Bethany Hoang is a leader we are especially excited to introduce you to.  She is the Director of the IJM Institute, a community of Christian leaders advancing solutions for overcoming injustice.  It is place for sharing ideas, resources, and tools to raise awareness of injustice and move the body of Christ to action. She was recently featured in The Relevant Nation: 50 Activists, Artists And Innovators Who Are Changing Their World Through Faith. She was also featured in the September/October edition of Relevant Magazine. 

Go to the Summit Next Steps website and click on Session 6 to find photos, videos, relevant links, session Q&A, and many more resources.

Session 6:

One of the questions Gary Haugen, my colleagues, and I receive when we speak and teach on behalf of International Justice Mission is "how do you grapple with both perpetrator accountability as well as perpetrator redemption?" In other words, while IJM's strategic focus is to rescue victims of injustice (such as slavery and forced prostitution), provide them with healing aftercare, and mobilize authorities to arrest those who are committing these violent crimes, what is the Body of Christ to do about the reality that criminals are in need of the opportunity for redemption as well?

When I am asked this question, the first words out of mouth are always these: Praise God for Chuck Colson and his ministry, Prison Fellowship.

Even as IJM protects victims of oppression and transforms systems of injustice through holding perpetrators accountable for their crimes, Prison Fellowship offers the grace of the God's love and new life to those who commit even the most violent of crimes. As he noted in his message at the Leadership Summit, Chuck Colson himself has spoken and ministered in over 600 prisons globally. And even beyond the prisoners he has personally impacted, countless more prisoners have had the opportunity to define their lives beyond their crimes through his founding and multiplying of Prison Fellowship ministries here in the United States and all throughout the world.

It was a true privilege to sit under Chuck Colson's teaching on Friday. As he took the stage, the audience at the South Barrington campus readily rose to our feet to honor his life and legacy. Having served a U.S. President, served a prison sentence, and served countless prisoners the world over, Colson's life bears its own unique and powerful witness to the Kingdom - to the reality of redemption that is both yet to come and already at hand.

Colson's message, speaking to Christianity as revelation of the only true reality-the reality that God is and is revealed in Christ-was at root a beckoning to us as leaders to equip our people to steward their lives toward a vision bigger than themselves, a vision worthy of their very lives. One of the principles Chuck offered that most struck me was this:

"If you are a shepherd - a leader - your job is not to pander to your people but to lead them."

Chuck asked the question of why so many people are in prison in our world - why 2.3 million people are in prison in the United States alone. He traces the problem not to culture's broken sense of morality, but rather, to a brokenness within the Church. In his message, Chuck made an unforgettable claim. He asserted,

"Culture is nothing but religion incarnate. If the culture is sick it means the church is sick."

Following this argument, if the church is sick, it is because leaders have been pandering to their people's broken, incomplete sense of reality rather that leading their people to live the only true reality in Christ. Living within the understanding as Christ as true reality opens up the possibility to live for something greater than oneself, to risk, to absorb into the bigger vision. To live within the Kingdom, even as it is both already here and yet still to come.

I was so encouraged by Colson's humble pouring-out of himself through his message, his veritable pleading with us as leaders to equip our people to truly follow Christ. As he closed his message in prayer, he continued his plea, this time to God, asking Him to "make us faithful stewards, faithful shepherds. Use our blessings, not for our glory but for your glory, that the world may know you."

I can only echo that plea as I consider the vision to which Colson has given so much of his very self. As millions of people suffer under the hand of violent oppressors in our world, God, make us faithful stewards of the rule of law, bringing firm accountability to restrain these oppressors from continuing their cycle of violence. And as millions of people sit in prisons throughout our world, God, make us faithful shepherds of the rule of redemption, so that even those who have taken the lives of others may someday know the Life that is truly life.