Ep. 039 - Rescuing the Enslaved: A Journey of Justice and Stewardship - Part 2

Episode Transcript

Spencer
Welcome to the second half Stewardship Podcast. We believe that God owns it all and our response as Christians is to live generous lives. 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.


Austin
So thanks for sharing your all about just all the work that IJM does. I think it's really powerful to hear these stories, and I think especially when we in the West, we need to be confronted by this regularly because I think we can easily become desensitized to these stories because either they just become big media stories that we see, there's people in slavery that we just we lose track of it if we're not intimately connected.


Austin
So when you think about partnership with IJM and what can we do as individuals, as institutions to come alongside? How can we learn more about IJM? Jocelyn you want to answer that for us and then maybe we can hear from Chuck as well.


Jocelyn
Sure. Absolutely. I can start with how we can learn more about IJM when we are on other social media platforms like META and YouTube and LinkedIn. So there's great ways to receive daily updates, but we also have resources for children. If you're interested in talking to your children about the issue of slavery, I know I started to engage my Son at about first grade, about what the issue of slavery was.


Jocelyn
So there are so many great resources for that. But I think my current favorite resource is a podcast that was co-created by Cadence Production, and IJM and it's called Finding Ruby The Fight of My Life. And Ruby is a survivor of online sexual exploitation. And in this podcast, she shares about her experience. You get to hear her voice and hear her perspective first through first person, but then you'll also hear the team that came alongside her the lawyers, investigators, the social workers, the partners.


Jocelyn
And you hear their perspective of what it was like to come up alongside Ruby and her, her case and the things that they saw in Ruby. And she is now one of our survivor leaders. And so this it's one of the most well-done podcasts I think I've ever heard. So if someone wanted to listen to it episode believe it's about six episodes.


Jocelyn
It's on Google and Apple Podcasts as well as Spotify. That is one of my favorite ways to learn about working at IJM.

Austin
Chuck, what about you? Where are some ways we can learn about IJM that you've found helpful?


Chuck
Yeah, When people come to us and say, How can I help? You know, how can I come alongside? I think the first thing that Jocelyn, I would say to them is pray for us. And you anticipate to some degree that there's going to be some eye rolling there because every Christian organization asks you to pray for them. As I mentioned earlier, prayer is the single best weapon we have, and it's absolutely essential to the work that we do.


Chuck
So when we ask people to pray for us, we're not just doing the Christian speak. We are asking people to actually provide the most practical help to us that they can give us. I think the second thing that we ask people to do is engage your church.


Chuck
Churches are learning about biblical justice and learning how human trafficking is an extension of God's love for the, you know, wanting to protect poor people from from horrific crime. Churches want and need to get involved here. And the best way for a church to get involved is when in a person within the congregation stands up and says, this is important to me.


Chuck
This is some place we need to be because churches are hugely important to what IJM does. I think thirdly, becoming educated on the issue of human trafficking, whether it's here in the United States or globally, this is an issue that is not going away. I live in a suburban area and in my newspaper once every two weeks there's a story in the newspaper about human trafficking getting busted within ten miles of my home.


Chuck
So that information and that news is out there and we need to be wise and up to speed on exactly what's going on, not only around us, but around the world. And I guess lastly, being generous, being generous with time, being generous with engaging in your spheres of influence, being generous financially.


Chuck
That's how you move the needle here. That's how you protect 500 million people who have never known a day of safety in their life. That's how you come alongside.

Austin
Yeah. And Chuck, to your mention about prayer, it's I think it's one of the emails every year that I get every Saturday that you guys send has different areas and what God is doing. And it is so encouraging to hear. I think with an honest perspective of, Hey, this is what's happening. Pray for us and this is what's challenging.


Austin
I think the reality of human trafficking and slavery is really challenging. And so I love the honesty and the vulnerability with which you invite partners to pray and to say, Hey, the work that we're doing is hard and we need your help. And then to celebrate alongside you guys and hearing about what's happening in all these different global areas that you're involved with is is really a beautiful thing.


Austin
So. Chuck, I would love to hear more as you think about ways that people give, whether it's families and thinking about the legacy of giving or what are those conversations look like for you with some of your financial partners?


Chuck
You know, I think the first thing that we talk about is that people sometimes assume that merely by being generous, that they're being wise stewards, and that's simply not the case. Everything that we have that God is provided to us, we're supposed to be wise stewards of our spending, of our saving, of our investing, of our giving, because there are extremely financially efficient ways to give.


Chuck
And there are some less effective ways of giving. And we hate to see people leave money on the table because that's God's money that's being left on the table. So we encourage people, first and foremost, if you have the chance to give an appreciated asset like stock instead of writing a check from a tax standpoint, that's way smarter to do that.


Chuck
The charity ends up with the same dollar amount, but you can save hundreds and even thousands of dollars in taxes simply by giving an appreciated asset instead of writing a check. I hope people set up family giving funds that are not only great from a tax standpoint, but they're a marvelous tool for parents to engage their children in family.


Chuck
giving. Parents who have seen the beauty of generosity in their life they want to pass that value on to their kids. And so engaging your children in family giving is a great way for parents to pass from one generation to the next. The beauty of generosity, because generosity is the greatest antidote to materialism that's ever been invented. And that's how, as parents, we want to raise our kids.


Chuck
So I do, from my own estate planning background, I do lots and lots of work with families just getting the first will in place and just how incredibly important that is, not only from a family protection standpoint and financial standpoint, but it's the building block for a lot of really powerful charitable giving that people can do with IRA assets and other things that otherwise would just be ravaged by taxes.


Chuck
So, you know, the conversation starts with, you know, how can I maximize my giving not just to IJM but to all the ministries we support? And it allows us to engage in a whole lot of conversations that end up effectively managing a lot more of God's resources. And maybe folks that at the beginning of the conversation.


Spencer
Well, and it's amazing, you know, as we have that conversation, I love that you help people put together, maybe even early in their careers and lives that first will. Because if we can have a conversation around the idea that maybe the will shouldn't just be you know, it goes everything goes to your spouse and then after your spouse passes away, take the number of kids that you have and divide by that number and everybody gets an equal amount, which seems like that's the prevailing trend of, you know, our culture.


Spencer
But it doesn't have anything to do with what the Bible's teaching, you know, is. And not that there's a certain amount or percentage that needs to go in one direction or another, But, you know, being able to have that conversation of the multiple goals that that Christians have and being able to steward resource as well and pass them on to the next generation linearly, but also look at that as what are the other places that really want to have a legacy?

Spencer
What do I want to give to what do I want to support? Sometimes I think you know about the end of the movie, you know Schindler's List, and you've got Oskar Schindler here, who has saved hundreds of people, and yet his whole time there at the end of the movie, he's just like, I could have saved one more.


Spencer
I could have I could have saved one more. You know, if I had just been a little bit more, you know, thoughtful or been a little bit more engaged. And so, you know, I think even for those of us who desire to be generous sometimes, you know, there's that push that all of us need, you know, biblically and through the Holy Spirit to say, you know, is there more that I could do?


Spencer
Is there, you know, Jesus calls us to lay down our lives? Am I doing that? You know, in a way that is depending on the Holy Spirit and empowered by the Holy Spirit, but also being honest about the fact that I don't own any of this. It's God's and a stewardship approach rather than an ownership approach. So I love especially again, that you're starting that conversation early, because I think if we do that, then, you know, we can set up a life and a trajectory, you know, for so many of our our kids and our younger folks that that is a little bit more rooted and in stewardship as as maybe the Bible unpacks it.

Chuck
Now, I was still in private practice when somebody handed me the book called Splitting Heirs. Splitting Heirs, which, you know, takes from the the whole notion of Christian financial stewardship and talks about not only are we responsible for managing all the resources that God has blessed us with, we are responsible for passing those resources on to the next good manager.

Austin



Chuck
And as an estate planning attorney, that was a mind blowing concept. But as parents, we have the responsibility of assessing who are we passing an inheritance onto and making sure that that person is going to have the same commitment to stewardship and wise management that I have as a parent. And that led to some incredibly powerful conversations with families who had never even considered whether or not, you know, they were passing their assets on to the right next manager.


Chuck
Right. So stewardship, I think, is just a fascinating conversation. And Jocelyn and I are in a unique position at IJM to engage people in that conversation because all these families want to have an impact in the world. They want to change the world. That's why they came to exam in the first place. And we just get to provide a little bit of guidance on how they make every nickel scream to advance God's kingdom.


Spencer
Yeah, it's it's a beautiful thing.


Jocelyn
And I think my favorite part and Spencer you know this well is I love sharing the impact of partnership with our partner. I love to be able to tell you we just had a rescue operation. I love to tell you we just got a conviction or a new piece of legislation was passed or a new initiative by our survivor leaders is underway.


Jocelyn
And that to me is super exciting because I think it's really important to share with partners. You know, you've partnered with us in India Spencer and there are incredible things that are happening there that you're helping to make possible and that the fact that I get a chance to tell you about that, it's just it's just a dream.


Jocelyn
It's super fun. And I love doing that part of my job.


Spencer
Yeah. And that's it's it's it's so energizing to get those. So if we kind of help folks connect the dots here, you know, gifts come in, they go to IJM. Let's just say that through a series of gifts, you have another million dollars, you know, that you can deploy. It sounds like that. You can then take those resources and of course, you lay them before the Lord's feet.


Spencer
You pray, you try to listen and discern the path wherever he leads you, though, it sounds like typically you know, you're being able to put staff in locations and be able to increase the number of people who are advocating on behalf of the poor or helping take care of the poor as they are rescued. Those kinds of different elements.


Spencer
So, you know, as as gifts grow, to IJM, in essence, kind of the the work, the number of people that you employ, that the the the number of attorneys, the number of people who are equipping police, the number of people who are helping with aftercare, you know, all these kinds of things, that's that's really giving you more firepower.


Spencer
You know, so to speak, as I understand it, primarily to be able to expand that work. Is that one way to understand kind of as as we think about gifts and think about, you know, being excited about being able to give and participate, that is as as that those great gifts grow, that that's kind of the path that we have there.


Chuck
Yeah. You know, and the beauty of IJM's work is that we measure everything we do vis a feasibility study before we even go into a country. And then once we establish the country and the crime that we want to attack, we bring in a third party organization and they do what's called a prevalence study. They measure objectively how bad is the crime now that we are trying to address.


Chuck
And every single year that we do our methodology where we're doing our rescues and we're we're arresting perpetrators and we're nursing people back to health through our aftercare programs. And we're engaging local law enforcement after we do that for a number of years, we bring that third party organization back to measure. Have we've been able to effectively reduce the crime?


Chuck
Because that's the only way we can go back to our generous investors and say, look at what you what you've done and what we have found time after time after time, nine out of the nine programs that we have taken to full completion, we've been able to reduce the prevalence of crime between somewhere between 50 and 85%. So that's incredibly good news to be able to take the people who have taken a step of faith and invested in us to be able to go back to them and say, you know, with God's blessing, look at what we've been able to do with your partnership in areas of the world where basically nothing works.


Chuck
This works. And so there's great joy in doing that. And that's what brings people back to us.


Spencer
That's powerful. And I love the the combination, the pairing that is so unusual of dependence on the Holy Spirit for leading, you know, via prayer and waiting and listening. And yet once the decision is made, a level of accountability diligence, you know, thought so that you can actually confront the brutal facts of reality, you know, as they are at the start.


Spencer
And also see, is this working? You know, is the Lord blessing this? Are there things that we can learn from this to to have the impact even grow there? Because oftentimes I think we see one or the other. You know, we we don't often see those paired. And yet what a what a powerful pairing that is.


Chuck
Jocelyn mentioned earlier that, you know, 90 plus percent of the people that we hire are indigenous to the countries in which we're working. And that's incredibly encouraging to us because we are hiring investigators and lawyers and social workers who could be making a ton more money working at someplace other than IJM. Yeah, but the reason they come work for us is because they are so passionate about wanting to remove this horrible thing from their country and they feel compelled through their faith and through their love for their country to come and do this work for us.


Chuck
So these are highly motivated, highly skilled, super passionate people who are earnestly praying to God every day because they're on the front lines doing this work and they're the ones who are getting it done.


Austin



Spencer
Well, so powerful. You know, even reading again the Locust Effect, what some of the attorneys of faith with some of the attorneys face or the caseworkers just, you know, I would be so tempted to give up after the first week or month or year. And yet they pursue things just with such diligence and wait for hours in courtrooms, you know, for judges not to show up and do that


Spencer
dozens of times. Because ultimately there is that you really get the sense that there's that that flywheel effect, I think that Jim Collins talks about in Good to Great. You know, of the first time you're doing it, it's it's so, so difficult. But then the second time is maybe just a little bit easier and then the third time and you start to build some momentum.


Spencer
And Jocelyn, you know, to your point about the relationships, you know, you continue to build those and even if some of them, you don't have them as long as you'd like them, you still kind of build that momentum over time. But goodness gracious, I just I was struck so much by the labor that it takes to get that flywheel moving in a particular area.


Spencer
And yet you've been able to do it not just once or twice, but you know, many, many times and proof that efficacy. So it's a beautiful thing.


Austin
Well, we love hearing about ways that we can partner financially. And then even with that, Chuck, I think the beauty of the effectiveness is so wonderful to hear and you talking about the places that you've opened and seen through to completion and seeing the success rate. I think those are just such powerful things to hear about. So on the flip side though, Jocelyn, I think you've got some things that we can do if we don't have resources to give at the current time, things like the Champions Program or advocacy.


Austin
Can you share a little bit about those ways that we can come alongside IJM If finances are not the primary way that we can do this in the immediate future?


Jocelyn
Sure. Happy to share. So I believe we mentioned becoming a prayer partner is something that one can do. And like Austin, you mentioned you receive confidential prayer requests and I believe it's every other Saturday. So one can go to our website IJM.org and sign up to be a confidential prayer partner. Number two, we have advocacy volunteer. So advocacy is a huge component of what IJM does.


Jocelyn
We are currently advocating for a bipartisan bill called the Earn It Act, which is asking and requiring tech companies to build and operate their tech platforms in a way that protects children from online exploitation. So we are working hard to raise advocates to create relationships with their policymakers and to make phone phone calls and emails. So we are currently hoping to recruit more advocates, especially for the month of February.


Jocelyn
So we go to IJM.org/advocacy to find out information there. And the Championship Champions Program is our volunteer program. So if you feel led to really come alongside IJM and be a champion and hear how you can speak on behalf of IJM, invite people to partner with us in different ways, you can contact us at IJM.org as well.


Jocelyn
And then we'll we'll reach out and we'll have a conversation about what that means.


Austin
Great. Well, anything else before we wrap up today? Anything on your hearts or minds that you would want to share about IJM that we haven't touched on yet?


Jocelyn
I think I would like to share some words from our founder, Gary Haugen, that really helps and inspires Chuck and I in our work each day and we have to remind ourselves, all of us at IJM and because we have a lot of hardworking Type A workers that care so deeply about our mission and we could probably work 24 seven on what we're doing, at IJM.


Jocelyn
But that's not what God calls us to do. We all have families or loved ones, and so one of the things that Gary often says is that this is this is God's work. And so it's his way to bear and it's going to be done his way. And so we can't make something happen, right? We can just show up with God invites us to be a part, but also not take responsibility, not hold the weight of it and actually give that back to God.


Jocelyn
And that's been really, really helpful because the work is really heavy and it's very urgent. And so we can easily slip into thinking, if I don't do this, if I don't come through it, if I take a day off, all of this will be left undone. And that's not true. And so that's something we constantly have to remind ourselves of that it's it's God, it's God's work, it's God's weight, and it will be done in God's way.


Austin
We well thank you so much for sharing that. Jocelyn I think that's such a great way to finish. We have so enjoyed having you guys on the podcast. Thank you so much for sharing about IJM and again, we come back to this over and over and over again. God owns it all. He calls us into being generous stewards of everything that He's given us, our time, our relationships, our energy, our money.


Austin
It's all his. And so just to continue to hear, I think so much of that has been reflected in what you shared. So thank you again for coming on. And if you want to learn more about IJM, we'll link things down in the show notes. Clients, if you want to talk to us about ways that you can give appreciated assets or right IJM or other charities that you love into your beneficiaries, we would love to have that conversation with you.


Austin
And with that again, Jocelyn, Chuck, it was a pleasure and we will talk to y’all soon.


Chuck
Thanks for having us.


Jocelyn
Thanks for having us.


Austin
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Speaker 5
This content was provided by second half stewardship. We're in Knoxville, Tennessee, and you can visit our website at www.secondhalfstewardship.com. The information in this recording is intended for general educational and informational purposes only and should not be construed as Investment Advisory Financial planning, legal tax or other professional advice based on your specific situation, please consult your professional advisor before taking any action based on its contents.