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So how do you balance proclaiming the gospel with carrying out justice ministry?

It's all either coherently about loving your neighbor or not. It is obeying Jesus and loving your neighbor that keeps it balanced. If you don't care anything about the spiritual health of the people you are helping, then that is not truly, deeply loving them. But if you are attending to their spiritual needs without attending to the man beaten along the side of the road, that's not love either. We tend to get unbalanced only when we unhinge our Christian missional activity from authentic love—treating your neighbor the way you would want to be treated, and doing it out of authentic discipleship.

How does IJM include witness and evangelism in its justice work?

It flows out of the authenticity of the Christians who are doing the work. It makes no sense as an authentic follower of Jesus to bifurcate those things. We have a tremendous emphasis on nurturing the spiritual health, the spiritual formation, of our staff, because from healthy Christians will flow authentic witness. We also make sure we do our work integrated with the local body of Christ, and also with an appreciation for the diversity of gifts within the body. We may be the ones relationally connected to some of the victims to share with them the faith out of which we work, but there will also be circumstances in which we are not well placed to do that.

How is the United States government doing regarding justice issues?

On the issues we address, the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development have been eager to help. There are five forms of violence that afflict the poor where God has helped us reach some focus for our work: sexual violence, police abuse, illegal detention, slavery or forced labor, and illegal or violent land seizures. The U.S. government is eager to address these issues when the American voting public in congressional districts is engaged.

For example?

In Cambodia, we were confronted with case referrals from places outside Phnom Penh where hundreds of kids were on open sale to foreign pedophiles and sex tourists. We had documented all of this, and with careful, professional undercover investigation had provided very specific evidence to the Cambodian authorities, but they lacked the political will and capacity to address it. However, the U.S. government is a very significant partner for Cambodians in their national development and in regional matters.

We were able to leverage the concern of Americans, including Christian Americans, who had been increasingly focused on slavery and sex trafficking. When it was time for us to move the Cambodian authorities to do something, we were able to go to the American authorities and get the U.S. ambassador involved in a conversation that made this clear: "If you want to continue to have a good relationship with the United States, you need to demonstrate that you share our concern about addressing child sex trafficking." That made an indispensable difference not only for rescuing the almost 40 girls whom we had identified in that one instance, but also for funding and training the police.

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January 2009, Vol. 53, No. 1