Recently the NMI office has received a few e-mails regarding the content of NMI’s mission book called Traffic and the related Living Mission education lesson called Priceless People". Focusing on the topic of human slavery, the book and lesson’s straightforward content about a tragic subject has caused some interest and concerns.
 
The following is a response Daniel Ketchum, NMI global director, sent to one such e-mail. Please read the response, pray for the men, women, and children who are trafficked every day, and forward this on to your local presidents. It will help them understand why we are addressing such a topic within our mission education resources.
 
August 21, 2011
 
Dear  :
 
Thank you for your e-mail regarding Traffic, the NMI mission book, and the Living Mission theme on human trafficking. I warmly welcome your further dialogue about this troubling issue. You are right to be concerned. I will share your concern with our colleagues: writers, editors, and mission educators.
 
You are so right: this theme is graphic and gripping. Current slavery, human trafficking, or sex trade is abhorrent and offensive...anywhere and in America. Everything about this sin is objectionable, loathsome, and sickening.
 
The sale of humans to other humans is detestable, abominable, and horrendous. The whole industry is repulsive, degrading, and grotesque.
 
It is essential that we see this as horrid, unholy, and unjust. Nazarene pastor and author Darrell MacLearn knows that something insidious is happening in our world, country, and neighborhoods (Traffic, page 36).
 
The authors told me that the theme made them sick to research and write. But they also reminded me that we cannot hope to combat or correct something about which we know little or nothing. You probably know that trafficking will happen again tonight and this weekend in your town or cities near your home. You noted that you are "very aware of this problem in our world." Are you aware of this problem where you live? Do your people know this and are they doing something to intercede and intervene?
 
You encourage sensitivity to persons won to Christ from pornography and women who have been molested and beaten and who struggle with unneeded memories and feeling. These persons might be the first to affirm the need for the Church to address the sources of this crisis and do something like missionaries to resolve this human disaster.
 
Regarding your concern that no one in the book was led to Christ, please join me in rereading chapter 8 of Traffic again. I wonder how many stories missionary Harmon Schmelzenbach told or accounts he wrote before he led the first convert to Christ in Africa. And how many times did he petition Christians in Nazarene churches to become involved with him before he organized the first church in those villages?
 
"Darrell wonders if this hush among the Christian community is because they are truly processing these realities or because they are offended at the profaneness they acknowledge in their worlds....He also knows there is no other single entity as well-suited to this purpose than God's church. It is Darrell's dream that the people of God become leaders in the rescue and restoration of sex-trafficking victims and the prevention of sex trafficking altogether...that in their repulsion Christians would not retreat to their ivory tower, but instead advance as a united army fighting the good fight for justice, setting the captives free" (Traffic, pages 59-60).
 
I commend you for raising strategic questions and concerns. What is God's mission in Christ regarding human trafficking? How will He set the captives free? What should we feel and how shall we respond? Then, what shall we do about this plague and epidemic where we live and with people we lead and serve?
 
Across decades and centuries, what has the Church done in response to the Holocaust, human slavery in America's south, AIDS, abortion, pornography, and other issues addressed in our Manual Appendix, Chapter IV? In light of your letter, I have reviewed Manual paragraphs 903.3, 903.4, 903.7, 903.8 (trafficking is war), 903.12, 903.15, 903.16, 903.17, 903.18, and 903.19. I hope you will join me in this review. I reflected on every Manual paragraph as I reread the book before responding to your e-mail.
 
I have grieved and wept over this. I repent that I have done so little to correct or counteract evil in trafficking and in many other forms. Perhaps you and I together can make a difference: praying, repenting, informing our people of present danger, and offering hope and redemption in Christ. Perhaps we can become even more involved as the Spirit guides us. Perhaps this Traffic book and the same theme in Living Mission (Volume 1: Forgotten People) are small beginnings.
 
Thank you for your time and passion. Would you be willing to read page 88 in Traffic one more time? Then, please keep helping us serve the Lord and the Church more effectively. You are so right: it's all about Him.
 
Daniel
 
NOTE: If you would like to comment about Human Trafficking or about the issue of NMI publishing a mission book and education lesson on the topic, please feel free to do so on the Living Mission Facebook page www.facebook.com/groups/104428492923551. The dialogue can only help us understand and learn as we all attempt to be the hands and feet of Jesus to those who are suffering. 
 

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  JFHP 2011 Christmas Outreach Offer 
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