If you missed the recent post about Human Trafficking read this link first.

The opportunites  below represent specific volunteer roles that need to be filled.

Specific Volunteer Needs
 
We have a few very specific needs right now, and I am wondering whether any of you can recommend someone for any of these volunteer positions:  Before you read further, would you pause a moment and ask God to bring to mind any person in your sphere of influence that He might be tapping on the shoulder for one or more of these roles?

1. media relations–This person would know how to maximize media coverage and would have a lot of availability immediately before and during the actual invitational.  We aren’t looking for someone to create marketing pieces — that’s already been done — but we do need a person who can get media coverage for events like the Parade of Tears and Town Hall meeting.  This person would also need to be fluent in using facebook and twitter to give updates on the Invitational.  Do you know a good PR type person who loves the Lord, would thoroughly understand and resonate with what we’re doing and why, and would communicate exceptionally well withboth college students and media professionals?
2. people with connections in law, public policy, law enforcement, etc.  The Town Hall meeting will address the issue of human trafficking from a public policy standpoint.  It is part of the overall Invitational and will clearly be sponsored by InterVarsityChristian Fellowship, but it will not be an overtly “Christian” or evangelistic event.  For this meeting to have maximum impact in educating the legal community about the realities of human trafficking, both international and domestic, the audience needs to include many, many lawmakers, judges, law enforcement professionals, attorneys, law students, and people in related professions. The most effective way to gather such an audience is to have professionals invite their peers.  Do you know professionals in the legal world who care deeply about securing justice for those who are voiceless?  God may have placed these folks in a strategic position “for such a time as this.”  
3. prize donations- The culmination of Invitational week is the Price of Life event at Mershon Auditorium in the Wexner Center.  During this informative / fun / sobering / evangelistic event, we will have a “Price is Right” style game show.  Instead of guessing the cost of the prize, however, contestants will be asked to guess prices related to trafficking — the cost to buy a child sex slave in X country, for example.  We are going to be able to use a professionally built Price is Right set, thanks to our friends at Young Life, but we need a stage full of “fabulous prizes” that would be especially appealing to college students.  We’d love to have a wide assortment of prizes from free pizza for a year to an iPod to a big screen TV or even a car!  Great prizes will draw students to the event. The students who come will learn the realities of trafficking and hear the message of Christ clearly and compellingly presented. Those who express a desire to know Christ will be personally followed up within 24-48 hours.   Do you know a business owner / manager who has a heart for reaching today’s college students and might be interested in making such a spiritually strategic donation?   Business owners frequently are asked to provide merchandise for good causes.  Such donations are important, but it is rare that a merchandise donation would be so directly linked to the process of bringing people to Jesus.   
4. participate – Go to the website www.osupriceoflife.org and get involved.

If God brought someone to mind for one of the above needs, would you let Connie know.  Email her: POLInvitational “at ” aol.com (fighting spam, replace “at” with the @ symbol).

Prayer Request= One final reminder,  February 20th Hitchcock Hall, 9:30 AM – 3:30 PM is our Invitational Kick-Off/ Training day for students.  We will have hundreds of missional college students worshipping together, learning about human trafficking from amazing speakers, and getting the required training for Invitational week. 

Connie Anderson
OSU Price of Life Invitational Coordinator
InterVarsity Christian Fellowship

Human Trafficking is arguably the 3rd largest illegal activity worldwide (behind drugs and illegal arms) and chances are it’s taking place right in your community. Shockingly, in the States, Toledo had ranked as one of the worst places for human trafficking. Because of these startling facts, InterVarsity along with many other organizations have partnered to do something about it.

They’ve targeted a time (this April) and a place (OSU /Columbus) in order to raise awareness and fight back the darkness surrounding this victimizing activity.

I sat down with York Moore {Author (of Growing your Faith by Giving it Away) and National Evangelist with InterVarsity}  in order to learn more. Hopefully, your heart will respond as you  discover the details surrounding this event.

• What’s the Big Idea behind POL Invitational?

The Ohio State Price of Life Invitational scheduled for April 18-22, 2010 is a unique city-wide campaign addressing human trafficking and child sex slavery sponsored by InterVarsity Christian Fellowship USA (www.intervarsity.org).  The Price of Life Invitational seeks to bring national and international non-governmental organizations together with campus and student leaders, business leaders, churches, scholars, and local non-profits to educate and mobilize the Columbus community to fight modern day slavery. 

I birthed the vision behind the Price of Life Invitational to bring diverse groups together to address the complexity of modern day slavery.  The Kingdom of God is about doing so much more than merely running soup kitchens or notching our belts with numbers of souls won from hell.  The big idea behind the Price of Life Invitational is that there is a better world Christ calls us to and that world isn’t just in Heaven.  Christ calls us to a world where slaves are set free, where women and children have the ability to flourish, where human dignity and potential are celebrated and empowered. 

This greater vision of a new world is possible through the person of Jesus Christ and becomes material when He is allowed to reign not only in our individual lives but when His power transforms the great institutions of society-law, commerce, government, medicine, the family, sports and entertainment, and academia.  The vision of the Price of Life Invitational is to bring leaders from each of these institutions of society to mobilize resources and ideas to battle the 3rd largest illegal enterprise in the world-human trafficking, while empowering those NGO’s who are on the front lines locally and globally to bring an end to modern day slavery. 

• What motivated you to care about this cause?

I became a Christian on December 25th, 1989 and for many years believed that God wanted above all else to save people from hell.  Well, I still believe that but a second conversion took place when I realized that hell wasn’t merely some future eschatological reality but there was a hell right here on earth that people needed saving from and that Jesus was the answer to this problem as well. 

I was sitting high in the rafters of the Urbana 1996 Global Missions Convention when I first heard Gary Haugen, founder and president of the International Justice Mission (www.ijm.org) speak.  I was one of 20,000 people seated in the auditorium that night when he made the claim that there would be more children trafficked into slavery that week alone then there were people seated in the auditorium.  As he continued to state the problem of modern day slavery, I began to realize that my Jesus was too small, that I needed to think about Christ’s power to save from the hell on earth as well as the hell to come. 

I left that convention and immediately changed my giving habits, my preaching focus and the trajectory of my career.  Now, 13 years later, I spoke to over 20,000 students from around the world at the 2009 Urbana Missions Conference on modern day slavery in December (www.urbana09.org).   I’ve been speaking out against modern day slavery for 13 years and have found that bringing diverse groups together to address modern day slavery has been empowering and has led to strategic partnerships that may not have existed without events like the Price of Life.

• What can we do to help?

Get involved in this historic event.  The entire week of the Ohio State Price of Life will give people from the Columbus community the opportunity to learn and become active as modern day abolitionists in a variety of ways.  The week will begin with an historic march of thousands along the route of the underground railroad on Sunday, April 18th. 

Monday, April 19th we will gather a town hall meeting with lawmakers to address human trafficking from a political perspective.  Throughout Tuesday and Wednesday, we will have various events utilizing the visual and performing arts, events for ethnic minorities, events in the law school, school of social work, events for faculty and business leaders-the week will be incredibly robust.  On Thursday, April 22nd, the week will end with a fund raiser called the “Price of Life” where we will educate the Ohio State University on the horrors of modern day slavery through an interactive game show. 

There will be multiple places to get involved.  If one wanted to get involved in a volunteer fashion or give financially to the Price of Life events, please contact our local director, Connie Anderson POLInvitational ”at”  aol.com (replace “at” wtih @ symbol – fighting spam) Our website is www.osupriceoflife.org

• Why does this cause partner conservative groups of Christians with groups they normally wouldn’t partner with (like gay, liberal, democrats, etc.). 

Partnership is the bedrock of the “Invitational” model for three primary reasons.  First, as Christians, we recognize the dignity and worth of all peoples.  We are all made in the image of God and carry with that great gift the ability to do the amazing!  Often, collaboration around complex issues like modern day slavery is stunted because we are trying to address the near impossible with limited resources. 

The issue of modern day slavery is too large, too complex for any one group, regardless of sexual orientation or religious heritage (or the lack thereof) to address on their own.  We need a “reverse prism” approach, where diverse thinking, diverse communities, diverse resources, enter into the thought and action process through collaboration and come out the other side as a focused beam of light.  This is difficult for many conservative Christians but we must realize that if we are to make an impact on our world, we have to get into relationships with people-especially people who are not like us.  Second, we believe that true dialogue and debate around the issues that divide us has also been stunted because of the self-selected ideological ghettoization of groups. 

A Christian cannot learn from a Muslim if she is not in relationship with him.  A Lesbian can never speak her mind to a Southern Baptist except through misquoted sound bites unless there is a relationship there.  The Price of Life Invitational intentionally brings communities together in order to foster true and sometimes spirited dialogue and to build opportunities for enduring relationships.  The third reason is symbolic.  The great evil of modern day slavery is a diverse evil, spanning the globe, sweeping up every race and socioeconomic strata with it. 

Consumers and victims alike come from the Christian world, the Hindu world, the Muslim and Jewish world.  They are old and young, rich and poor, from developed countries and third world garbage communities.  Human trafficking spoils the soul of the rich and poor and every race and nationality-it is a cancer that threatens to consume the very nature of humanity-how can we not include every color of the world’s rainbow in addressing such a diverse evil.

I will post some opportunities for specific ways you can volunteer, but for now check out the Price of Life website.

True story.

I used to hate reading.

And learning.

And thinking.

I was one of those kids in the “GENERAL” classes.

Until I realized that by having such an approach I was actually disobeying the Greatest Commandment.  

Now I try to love God with my mind as well as my heart, soul, and strength.

Often convicted (and then inspired) by this quote from Os Guinness:

 As God has given us minds, we can measure obedience by whether we are loving Him with those minds, and disobedience by whether we are not. Loving God with our minds is not ultimately a question of orthodoxy, but of love. Offering up our minds to God in all our thinking is part of our praise. Anti-intellectualism is quite simply a sin.

Your thoughts?

Is failing to love God with your mind a sin?

Read my last blog post.

Then watch this video.

Seems like Brit achieved the definition of “GOOGLE GOSPEL.”

Crisp, clean, simple, easy to navigate, one purpose in mind. They also designed it this way. They wanted to provide relevant answers to your search question.

As Brit found out this week (56,000 views and 801 comments {To Date}) later, simple has its price. He was clear and the world answered.

I respect a person that speaks with clarity and conviction.

Do you?

I am happy to introduce you to my dad’s new ministry, a strategic partner with BASICS. `

Here’s what he will help you do:

• Church Redevelopment = Help churches through the process of redeveloping and revitalizing stagnant or ineffective ministries.
• Strategic Evangelism Planning = Assist churches in the development and implementation of a dynamic strategic evangelism plan.
• The Truth Project = Use “The Truth Project” to train and equip Christians to engage their culture through the revelation of truth found in Jesus, His Word and the Holy Spirit.

Read his bio and see a pic of he and my mom here.

BASICS recognizes the need for equipping Christian leaders to administer ministries in holistic ways and is committed to effecting a spirit of unity. Its primary partners are both church and outreach ministries whose missions are based upon Christian values and a commitment to serving the needs of central cities.

The 10 most common misconceptions about women which leads to sloppy theology

REASON #8

• Women weren’t on Jesus’ list as the type of followers He allowed or preferred. Luke 8:1-3 = Jesus’ disciples included women  Luke 10:38-39 = Mary was “seated at the Lord’s feet. parakathezomai = Place reserved for elite males. Acts 22:3

Download the sermon here.

The 10 most common misconceptions about women which leads to sloppy theology

REASON #9

•  Women are now unequal and/or disqualified because of the curse which resulted from the fall. We try and reverse the curse in every other area. We  need to be consistent. (The curse involves pain in  childbirth, power struggles between the husband and wife, and obstacles within our relationship to the earth.) 

Download the sermon here.

Coming for the next 10 days…an edgy but important top 10:

The 10 most common misconceptions about women which leads to sloppy theology

REASON #10

• Women are merely helpers and therefore they’re insignificant. Genesis 1:27&28—Male & female reflects God’s image. Three commands (1. Be fruitful, multiply, and fill the earth 2. Subdue the earth 3. Rule the earth are called the “Cultural Mandate”) are given and they’re only possible through men & women. Genesis 2:18—”I will make him a helper.”  Helper = Hebrew word  Azar = Psalm 30:11; 54:4; 121:2 (Used of God as our helper).

Download the sermon here.

Still chewing on a quote I heard from Dr. Tony Beckett at a funeral he officiated last Thursday at our church:

If you are a Christian then this world is the closest you will get to Hell. If you aren’t a Christian then this world is the closest you will get to Heaven.

Your thoughts?

Just finished up vacation.

Just finished up 2 Slick Books and 1 Stupid Movie.

The books?

21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership by John Maxwell.

Loved it again…for the 3rd time. In my top 5 of all time.

The Call by Os Guinness.

So so.

The Movie?

The Sasquatch Gangby the makers of Napolean Dynamite.

Here’s my favorite clip:

Would like to know…

What’s the latest book you read and the latest movie you watched?

Were they stupid or sweet?