their “staying on the bike” supports families in “sticking with their unplanned pregnancy.” This is our effort to renew the culture of life through redemptive suffering and intercessory prayer; transforming ourselves first, and then the world.