This month marks the two-year anniversary of the launch of Equal Rights Institute. I couldn’t be more proud of what we’ve accomplished.
We spoke to 1,455 people in 18 speeches and seven all-day seminars. We published 35 new articles to our blog, which were ready by 38,269 people, mainly visiting our site from America, Russia, Canada, the United Kingdom, India, and Australia!
Here are a few of my favorite memories from the last year:
Successfully shooting 31 videos for our online course in three days.
Finding out that a Students for Life club had an awards ceremony that they named “The Brahmdie Awards.”
Training the Students for Life clubs in West Michigan, the most prepared students we’ve ever trained.
Getting to know Rachel Crawford, and formally offering her a job.
Receiving the Defender of Life Award from Students for Life of America.
Teaching Tim how to do basic video editing so that I could focus my time on other tasks like preparing for our move to Charlotte.
Watching Timothy’s fiancee Bethany have amazing conversations at UC Davis.
It was her first outreach and she was pretty nervous, but I think she had more conversations than we did! People couldn’t stop coming up to her and having lengthy, productive conversations with her about abortion. She rocked that outreach.
Being nominated for the 2016 John Maxwell Leadership Award, and reading the comments from people who’ve been influenced by me.
Getting text messages from Jacob Nels every time he’s involved with saving a baby outside his local abortion clinic.
(Be looking for a series of articles on sidewalk counseling tips from Jacob in the next few months!)
Finally, I’d like to thank the people who so generously have supported us this last year. I know it sounds like a cliché, but we seriously could not have done any of this without you.
I’ve spoken with a few people who have been watching closely, wondering if ERI would last. By God’s grace, the future of ERI has never looked brighter! A great deal of the last year has been about laying the foundation for year three. This year our reach and impact will dramatically increase as we publish our online course, begin a podcast, and speak for both Students for Life national conferences and 14 of their Leadership Summits!
We’ll be training thousands of college students, and we need your help. The summer months are notoriously bad for fundraising, but it’s our birthday, and I’d like to ask you to invest in the work we’re doing to train pro-life advocates to think clearly, reason honestly, and argue persuasively. Thank you so much!
Josh worked in the pro-life movement starting at age 18. After 12 years of full-time pro-life work he launched Equal Rights Institute to maximize his impact on the movement.
A sought-after speaker, Josh has spoken for more than 29,000 people in six countries and in 25 of the 50 states.
Josh’s primary passion is helping pro-life people to be more persuasive when they communicate with pro-choice people. That means ditching faulty rhetoric and tactics and embracing arguments that hold up under philosophical scrutiny.
He has publicly debated leaders from Planned Parenthood, the National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL), Georgians for Choice, and one of the leading abortion facilities in Atlanta.
Josh also wants to bring relational apologetics to the pro-life movement. “Some pro-choice people will not change their mind after one conversation on a college campus. Some of them will only change their mind after dozens of conversations with a person they trust in the context of friendship.”
Josh is formerly the host of a globally-heard podcast turned radio/TV show, Life Report and the Equipped for Life Podcast. He’s also written dozens of articles for LifeNews.com and the ERI blog. He has been interviewed by the Washington Post, NPR, and Focus on the Family.
He directed the first 40 Days for Life campaign in Fresno, resulting in up to 60 lives saved.
Josh has been happily married to his wife, Hannah, for 19 years. They have three sons, Noah, William, and Eli. They live in Charlotte, North Carolina.