After a summer of working on this foundation at IJM, it seems obvious that every Christian should have a desire to see victims around the world rescued from oppression- children taken out of brothels, generations freed from their family’s debt bondage in a brick kiln, millions of prisoners released from illegal detention, and the perpetrators of unprosecuted murder, rape, and abuse brought to justice so that others may be deterred. This cruelty still exists, however. Slavery still exists. How can so many churches stand silent to that cry?

The church is a vast, untapped resource of funding, will, and skill and is capable of contributing to the quieting of that cry. So if the church is silent now, it is the IJM Education Department’s hope that it will not remain so. Therefore it is critical for us to gauge the degree to which the church is already engaged in “justice issues.” When IJM started, almost no one was talking about injustice in the sense that IJM’s clients experience it. Thirteen years later, we want to measure if and how that has changed. Is the church talking about justice more or less, and in what context?

Answering that question is a bulk of my work has been at IJM's headquarters. Our mode of quantification is an analysis of the various contexts and frequencies in which the word “justice” appears within Christianity Today articles. Christianity Today is a non-denominational publication that discusses theology, worldviews, and general news from a evangelical Christian’s perspective. I am excited to report that the oppression of injustice around the world is a much more frequent topic of conversation in 2007 than it was just over ten years ago. But I’ll have to smooth out a few final details before I can present statistics…

My experience at Headquarters in and of itself, however, has been a huge treat. Orientation did a great job of painting the context of our coming work. Each department presented their goals and specific ways they work to support IJM’s mission, so I quickly became acquainted with the intricacies of a several hundred- staff human rights non-profit. I’ve also had a few great opportunities to expose me more to the world of trafficking expertise. IJM’s Government Relations Vice-President Holly Burkhalter spoke a few weeks ago at a caucus that I was able to attend sponsored by the bipartisan Congressional Task force on trafficking with a few members of Congress as well as Julia Ormond, the UN Goodwill Ambassador for human trafficking. There was a lot of discussion about the State Department’s TIP report’s 3-tier system that calls out other countries for failing to adequately address the injustices and slavery occurring in their own country, especially in light of the fact that to be a model, the United States needs to make sure its own policies are fair, effective, and enforced.

Last week another unexpected event was lunch and a great discussion with Kevin Bales, considered by many to be the world's leading expert on human trafficking. His book, Disposable People, was one of the first I read about modern day slavery about a year ago. Looking back, I remember feeling jarred by his firsthand accounts of Indian brick kilns, brutal debt bondage in South American forests, and brothels catered to tourism in Southeast Asia. Now my thoughts visit these circumstances on a daily basis, but the jarring situations of named individuals become no less striking, and even more agitating, because after these four weeks at IJM it has become clear to me that not only do we have hearts that break over the suffering of another, but also tools with which to change that suffering.

My specific role here—my daily work—consists mainly of two broad research projects that I have only gotten to touch the surface on—one relating to role of the North American church in international justice issues, and the other attempting to put a ballpark figure on the price tag of ending modern-day slavery in South Asia. I’ve done more reading in the past few weeks than entire semesters at school, which is challenging to do for an 8 hour workday, but ultimately fantastic. Many more details on those projects to come.