1. The speakers' bureau needs to be designed to enhance the effectiveness of everything else that we are doing within the context of a larger strategic plan for pro-life activism.

2. We must ask, for example, how the work of the speakers' bureau can enhance the effectiveness of church conversion, CPC work, fund raising, staff recruitment, etc. Synergy occurs when each project undertaken reinforces the effectiveness of every other project we are doing so that the whole of a long term strategic plan is greater than the sum of its parts.

3. Instead of random bands of individuals conducting ad hoc projects (with nobody knowing what everyone else is doing), we need a "team" mentality where we are more concerned with how everyone else is doing than we are with how we are doing.

1. Most speakers' bureaus operate like the Maytag repair man: they sit back and wait for requests for their services rather than looking for opportunities. We need to understand that the American public generally does not want to think about this issue. They want it to just go away.

2. Furthermore, the leaders of the organizations to which we need to deliver our message know that their organizations are filled with people who will grill them for letting us come speak. Many of their people have been personally involved in an abortion decision. They do not want to hear that abortion kills a baby.

As a consequence, we are living in a dream world if we think these leaders are going to call us up and say, "Could you come over and show a video that will make everyone angry at me for inviting you to come?" Unless these leaders are heart broken over abortion, they will seldom invite the persecution your presentation will bring.

3. We need to decide where we must take our message and develop an aggressive plan for gaining access to those forums.

The first job of the speakers' bureau is to develop a plan for getting our message into every organization in a given service area:

* Develop an exhaustive list of all organizations that can provide a forum into which we can take our message. Divide these organizations into the following two categories:

Secular: Service organizations (Rotary, Moose, VFW, etc.), high schools, middle schools, law schools, medical schools, colleges, etc.

Sectarian: Pastors' luncheons, ministerial associations, Sunday school classes, prayer groups, home Bible study fellowships, Christian Businessmen's associations, Bible colleges, seminaries, Christian schools, etc.

* Rank order these organizations by asking:

* Go after large friendly groups first. They are the easiest to access and are the most responsive to appeals for money and manpower.

* Identify the leaders of each organization and develop a plan for converting them to the pro-life position (as a means of securing access to their organizations).

1.If you are not willing to change your life to stop the killing, do not expect the American public to take you seriously. The measure of how much we care about this holocaust will not be found in the piety of our rhetoric, but in what we are willing to sacrifice personally to stop the killing.

2. We need people who are willing to work organizing the speakers' bureau so that it can function effectively within the context of a long term strategic plan. This requires hard, tedious work that many pro-lifers are unwilling to do. The speakers' bureau also needs at least one full time staff person coordinating all events.

3. Most people come to speaker training seminars wanting to pick up a few gimmicks rather than assuming personal responsibility for organizing a speakers' bureau. Most want somebody else to do the hard foundational work. They want to show up and speak when their schedule will allow it rather than sacrificing personally to stop the killing.

4. To be effective, the speakers' bureau must be highly organized and highly visible. That can't happen without at least one full time staff person and a host of volunteers willing to do miserable, tedious work.

There are more people working full time to kill babies than there are working full time to save them. That's because killing babies is very profitable while saving them is very costly. So costly, in fact, that large numbers of Christians who say they believe that abortion kills babies are willing to do just enough to salve the conscience but not enough to stop the killing.

1. Most envision a rather innocuous, benign procedure carried out under sanitized conditions. Until you level the playing field, you may as well be talking about stock options.

2. The only way to level the playing field is to let people see abortion. That can't happen without the use of graphic visual aids.

3. We communicate the truth about abortion in two ways:

* Visually to break hearts and change how people feel about abortion

* Cognitively (using facts and arguments) to change how people think about abortion.

Both methods are vitally important. Visual communication requires the use of graphic aids; cognitive communication requires the use of good documentation in conjunction with hard hitting facts and arguments. You must first change how people feel before you can change how they think.

4. Very few pro-life speakers carry good documentation to back up what they say. Your audience does not care what your opinions are, they want to know the facts. Holding up physical documents is a powerful way to crush your opponents. If abortion advocates can achieve confusion, the status quo will be preserved (the status quo is that any woman can kill any baby at any point in the pregnancy for any reason or no reason). Their goal is confusion. Our goal is clarification. We need good documentation to unmask pro-abortion lies.

1. Americans by and large do not have the analytical thinking skills their forefathers did. As Neil Postman points out in his book Amusing Ourselves to Death, America has shifted from a print based culture (with an emphasis on critical thinking skills) to an image based culture (with an emphasis on experience, feeling, etc.). 130 years ago, crowds stood for hours in terrible weather listening to Lincoln and Douglas debate slavery. The speech style of both men was philosophical and learned. Today, it's hard to get people to listen to a 20 minute sermon at church. Hence, it's little wonder that most Americans have not taken the time to think through a consistent position on abortion.

2. A nationwide survey on abortion commissioned by Dr. Jack Willke of Life Issues ("Marginals and Persuadables"), confirmed that Americans hold completely contradictory and schizophrenic positions on the issue:

* 65% oppose public funding of abortion--but:
* 53% disagree with the so called "gag rule"

* 65% think no one should tell a woman what to do with her body--but:
*79% support some restrictions on abortion/ 78% say father should have some rights in a decision to abort

* 60% say abortion is morally wrong--but:
* 60% say only the woman should decide the issue.

* 73% say a fetus is a baby and killing it is wrong at any stage-- but:
* 65% say no one should tell the woman what to do with her body

* 73% favor more attention to the rights of the unborn-but:
* 65% say no one should tell a woman what to do

* 47% say abortion = ultimate form of child abuse--but:
*70% want abortion legal to protect women from back alley abortions

* 77% agree there are too many abortions, but:
* 70% would keep abortion legal

* 45% want the states to decide their own laws on abortion, but:
* 41% want federal law to decide the issue

Other key findings from the Willke study:

* 90% disapprove of abortion when used as birth control

* 40% felt angry when presenter shows pictures of fetus

* 44% say abortion is less painful than adoption

* 48% want the abortion debate to just go away

* 78% are bothered by a perceived pro-life opposition to birth control

* 59% believe pro-life presentations should be more scientific and less emotional

On a scale of believability:

71% say woman who had an abortion and regrets it is most believable

48% believe a religious figure most believable

56% find Planned Parenthood believable

47% find doctors not doing abortions believable

3. In short, the American public does not know the facts about abortion, has no coherent position on the issue, and wants the problem to just go away.