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 2 to find photos, videos, relevant links, session Q&A, and many more resources.

Session 2:

My name is Bethany Hoang and I serve as Director of the IJM Institute (www.ijminstitute.org) at IJM's headquarters in Washington, DC. As I listened to Gary's message here at the Leadership Summit and considered the tens of thousands of ministry leaders who were also listening, I couldn't help but feel an intense yearning for each of these brothers and sisters - to my right and to my left and scattered throughout the world - to know how sincerely IJM desires to partner with churches in learning how to actually do justice. As Bill Hybels has so powerfully stated, "the local church is the hope of the world" - we truly believe that the local church is the hope of the oppressed. The local church is God's plan for bringing justice to those who right in this moment suffer under the hand of violent injustice. As Gary admonished us, we are the plan. And many of my colleagues and I at IJM show up everyday simply and solely to be here as partners with the Church, walking step-by-step and day-by-day with churches in their journey of responding to God's call to do justice.

I hope you can take a moment just to contact us - we've made a special banner on our website at www.ijm.org just for Leadership Summit participants. If you click on the banner that says "Welcome Summit Participants" you will be taken to a page specifically tailored to lead you forward in concrete action. We've also just yesterday launched an official IJM blog for leaders through the IJM Institute. I hope you will visit www.ijminstitute.org and join a community of Christian leaders who are seeking to draw others into action on behalf of those who suffer violent injustice in our world.

As for me, I was introduced to the work of IJM at a time when I was longing for a framework of biblical hope through which to process the brutal reality of slavery about which I was just newly learning. I was in seminary at the time, and I originally began my MDiv studies because I had a passion to see the Church renewed in its calling, to see churches that were dying or stagnating revived live freshly as vessels - however fragile and broken - of God's passions, displaying God's glory and offering tastes of the Kingdom.

What I didn't know back in 2001 was that God was beginning to raise a movement in His Church to revive a very specific passion of His own heart that had been significantly neglected by His people throughout the past century - God's passion for justice. And even more specifically, God's passion to bring justice to those who suffer at the hand of violent abuse and oppression in the very poorest regions of our world.

It all began for me one day after lunch.

As I walked out of the cafeteria, out of the corner of my eye I noticed a poster. A woman from the Salvation Army had set-up an informational booth and tacked up a poster of a young girl. As I moved toward the poster so that I could read the text, I literally stopped in my tracks. The poster said this:

"Slavery is alive. Rape for profit must be stopped."

Truly, this was arresting news to me. I was a student of history and knew much about slavery of the past, but slavery today? This was news to me. If I was unaware of slavery, I was all the more unaware of the thriving, multi-billion dollar sex-trafficking industry that could be described as "rape for profit."

I put my name on a mailing list - perhaps the single-most important action step I had taken in my life up to that point. As I began to read the stories and news that came to me to my inbox, I felt a fire of what Bill Hybels calls "holy discontent" growing in me.

Over time I began to realize that God had given me passion to see the Church renewed and revived to the fullness of its calling in our world as a precursor to the things He planned to teach me about how I was to lead others to know His passion for justice.

Justice, it turns out, is central to the heart of God, and yet has been sorely marginal to the church's mission for too long.

Since joining the staff of International Justice Mission four years ago, I have been on the most remarkable journey of seeing more and more of the body of Christ embrace God's passion for justice as central to their mission in our world.

Here at the Leadership Summit, it was amazing to experience the palpable sense of conviction rising throughout the room over the course of Gary's message. As Gary expressed the call of God to His people, the call of Jesus beckoning us to "Follow me. Follow me beyond what you can control. Follow me beyond where your gifts and your competencies can take you," it was clear that the leaders sitting here in these seats were ready to rise up and GO. Ready to rise up and take their congregations with them. Ready to walk up to the place on the mountain where the paved path ends and cross over to begin the more demanding climb.

But if the 5,000+ people in the room with me yesterday and the 60,000 people across the United States and the 60,000 more people across the globe are anything like the thousands of people I have had the opportunity to speak to, teach, and interact with throughout my four years of working at IJM, the heavy question on their mind as Gary stepped down from the stage was, "I'm ready... but what do I do now? What is the next step?"

I want to lay out a concrete action plan for pastors and other leaders who are asking this question. I hope this will be helpful to you - and if it is not, please do let me know (you can contact me personally at bhoang@ijm.org). At IJM we see every day that God simply will not give us a ministry He Himself will not empower. If God asks us to do justice, as He does all throughout the scriptures, then God will show us, day by day, how.

At IJM, our hearts beat not only to see rescue come to victims of injustice and just accountability brought to their perpetrators, but we long to see the global church rise in response to God's call, to be the transforming agents of His redemptive, staggeringly glorious work of justice.

Here are a few starting points for action that I like to share when I am speaking with leaders about getting involved:

LEARN

Go to www.ijm.org and sign-up for regular updates. Specifically, ask us to send you our brand-new Leader's Handbook, "The Justice Journey" (free of charge). Regardless of how simple this may sound, this could be the most important step you take to this point, as it was for me years ago. Learn as much as you can and be diligent to share with others. God will grow your heart and imagination day-by-day as you simply seek to learn more.
Visit the IJM Institute: www.ijminstitute.org - an interactive community of Christian leaders creating ways to lead action on behalf of the oppressed.
Read and share books such as Gary Haugen's Just Courage in your small group.

PREACH

Use your influence to teach and mobilize others to join God's passion for justice. Wondering where to begin? We've created a sample sermon outline that you are welcome to use in any way that is helpful to you. You can access this free resource at www.ijm.org.

PRAY

Pray for victims of injustice and for the perpetrators of these crimes. Learn how to pray for specific people and cases on a weekly basis by becoming a Prayer Partner with IJM at www.ijm.org.
Consider attending the Global Prayer Gathering in March of 2009. Go to www.ijm.org/gpg for details.

GO NEAR

Explore your own backyard - what kinds of justice needs are present right in your own community? Join with others or launch your own network of action, like Atlanta's "Innocence Atlanta," Portland's "Portland Area Justice Network," and Orlando's POLIS Institute. Email institute@ijm.org for more information.

GO FAR

Explore your global neighborhood: Equip your next short-term mission team with ways to open their eyes to injustice, wherever the team may be headed. Email institute@ijm.org or go to www.ijm.org to request a copy of our free DVD tool, "As You Go: IJM Mission Training."

GIVE

Help pay for the rescue the poor cannot afford. Lead your Church to become a Justice Church with IJM: www.ijm.org/justicechurches or give as individual by becoming an IJM Freedom Partner: www.ijm.org/freedompartner.