At Mosaic Church’s Teen MOPS program, young mothers attend weekly meetings where they build a relationship with Jesus Christ, learn parenting skills and gain peer support. Attendees earn incentives for participating, and can shop for diapers, clothing and other necessities.

It’s amazing what the promise of diapers can do. As any new parent knows, the puffy, plastic-wrapped bale that’s hauled home during the week’s grocery shopping is essential—not to mention expensive. For a teenage mother, it’s one more detail to be worked into her new normal.

Tricia Goyer knows this scenario well, because she was a teen mom. Now, as she goes about her work as director of Teen MOPS (Mothers of Preschoolers) at Mosaic Church in Little Rock, she can still summon up what it felt like to be in that position. “There is no stereotype as to what a young mother is. When I was in high school, I was a cheerleader, I was on honor roll, I had a lot going for me and I found myself pregnant,” she says. “I had women who reached out to me when I was a young mom and I know that it really turned me around and got me on the right track.”

In addition to peer support and incentives, Teen MOPS helps its members develop a sense of self and a relationship with Jesus Christ. As an author of more than 30 books, many on faith and family, Goyer is adept at connecting the dots between the omnipotent redemption available through Christ’s love. “It’s great just to let them know how important they are,” she says. “Sometimes, they’ve never had anybody tell them ‘You’re special, God created you for a purpose and he has a good plan for you, he has a good plan for your life.’”

“Teens make mistakes all the time,” Goyer says. “Pregnancy is one of those areas where not only is the teen mom affected but her child is impacted, too. And if we reach out, if we can help the teenage mother, encourage her, point her to good resources. If we can teach her how to be a good mom and a good role model, then we’re impacting two lives.”

Along with the aforementioned diapers (of which Goyer hands out about 1,600 monthly), young mothers also get a hot meal, inspiration from a speaker, prayer and peer companionship at weekly meetings. The group is made up of roughly 50 mothers, some as young as 14, of whom a dozen or so attend on any given Thursday.

Occasionally a group member has a supportive family, but many of the young women have been left to fend for themselves. Kayleigh Stoltz could be their poster child. At 15, she intentionally got pregnant as a means of escaping her troubled and abusive household in Montana. “I knew they wouldn’t want a pregnant teen around,” she says. “I went to a school dance and I got together with the first guy I saw.”

She heard about the local Teen MOPS while in the hospital after delivering her daughter—like a lot of new participants, she went for the freebies and walked away with a lot more: “It was really cool to come to a place where these nice ladies were there to show you the basic things, like how to pack a diaper bag,” she says. “I felt taken care of for the first time in my life.”

One of the women handing out love and concern was Goyer, who founded the program Stoltz had stumbled onto in Montana. It eventually proved to be a match made in heaven. The bond between the two women is so strong that when Goyer and her family moved to Little Rock a few years ago, Stoltz wasn’t far behind with her daughter, now 13, and her husband in tow. (She’s married to the same young man she picked at random all those years before.)

Stoltz now volunteers at the ministry along with others who provide child care or cook dinner for the young mothers. Teens earn incentives for attending meetings as well as other positive activities, such as enrolling in higher education or attending doctor appointments. But as Goyer is quick to note, the material perks are a small part of the picture. “You know, those are things to draw them in, because we really want to share just how to be a good mom and what a relationship with God is all about,” Goyer says. “We know that when you have those internal changes, that is even more important than providing diapers.”