Ep. 38 - Rescuing the Enslaved: A Journey of Justice and Stewardship

Episode Transcript

Spencer
Greetings. Today, we're delighted to host two leaders from International Justice Mission, or IJM to talk about their work at IJM and their approach to stewardship. One of the things that we see over and over again as we read the Bible is not just that we are stewards because God owns at all our finances or talents or time, our relationships and even our experiences, but that God expects us to use what he has given us in service of our neighbors and in particular in helping our poor neighbors.


Spencer
One of the ways that we do that as a firm is providing financial and prayer support for IJM specifically for their work in freeing slaves in India, because we are partners of that particular field office. We're consistently connected to what's happening at their office in India and can pray for their work more specifically in freeing slaves and helping to equip the Indian government and police in a variety of different ways to help protect the poor.


Spencer
Now they do this all over the globe with 31 different field offices and 1400 staff. But we love that we are also connected intimately to that one particular field office so that we can pray and understand what they're up to. More specifically.


Austin
Big picture IJM is a global ministry who works to protect the poor from violence and has done so for the last 26 years. They aim to strengthen local justice systems by partnering with government officials and law enforcement to rescue victims, restore survivors and bring criminals to justice. And they have been a part of bringing release over 85,000 men, women and children.


Austin
The need is tremendous. It's estimated that there are around 50 million people currently in slavery. 28 million of them in forced labor and 22 million in forced marriages. The Scale of Harm Project reported that 1.7 million children are exploited in sex trafficking each year. The immensity of the problem is sobering, but there is hope. Since the beginning of IJM’s work and the Dominican Republic basically able to see a 78% reduction of sex trafficking and seen similar results in other countries in the next seven years, IJM has a vision to rescue millions, protect half a billion, and prove justice for the poor is unstoppable.


Austin
IJM was founded by Gary Haugen, who worked at the Department of Justice's Police brutality unit and was put on loan to the U.N. to investigate the genocide of Rwanda.


Spencer
Austin and I have actually read Haugen's book, The Locust Effect Why the End of Poverty Requires the End of Violence. And I'm not so sure that ever read anything more moving in the stories that Haugen unpacks. I was crying so many different times and had just a great sense of godly anger that so many poor are in this plight today.


Spencer
But the book's also full of hope because we serve a loving God who has a heart for the poor and is giving life and energy to IJM and their partners that can bring about lasting change. Welcome to the second half Stewardship Podcast. We believe that God owns it all and our response as Christians is to live generous lives.


Spencer
I'm Spencer Hall, a certified financial planner.


Austin
And I am Austin McLaughlin. As former full time missionaries in the United States and oversees Spencer and I approach managing our personal finances through the lens of biblical stewardship.


Spencer
Journey with us as we explore how to be generous stewards of our money, time, relationships, gifts and experiences. Well, today we have Jocelyn White and Chuck Day, who both serve in North America with IJM to tell us more about IJM's work. And we're really excited again to have you all. Jocelyn is James director of Strategic Partnerships and Chuck is the director of Planned Giving.


Spencer
So Chuck and Jocelyn, welcome.


Chuck
Thank you for having us.


Jocelyn
Yes, we're thrilled to be here.


Spencer
First, we have a sense of the importance of the topic, of course, that we're talking about today. But I'll say that it's also personally important for me, because I told my kids who are age nine through 15, there's four of them that I'd be hosting an IJM podcast. And you talking about IJM. They told me, in all seriousness that I better not foul this up because exams work is too important.


Spencer
And so knowing that we'd be taping today, my 15 year old, our oldest, he he told me last week, he said, Dad, you have got to get a haircut for this for this video session. So with that, you know, it's funny. Sometimes the interactions are with kids. I'm so pleased that they are cognizant of how important your work is and how much they want IJM to succeed, to thrive, to be able to defend the poor, to be able to stand up and have a voice for the poor and we are just again, so thrilled to have you today and to be able to hear more and to be able to share that with clients and


Spencer
friends and others in the podcast universe there. So as we kind of dive into today, we thought it might be helpful to kind of start off with IJM's founding and story and background. And so Gary Haugen's background, his investigation of genocide in Rwanda, because I know that experience was key to starting IJM and for Gary. So Jocelyn, I thought maybe you could start by unpacking that experience and how it led to him being formed.


Jocelyn
Right. That's exactly right, Spencer. So, Gary, he was working for the Department of Justice, for the police brutality Unit, and he was put on loan to the U.N. to investigate the genocide in Rwanda. And part of his job was to explore where there were mass graves in most of those places were actually churches. And so he was going through the remains inside churches and watching how each person was murdered.


Jocelyn
He was interviewing men, women and children who survived the genocide. And it was a very traumatic experience for him. As you can imagine. And one day he was sitting in a church just kind of overwhelmed by it all and cried out to God and to say, God, where were you during all of this? And he just felt God and pressed his heart and said, I was here, but where were you?


Jocelyn
And so he really reflected on that. And when he returned to the States, he started exploring ways that he could utilize his skills as a lawyer to do things like protect the poor from violence. And what he found was that the majority of Christian investment and giving was given towards church planting and discipleship and very little to areas of injustice.


Jocelyn
So he kind of penned the idea of I am on a napkin and waited till he received a grant and 100 prayer partners. And then IJM was birthed out of the basement.


Austin
Wow. Yeah. And it's such a powerful story. Thanks for sharing, Jocelyn. So you guys are both on staff with IJM, and how did you find IG and what was your journey like to get to where you're at?


Jocelyn
Yeah, so I was on the executive team at a church and we used to always go to the Willow Creek Leadership Summit every year and back in 2008 there was this guest speaker Gary Haugen, and I was ready to take all these notes on leadership. But I didn't take one single note because he brought up two things I had not heard before.


Jocelyn
And one was the issue of human trafficking, and that was the second largest crime in the world. And then number two, that God cared about justice. And he called his church to seek justice, to rescue the oppressed, to defend the poor and feed for the widow. And I was on staff, I think, at that time for about seven years.


Jocelyn
I probably had perfect church attendance and let a Life Group. And I just felt a conviction of the deep imbalance I had. Focusing on the production of church service as opposed to the protection of the poor from violence. So I felt really compelled by that and just started to ask God, what can I do?


Austin
Thanks for sharing, Jocelyn. What about you Chuck? What, what led you to IJM?


Chuck
Yeah. I like to tell people that I'm a recovering lawyer. I am. And I was on the pathway of a very traditional lawyer in private practice when God intervened pretty radically in two different ways. Number one, he took me out of private practice and into the Christian nonprofit world, which, quite frankly, I didn't even know existed to do a thing called planned giving, in which I help people be wise stewards of their giving.


Chuck
And I did that in higher education for a number of years. And then God showed up again and decided that I needed to be immersed in the world of extreme developing world poverty. And I connected with an organization that was going into the poorest areas of the world and providing small loans, mostly to women, to help them build up businesses and work their way out of poverty.


Chuck
And that experience changed my life. I my heart was broken a thousand times by the poverty that I saw and I saw over and over again that if you really, really want to help poor people, the first thing you need to do is keep them safe because we provide education and health care and mosquito netting and clean water and all these things that we're trying to help poor people get out of poverty.


Chuck
And they all work as long as people are safe. But if people aren't safe, none of them work. So ultimately, that's what brought me to IJM sort of as the ultimate expression of trying to help poor people in the developing world get out of poverty.


Austin
Yeah, I think that was one of the things that struck me reading the locust Effect last year was just how much time and energy I put into thinking about, okay, what are the things that I need to do or what are the things that we can do to help, whether it's the poor locally or globally? And it always came back to things like you were talking about mosquito nets, wells, things like this.


Austin
And the the stunning effect that that has without the justice systems kind of in play as well was just staggering. I was so surprised that that can move the needle a little bit, but without the help of actual protection. There's little of that does. So as you think about both of your roles in a church setting for you, Jocelyn As a lawyer, Chuck, what continues to compel you to work for IJM and Chuck Well, we'll start with you on this one.


Jocelyn
Yeah.


Chuck
Spencer If you if back in 2015, if you had told me that 100,000 people in this world were enslaved, I wouldn't have believed you because the last word I had about slavery was probably in college where they told me that slavery ended at the end of the Civil War.


Jocelyn



Chuck
And I had no concept that slavery still existed in the world.


Jocelyn



Chuck
And if you had told me that 50 million people were enslaved in this world, I'm not sure I would have been able to wrap my brain around that fact.


Jocelyn



Chuck
What keeps me at IJM is that we're winning.


Jocelyn



Chuck
IJM has actually developed a methodology that defeats the prevalence of crime against the poor in something that has never been done in the history of mankind and never has mankind been able to protect the poor, maybe even wanted to protect the poor from violence. And IJM has created a methodology that does it just amazingly well, no matter what culture or country we work in.


Chuck
And what keeps me coming to work every day is I feel like God has given me a front row seat to a miracle that he's doing in the world. He is protecting the poor from violence in a way that's never been done before. And if everything works out the way that IJM has it planned, we're going to protect 500 million people by 2030.


Chuck
So why would you want to give up a front row seat for something like that?


Jocelyn
that's so good, Chuck. And then I get to sit next to people like Chuck every day. One of the things that compels me. I mean, honestly, if I can think back when I first heard of IJM and the things that compelled me about my jam was our commitment to prayer and partnering with local justice systems and government officials and law enforcement in their commitment to 90% of the staff being nationals from where they work.


Jocelyn
But I would say now it's our mission and it's the people at IJM and it is an honor to get a chance to work with such a committed, faithful and generous people, just like Chuck. And we get smart people just like Chuck that I get to learn and work alongside. So it's just a really fun organization to be a part of and we're all fully dependent on God.


Jocelyn
Because if you just wrote down what we had to do each day and our mission and our goals and took God out of the equation, I mean, we would totally be lost. And so it is, like Chuck said, just getting a front row seat and seeing God do his miracles through his people, his imperfect people. Yep.


Spencer
Well, and it's I love that you talk about the people that you get to work with in the partnership. One of the things that's so beautiful in seeing is just even the way that you frame that mission and that engagement is coming alongside, you know, and being really a supportive influence, a cheerleader, you know, one that can provide resources and best practices and all these different things.


Spencer
Because we know, you know, if history is any guide, that if we come in and we try to do the work, then it's it's not going to produce lasting change. But that model, I think, is so winsome because you're coming alongside and you know, you're patiently supporting and encouraging and loving, just as Christ did as he came into the world and was among us there with patience and love in so many different ways.


Spencer
So and just being connected to the India office, I mean, just one location of of more than 30 that you have, you know, you just get a flavor of of the people that you have working with you. So it's it's been a gift for us to to even see a small part of that.


Austin
And you know, one thing to kind of piggyback off that and one thing that you mentioned, Jocelyn, was that you try to raise up nationals. And I think when I worked in a nonprofit Christian organization that worked with international students in the U.S., it was like, how do we continue to allow them and empower them to be leaders back in their home countries?


Austin
Because it was always, what are we doing to send them back? Because this if we are constantly going as Americans to other places, but not replicating locals to do it, that within a couple of generations the work starts to dissipate. So it's really a beautiful thing as you guys are in these places. You're raising at nationals to do that.


Austin
So I would love to hear, you know, coming from a law background, a church background. How do you guys feel like your prior jobs really prepared you to work at IJM? You know, even as I think about this, you know, the there's only so much you can do that's not within the work of the poor to prepare you for that.


Austin
The trauma that you experience in working with a place like IJM And because it's it's hard, it's challenging. But I would love to hear like, how did God prepare you as you were working in jobs before IJM.


Jocelyn
Well, Austin I kind of have to chuckle because if you heard how I got to IJM, I mean, it's kind of comical. So before I came to IJM, I had a short stint working in a church, but I had about a 12, 13 and a half year career in entertainment. I was a choreographer, a performer, a director and a producer.


Jocelyn
And so sitting in front of a computer, preparing for a podcast like this and telling people about slavery and inviting them to invest in the work was never on my radar. Back then. The only way I can kind of see how God kind of used that to prepare me for what I'm doing now is I kind of have this ability in my brain to kind of have a bird's eye view of a bunch of things that are going on at the same time and understanding different roles.


Jocelyn
And at times I help with events and being on stage or in front of a camera is something that I'm used to, so I can see that that's helpful. But I think so much of the development and the transformation and the skills that I've uncovered at IJM was actually starting to work at IJM and we have the VP of spiritual formation named Jim Martin, and he was our first boss.


Jocelyn
And he would always say, you know, God calls us to this mission. He's with us in this mission, and he transforms us through the mission. And I think that's what I experience every day on screen. Wow.


Chuck
I think when you get to my stage of career, one of the first things you recognize is that God doesn't waste anything. When I was in private practice, I was a general practitioner, so I did real estate and estate planning and tax planning and all these different things that at the time I never dreamed I would actually be applying to help generous people be wise givers into impact the world through organizations like IJM.


Chuck
So I in the work that I do now in helping people be wise stewards, every bit of my law background comes into play every week of my job, and sometimes I will look back and just marvel at some random experience that I had in private practice that gave me the experience to go ahead and help somebody do something.


Chuck
Now, decades later, the you could not have complete you could not have connected at the time. So I look back and smile at that because I see that, you know, God was planning this path the whole way.


Jocelyn
And if I could add to that, Chuck mentioned having a front row seat at miracles. I've had partners that I've introduced to Chuck who are trying to figure out how they can maximize their giving while minimizing their tax, their taxes. And Chuck will just share information and you just see the light bulbs go off. I can do that.


Jocelyn
I can. my goodness. This is going to increase my giving exponentially. And it is just so fun to watch. And so to me, that's super fun and joyous to be able to introduce someone to the Chuck and him share all of its wealth and the knowledge that he has gained over his career and see God unlock resources through that.


Jocelyn
I think that's really fun to be part of.

Chuck
IJM places a really high priority on stewardship. We have a responsibility to steward the funds that our donors give us. We are trying to protect incredibly poor, vulnerable people who don't have resources of their own. So we're having to bring them in and that is a huge responsibility. And the whole organization feels that. So I'm certainly not the only one who engages in wise stewardship.


Chuck
It's simply this is the avenue that God has given me to do it.


Spencer
I think I think this may be an interesting question here. And Chuck or Jocelyn, if this is something that's kind of outside of the purview of what you see, we can pass on this, but I'll just frame it and you know, it's recording regardless and we can splice and cut and do different things. Chuck You were talking about stewardship, and I'm really trying to be great stewards of both the people and the finances and all that God has given.


Spencer
And obviously the the task that you have, the mission that you have is so big. How have you seen your leadership team kind of grapple with, you know, when they have funds to to maybe move into a new arena or when they have an opportunity. How how do you kind of digest is this something that we're going to go for or is it is there a different path?


Spencer
Because, you know, obviously we've got 180 or 190 countries in the world, and every one of them has some level of injustice and some have a tremendous amount of poverty and and could have IJM locate there. What what does it look like for your leadership team to kind of grapple with, you know, the next steps that you take on that path to to a vision of defending the poor?


Jocelyn
Yeah.


Chuck
You know, I think maybe the first and perhaps easiest to answer is prayer. Gary started this whole organization with the understanding that if prayer was not the backbone of the organization, this wasn't going to last. I think part of the beauty of coming to the whole arena of human trafficking from a Christian perspective is that you understand and appreciate the evil that is behind the trafficking.


Chuck
And if you try to attack that and battle that with human power alone.


Chuck
You're going.


Chuck
To fail miserably. And Gary totally understood that and appreciated that when he created the organization and built the entire organization on the basis of prayer. Jocelyn and I have the privilege of getting paid to pray one hour every workday. Well, I don't know any other organization on the planet that does that other than us. So when our leadership team has an opportunity or a challenge and we have a choice as to how to allocate precious donor dollars to a situation, the first thing our leadership team does is places, places it at God’s feet and says, What do you want us to do?


Chuck
Maybe that's the essence of real stewardship because it is God's money and he's got a definite idea of what he wants us to do with it. And our job is to simply ask. One of the beauties of working in the developing world is that a dollar goes a long way, and our donors love the fact that when they give to us, they know that we're leveraging those dollars in economies where a dollar goes a long way.


Chuck
So in addition to the actual impact of our work in rescuing girls from brothels and families, from brick factories, we're actually doing it at a highly efficient cost because we're able to do this in the developing world where the dollar simply goes a lot farther.


Spencer
Yeah, yeah.


Spencer
That's that's so powerful that the need is so significant and the weight is is so significant. But we have a God, you know, that is right there with us in leading, you know, think to Ephesians 2:4. You know, we have all of these things that, you know, we're falling and such, but God's not being rich in mercy because the great love with which he loves us.


Spencer
And and I love that focus that you have that priority of prayer because you know, you just even read the first story from the locust effect. And, you know, if you have any kids, you have a daughter. You know, I have two daughters that are just slightly older than the little girl that that, you know, whose story is in that first chapter.


Spencer
And it's just gut wrenching. So being able to lay that at the Lord's feet, I could imagine, only would be so critical not to be overwhelmed, even though by the by the evil, you know, that you confront organizationally every day. But that's that's such a moving answer and such a call, I think, for all of us to be people of prayer as we think about our our stewardship role there in our introduction, you know, and in our conversation.


Spencer
You've mentioned that IJM has this audacious vision of rescuing millions and protecting a half billion and proving that justice for the poor is unstoppable. And yet we know that there's all these kinds of challenges along the way as you as you think about those challenges that you see day to day or that you see that are some of the biggest ones that you confront.


Spencer
What comes to mind, Jocelyn, first for you, What what strikes you each day?

Jocelyn
Sure. So two things come to mind. And first is relationships, and the second is resources. Part of our core values at IJM is to really be bridge builders, right? We really want to collaborate because we can do so much more together than alone. And so we are really committed to developing personal relationships with governor, government officials and law enforcement sources, social services, churches, advocates on the field.


Jocelyn
And sometimes that kind of a tension to manage is if, let's say, we're working with a certain official for, you know, we've developed relationship for a number of years, all of a sudden gets transferred out or retires or someone new gets voted in that it's almost like, we have to start that relationship all over again and just hope and pray this person is going to be just as invested in protecting their community as the last person.


Jocelyn
So that's we're always juggling that and I. JM And then I would say research. Like you said, we have this audacious goal of protecting half a billion people by 2030. Right? And so the great thing is we have a pathway to get there, and we know that it's possible. And so we just have to be expectant and believe and invite people to be a part of this.


Jocelyn
And just we just know that there are enough resources in the world to make this possible. And it's just about finding out, you know, who who feels called at this time to be part of this work and being resources towards the work.


Chuck
Yeah, I guess I think back to when Gary was starting a gym and he was floating the idea of starting an organization that would protect poor people in the developing world from violent crime and everyone in government and outside of government told Gary it was impossible that he would never be able to rescue a single person. And I think we're about 85,000 or 86,000 right now.


Chuck
And the reason they told him that is because the challenges at times can seem overwhelming. We're trying to do something that's never been done before. There's no blueprint for this. We're trying to do it in areas of extreme poverty where there is simply no law enforcement at all for the poor. We're trying to work with governments and legal systems that are tremendously under-resourced and undertrained.


Chuck
We're trying to do this work in cultures in which the poor have been ignored forever. So the you know, the challenges are immense. And then here in the United States and in the Western world, where we're raising the funds, we have to educate people that for 5 billion people on this planet, there is no law enforcement that when they're the victim of a crime, there is no 911.


Chuck
There is no police officer that's going to come and help them. We take that for granted here. So we're trying to get people here in the United States, in the Western world, to understand the enormity of the issue and how important it is for us to care about our brothers and sisters who live elsewhere on the planet and what it's going to take from a resource standpoint to get that work done.


Spencer
I think one of the things that was so interesting in reading the Locus Effect, Chuck and you mentioned you know, not having a culture of caring for the poor and the things that we take for granted in the West. One of the things that was so surprising to me is how little I knew of our history, of our justice systems and how they had to evolve in the West over the last couple hundred years as well.


Spencer
And you've done such a nice job in recognizing their steps along this way. They didn't just magically appear, you know, several thousand years ago. For us, it wasn't like, you know, Moses came down with the Ten Commandments and we've been, you know, living in some kind of place where we have police presence ever since. It's really been in the last couple hundred years that we've even seen that in the West.


Spencer
But there were steps that were taken and you're trying to learn from those and then mimic those in many ways that built building, relationship trust, best practice, all of these kind of of, you know, elements there. As you think about those areas where, you know, you look and you say this might be a great area for us to be able to enter and have some impact.


Spencer
What are some of the things that you see kind of as commonalities of areas that as you've gone in, you've been able to see the work and see it accelerate maybe a little bit more quickly than in some other areas where it's just it's a harder field or there are certain things with countries or municipalities or localities that have kind of helped you along in that path or that you've been able to learn from there.


Jocelyn
I think it comes down to people, right? And we just trust God to steer people's hearts because it does seem impossible. But we are just committed to waiting and asking God who should we partner with, Who can we come alongside of on the field? And for Chuck and I, you know, we can give you names of investigators and lawyers and social workers that we have come to know and love over the years.


Jocelyn
And if any friend or family member of mine, God forbid, ever ended in a situation of exploitation, it would be our colleagues at IJM and that I would have the utmost trust to walk us through. And so I just think that we are just following God's calling to be a part of it and acting in faith. And oftentimes, Gary will remind us that, you know what, Ultimately, I want you to remember that God loves us and he loves what we're trying to do and the work is going to be really hard and it's going to be really challenging a lot of the time.


Jocelyn
And there are a lot of times that we have tried things and fallen short or or have failed at something. But we also say, you know, we never give up and we never go away. Right. So I remember, gosh, it was in Ghana. We had just finished our first rescue operation. It was a huge celebration for the entire organization.


Jocelyn
And shortly thereafter, they shut down the government, shut down operations, and they shut us down for two years. And so I was like, why don't you just give up and leave? Right. Everyone that would make sense of it all. But we just felt that God really wanted us to be there and we prayed and our staff on the field just did what they could, which was develop relationships with aftercare shelters, with churches.


Jocelyn
So when the time was right, they were all ready. And what happened was after that, two years, the the leaders who are stopping Iran from doing the work that we were wanting to do were all removed from office. And we placed like this like a handful of people, a handful of leaders were all replaced with people that were committed to ending child slavery, unlike volta.


Jocelyn
And to this day, they are they are working really hard to do that work. But that taught us so much as an organization about being faithful and being committed and allowing God to to lead us and to open doors and just just be faithful what he's called us to do. Yeah.


Chuck
Spencer At a maybe a 30,000 foot level, one of the things that we do see that can accelerate the process of reducing the prevalence of crime is when a national government decides that this is a priority for their country. I mean, you guys are partnering with our work in India. Half of the world's slaves live in India, which I'm sure is part of what attracted you to the the impact of your involvement there.


Chuck
But years ago, the Indian government wouldn't even acknowledge that slavery existed in their country. And then just a few short years ago, they stood in front of the world and said, We've got a problem here. We're going to eliminate it in IJM is our partner to do it.


Spencer
Wow.


Chuck
So when a national government steps up and says that this is a national priority, that sends a message all the way down the line to the the beat cop on the street that says that this is now important and that this is a priority and that this is a situation that is no longer going to be allowed to exist.


Spencer
Wow.


Spencer
And that's so powerful in India. You know, from a personal perspective, we my wife and I have a niece who was adopted from India a few years ago. And of course, we our son, we adopted a number of years ago from China. But what we know is that many of those orphans around the world are among those that are most likely to be exploited.


Spencer
And so for my wife and I as missionaries in China for a few years, I could see that some of the just the the exploitation, the human trafficking that was going on because you would be confronted with beggars and, you know, children and oftentimes who had been beaten or abused. And we didn't really understand the story very well until we had folks that were working in against human trafficking that could unpack some of what would often go around in these situations.


Spencer
And so that's one of the things, you know, your heart just you see these kids that are being taken advantage of and there's not a government that's willing to do things. And it's so wonderful that India, you know, at least at that time, it didn't seem like the government where we were was willing to do things to kind of rectify the situation.


Spencer
But with India, you know, at this point, it's wonderful that there's a tremendous amount of impact that can be had with a partnering situation and just all that you're doing so grateful for the Lord's work through you and your team over there. And that is one of the reasons that we're so excited to be able to partner.