The Church on the front lines of the battle against sex trafficking and forced prostitution.
When he invited former strip club dancer Harmony Dust to address Phoenix’s Bethany Bible Church, outreach pastor Brad Pellish raised a few eyebrows. But Pellish had been learning some harsh truths about the commercial sex industry in Phoenix. He thought his flock should know about the despair the women behind the Nude Girls signs felt. That they would probably be horrified to know that the average age of entry into prostitution in Phoenix is 13—and that brutal pimps forcibly kept many in this lifestyle. He wanted his church to join him on a new mission into some dark and scary places.
In August 2007, Pellish had attended the simulcast of the annual Willow Creek Leadership Summit. There he heard Gary Haugen, founder and CEO of International Justice Mission (IJM), a Christian human rights agency, talk about combating the large-scale problem of sex trafficking and forced prostitution in south Asia. “It was the first I’d heard of IJM and I thought, ‘Ok, we will add them to our missionary support list and I’ll feel better,’” Pellish admits sheepishly. Within days, though, he received an email invitation from Food for the Hungry, a Christian relief and development organization headquartered in Phoenix, to attend a meeting with other church leaders about child rape for profit in the city. “I’m not such a simpleton that I could miss out on this one,” Pellish laughs. “When God did both these things in about a week or ten days’ time, I knew in my heart he was saying to me, ‘Brad, you’ve ignored these issues for too long.’”
[...] The Church on a Justice Mission Mon Sep 13, 2010 15:03 pm The Church on the front lines of the battle against sex trafficking and forced prostitution. When he invited former strip club dancer Harmony Dust to address Phoenix’s Bethany Bible Church, outreach pastor Brad Pellish raised a few eyebrows. But Pellish had been learning some harsh truths about the commercial sex industry in Phoenix. He thought [...] [...]
By: The Church on a Justice Mission - Ziarul toateBlogurile.ro on 13 September 2010
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