Freedom is not freedom without Jesus,” said Chad Cossiboom, university minister at Shades Mountain Baptist Church, Vestavia Hills, during a human trafficking awareness event at the church April 22, 2012.
The purpose of the event was to make its members aware of the 27 million people held captive in slavery. And Shades Mountain Baptist is just one of many churches and Christian organizations seeking to end slavery and to bring slaves both physical and spiritual freedom in Jesus Christ.
“You can’t look at trafficking in isolation without embracing our role in the Church,” said Jean Cullen Roberson, a national Woman’s Missionary Union (WMU) ministry consultant and the director of the Christian Women’s Job Corps. “Throughout history, Christians have been the bystander. We cannot be the bystander any longer.”
WMU is doing its part through its initiative called Project HELP. Project HELP began in 1994 and has focused on a variety of social justice problems since its inception. In 2010, through the guidance of a planning group, WMU launched its newest Project HELP focus for the next four years — Human Exploitation.
“There were several people on the board at the time when [human trafficking] was kind of a rumbling; it wasn’t nearly as visible,” Roberson said. “You had people from all over the United States who had heard that or felt that, and because it heavily involved women, we felt it was our responsibility to articulate the issue.”
Project HELP: Human Exploitation is divided into six issues, with human trafficking (labor and sex) being two of the six. During the first two years of its focus, WMU’s objective was to educate people on the issue. It has done this through conferences, articles, an interactive experience, resources like its CD “Release and Restore” and books published by its publishing arm, New Hope. The next two years are focused on helping Christians take action.
“The law says silence is consent,” said Dianne Daniels, a WMU ministry consultant. “When the Church is silent, it is consenting. From my perspective, if you want to make a difference, you have to make a commitment. If we don’t make a commitment to fight these issues, we are going to lose.”
One of the first ways Christians are committing to this issue is through prayer, because at the bottom of human trafficking is spiritual warfare, said Sheryl Churchill, a WMU ministry consultant.
“There are areas where Satan doesn’t want us to go,” she said. “He doesn’t want us there, and he will do anything he can to block us from being there.”
Tajuan Lewis is another Christian doing her part against human trafficking. In 2010, the same year Project HELP: Human Exploitation was launched, Lewis opened The Well House, a Christian shelter in Birmingham for women coming out of trafficking.
“Prayer is No. 1,” she added. “Where we are at is because of prayer.”
In addition to prayer, the faith community is doing its part by being “available,” Daniels said.
“There’s also an expectation that the faith community is available,” she said. “I’d like to think that we can offer grace and not judgment. Christians are bad about judging but we have the potential of offering great grace in the name of Jesus Christ.”
Daniels had that opportunity on a Friday afternoon while thinking through the human exploitation issue. She received a call from a U.S. district attorney asking for help with three women who had just been rescued from human trafficking in Birmingham. Daniels called the WMU director of Birmingham Baptist Association and together they gathered supplies needed for the three women.
As WMU, Shades Mountain, Lewis and others continue to raise awareness on human trafficking, many believers are being spurred to action.
In February 2012, Columbia Baptist Association sponsored a Human Trafficking Awareness Conference in which Candace McIntosh, director of Alabama WMU, presented to churches and law enforcement on the issue.
“Alabama WMU has placed an intentional focus on raising awareness of the issues … in Alabama Baptist churches,” said Pat Ingram, missions and ministry consultant. “Alabama WMU staff members have been invited many times to speak during church and associational meetings about this issue. We have presented information and raised awareness of issues during our events and training.”
Thanks to the Project HELP: Human Exploitation initiative, 150 Georgia Baptists representing 25 churches and universities participated in the 2011 Lobby Day at the state capitol for the purpose of getting a trafficking bill passed. In addition, Georgia WMU partnered with two other groups to start the Child Safe Zone hotel project, a project that challenges every hotel in every community throughout Georgia to become a trafficking-free place. They are accomplishing this by training and educating hotel staff on how to look for trafficking signs and how to respond.
Daniels told a story of how one woman made a big difference just by becoming aware and reporting her suspicions.
“We had a lady … who had gone to the WMU conference on trafficking,” she said. “On her neighbor’s property sat a trailer. When she came home … she’s washing dishes and suddenly she realizes that cars were going in and out of the trailer. She reported it, and it turns out the trailer was one of the trafficking stops from Florida to New York. She helped break that chain because she paid attention.
“The safest thing to do is call the national hotline,” Daniels added.
In addition to taking steps to stop the perpetrators and free the slaves, Christians are at work in bringing restoration to the victims.
At The Well House, for example, people are donating clothes, makeup and accessories to women who come to the shelter with nothing. Others are volunteering to lead Bible studies, teach painting or pottery, offer counseling and help with resumé building and job searching.
Roberson said that as Christians we understand that, in addition to all these aids, the victims need a relationship with Jesus Christ.
“Evil begins and ends in the heart of the adversary, and redemption begins and ends in the heart of God,” she said. “There are scars these men and women and children carry that are too deep for any psychoanalysis and medicine to heal … that only God reaches. This is the kind of healing that Christians can bring to this issue.”
Lewis added, “If someone asks, ‘How do you fight the fight of 27 million slaves?’ I say, ‘How big is your God?’ I say, ‘My God is huge.’”
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