Gary Haugen: International Justice Mission WCA Session

GCC's site for the Leadership Summit simulcast is awesome.  Here are some notes from the second session.

Gary Haugen: International Justice Mission

Bill is apparently open season for old-age jokes this year. Gary let him have it as he expressed his regrets for laughing at Jim’s opening comments about Bill’s age, then he expressed his appreciation for the fact that Bill was still “sitting up and taking nourishment” at such and advance age.

Haugen saw the value of leadership at a young age; living in South Africa in 1985 he watched Christian leaders trying to save their nation from a bloodbath.

“I was there three days before martial law was declared in the country. I came to know pastors and ministers and youth leaders (black and white) who were being arrested, tortured and murdered for speaking the name of Jesus. Through their leadership, they rescued. They did it without war. Their leadership mattered and I got to see it with my own eyes.”

“We want our leadership to matter. We want it to make a difference.”

“Leadership that matters to God is leadership on issues that matter to God.”

“Are Jesus and I really interested in the same things?”

“What is God truly passionate about?

Two Fundamental Passions of God.
God’s passion for the world.
John 3:16…says God so loved “the world…”
Incarnation was motivated by God’s passion  for the world.
Enter that world, and share the love of God with that world…and you’ll discover the most difficult thing for people to believe about the Christian faith is that “God is good.” Because they are in so much pain.

25,000 children will die today just because their parents can’t get them enough nutrition.
How are they supposed to believe that God is good?

If you think about it….what is God’s plan for making it believable that He is good?
The answer from the Bible is surprising….it turns out that we’re the plan.
And God doesn’t have another plan.

Matthew 5 Jesus says, “You are the light of the world….”
So, for 2,000 years Christians have been trying to make it believable that God is good.
We get to go and share that Good News with them…

When we do that, they actually see the Body of Christ show up….and it becomes believable to them that God is good.

But there are people who are suffering because of the intentional abuse, and oppression at the hands of other people.  These are the victims of injustice in our world.

What does injustice mean?
When the Bible talks about injustice, it is actually talking about a specific kind of sin. It is the abuse of power…to take away from people their life, liberty, their dignity… and God calls it sin.

Ecclesiastes says,  “On the side of the oppressor was power…””

In 1997 Haugen left his job at The Department of Justice and founded IJM.
“We take on cases of brutal violence, abuse or oppression.
I have a clear idea of what injustice looks like around the world.

Think of David. He was grabbed by police officers who took his money and then let him go…and he fell in a heap in the road. The police left him for dead. He got up and went to the hospital. They had to amputate his right arm. The police learned he was still alive so they arrested him and threw him in jail where they left him to rot. How is David supposed to believe God is good?

Or consider the 12 year old girl who works 12 hours a day in a compound where the owners abuse, starve, rape and torture their slaves. 
27 million people in our world live in slavery.
How are they supposed to believe God is good?

What about the 16 year old girl who was asked to come “to the big city to get a job,” so she could “make money and send it home.”  She is drugged. She was beaten in a brothel for three days until she complied to “service” 20 to 30 men a day, seven days a week…
2 million children are in forced prostitution every day. 
How are they to believe God is good?

God loves these people. He wants this abuse to stop.
Few things make it more difficult to believe that God is good than this rank injustice.

Psalm 11 says the Lord is righteous. He loves justice.

If he is so passionate about it, why isn’t God doing anything about it?
What is God’s plan?
The answer is surprising. 
We are the plan.

Micah 6:8.  “He has told you …do justice, love mercy and walk humbly with God.”
Isaiah 1:17 “Plead for the widow…”

“God has given to us…the work of justice.
If you want your leadership to matter, lead in the things that matter to God.

Jesus challenged the Pharisees….”You’ve neglected the weightier matters of the law….Justice, mercy and faith.”

It feels intimidating.  We hear the stories…and feel bolted to our chairs with despair.

Leadership that matters to God, and leadership that matters to God’s people.
The work can seem hopeless, scary and hard.”
Experienced leaders know this well.  How do we lead when it is frightening and difficult.

What have we learned?
1. When the task seems hopeless.
2. When the task seems scary.
3. When the task is really hard.

How do we lead when the task seems hopeless.

We re-center on the basis of our hope. Focus our eyes on who God is and what He wants to do.  If God is passionate about getting it done…he is responsible for getting it done.

Want to see hopelessness?  Look at the disciples when Jesus told them to feed 5,000. “You feed them.” And the disciples are always so patient to explain to Jesus what He just doesn’t seem to understand.  “We just don’t have that kind of cash on us today….so back to You, Jesus.”

The magnitude of need and limited resources.
They bring forward what they do have.  Five loaves and two fish.  The corporate resources to meet the massive need. “What are these among so many?” I took a math course. We really have nothing to do here but sit in the paralysis of despair.  Jesus says, “Give it to me. What do you have? Give it to me.”  And he feeds 5,000 people.
He asks for what they have. Will you give it to me? I’ll do the miracle.

David’s case seemed hopeless. The police were committing the violence. So, we cried out to God. They offered their commitment to “not go away” … and God used their courageous advocacy.  Those five Police were charged with crimes. IJM is committed to justice.  Now David volunteers his legal advocacy.
Sometimes God calls you to lead in a work that seems hopeless.  Remind people that the work is Gods. He asks us to give what we have and the miracles are His job, not ours.
How do we lead when the task seems scary?
We know the feeling.
Death threats. Violent assaults.
Confrontation with slavery.  We knew the slave owners were capable of great violence.

My colleagues have been brutally attacked, beaten attacked by mobs…and they’ve experienced God. God led us to that great epiphany, “Jesus did not come to make us safe; Jesus came to make us brave.”
If my life following Jesus doesn’t seem dangerous, I might check to see that it is Jesus I’m really following.  He came to make us brave.
Delivered from the mediocrity of “safeness.”

I pray we don’t miss it.  At the end of the day, it’s sad to learn we went on the trip but we missed the adventure.

On the adventure, my brothers ran ahead, but my father always stayed behind me. He’d hang back and let me know he was present.  One trip, on the mountain trail, I just didn’t want to go on any farther. A warning sign indicated all the horrible things that would happen to you if you went on up the trail. My brothers dashed off.  My dad assured me I could make it. The view would be the effort. We could do it together. I thought, “All kinds of things could go wrong. What if I don’t make it and I’m humiliated.” So, I said, “Climbing up would be ‘boring.’ We should go to the Visitor’s Center.”  I went to the visitor’s center and was pleased with myself….and it seemed, “this really was the place to be.”  As the afternoon wore on, the visitor’s center seemed small….stuffed animals seemed dead…the videos that looped were not as exciting…
I realized I was bored, sleepy and small.  I missed my dad.  I was totally stuck.  I was totally safe, but I was totally bored.
Dad and my brothers returned….and on the long ride home, they had something. They had stories. Stories of an unforgettable day with their Dad, on a great mountain.  Of course, I insisted the day was the greatest day of my whole vacation.  I went on the trip, but I missed the adventure.  We’re on the journey with Jesus…but many of us are missing the adventure.

Heavenly Father says, “Follow me beyond what you can control…and you will experience Me and My power and My wisdom and My love.”

Jesus beckoned me to follow Him to that scary place of service where I could see how strong my Father is, and how much He loves me.

God wants to take our strengths to a more demanding climb.

How do we lead others when the calling of God is hard?

Effective leadership comes from a few decisions:
1. Choose not to be safe.
We must take our gifts, passion and training beyond safety and control. 
The first indicator that we are being brave, rather than safe, will be our prayer life.
Do you and I have a work that we couldn’t imagine doing for 30 minutes without prayer?

I won’t need to be in prayer every 30 minutes if I’m doing work that God doesn’t need done.
We don’t want to spend our days at the Visitor’s Center.
We must admit that it is FEAR and not CLEVERNESS that keeps us at the Visitor’s Center.

2. Choose to pursue deep spiritual health.

Religious people can do things that are safe without deep spiritual health.
But people can’t do what is scary and difficult without deep spiritual health.

My devotional life can become a list of activities to do … so I can feel better about myself.

By contrast, when you are on the more demanding climb, your devotions have a different feel.  I know I must learn. I’m panting to read the Bible. I’m desperate to pray to my Heavenly Father. There is no way I do what I’m doing unless He intercedes!

If you want to ignite passion and purpose….lead them on a more demanding climb where it is unsafe to go….and the people you are leading will run to God.

We begin every working day with silence and prayerful preparation for the day.  All of us, every day.  We do this as desperation, not discipline.  Without the spiritual resources accessed through prayer…we can’t get the work done.

We are trying to help people who are being abused in the most desperate way.  In the struggle for justice, not much that is meaningful will get done if we don’t spend at least an hour a day doing nothing but pursuing God.

3. Choose to pursue excellence.

To outsider…the work product of the church often appears sloppy, soft-headed.
It was not always so.
In other eras…the hardest thinking, the most brilliant creativity….came from the church.

As Christians moved-in to more climate controlled cul-de-sacs…we traded away the value of  excellence.
But truth be told, we weren’t loving very well…
Remember, Jesus made the connection between love and execution.

It matters how we do what we do.  Thoughtfully, Rigorously.

At IJM it is a matter of life and death.
It matters whether our lawyers are ready to confront the lies of the slave-owner’s attorneys.
It matters.

As God calls this generation to the work of Justice, perhaps we can say, “Enough is enough.”
Enough of mediocrity. 
May this be the generation of Christian leaders that re-sets the bar of excellence.
Disciplines of transparency and accountability.

4. Choose joy.

Choose to seize joy.

The first thing that disappears when spiritual health departs is laughter.
Insufferable self-seriousness.
Truth is…it should make us laugh to see God’s extraordinary humor to see God’s willingness to use us as instruments of His glory.

God makes His appeal to the world through us.  If that juxtaposition doesn’t seem to you to be really funny….

The struggle for Justice in God’s kingdom is really hard.

Do not add burdens to the team of self-seriousness.  Something is wrong if Jesus’ yoke is light and mine is heavy.  Jesus was gentle and humble of heart.  In Him was the fullness of JOY.
Some lead their lives with such sourness that we could never be accused of things Jesus was accused of … and we thing that’s good!  (We are mistaken.)
Hilarious generosity marks the Christ-like leader’s life.
The joy of the Lord is our strength.
For us…”all is well.”
God offers to us the holy fellowship. 
“These things I’ve spoken, so my joy may be in you and your joy may be full.”  This is the way Jesus leads.
A leadership role in Christ’s heroic struggle for justice in the world.  An adventure of the rarest joy.
Imagine our joy when we rescued this little girl…
We provided her a Christian home of love and healing, and unleashed unexpected miracles!  She led us back to rescue another seven children out of the brothel. One of them led us to rescue another 24 from a dungeon.  On this day they were brought out of the darkness. 
This is the power of the Gospel…going into the darkest places of the world.

IJM exists to provide practical resources for you and your church to enter in….

When I grew up I wanted to be a great football player. My brothers explained why I failed.  “You are small, but you are slow.”

I worked out. I would look over and see, in their special section of the gym, the body-builders.  I’d look at that muscle mass and ask, “What’s it all for?”
“It was all just for posing.”

Or, in the kitchen…opening jam jars.

My prayer for us….is that, in a world of so much suffering and need, that God will not leave us opening jam jars.

Comments

[Ted Bryant]

Hey, thanks for this post - I am traveling to India this winter on the Justice team, and so this is special to read this. It makes my heart rejoice to know that that IJM is full of such integrity and is "on mission" - so thanks again for the time you spent :)