IJM Global Prayer Gathering - Plenary #1

Pre-session Online Feature:

Gary Veurink, IJM executive vice president and COO, was previously the corporate vice president of Dow Chemicals. From his brief interview, it was clear that his corporate mindset and experience are a tremendous asset to the long-term goal-making and goal-reaching processes. It is good to remember that NGOs and non-profits need business models, pragmatic principles and empirical knowledge to accompany their heart and passion. To hear a COO, especially one with such an impressive background, speak of a "movement of justice" that "changes how the justice system in the world treats poor people" was moving. To see that he also had a plan to bring the movement to fruition was in.credible.

And one other thought not from Gary: Calling on God to help in the work is tantamount to any fundraising efforts. If He is not in it, it is all for naught.

Gary Haugen Introduction:

An excellent reminder that seekers of justice are locked in a battle with violence and evil - the violence and evil in the tangible world as well as that which is found in Paul's writings. "For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places" (Ephesians 6:12). And so we must "put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil" (Ephesians 6:11).

This work must manifestly break your heart and, perhaps, you will hate it; but you will do it because God calls.

Susan Cohn Wu:

- Something amazing happens when we commit to unhurried time.

-Exodus 33: "you cannot see my face, for man shall not see me and live." Aslan, as described in the books, could never have fit on the screen. Neither could Christ fit in our limited understandings. We have a glimpse of a God who "stooped to conquer."

-"On the whole, I do not find Christians, outside of the catacombs, sufficiently sensible of conditions. Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, making up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies hats and straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may wake someday and take offence, or the waking god may draw us out to where we can never return." -Annie Dillard, Teaching a Stone to Talk

- Psalm 23: words of certainty about the proximity and care of God in our time of greatest crisis--the valley

- "All prayer is prayed in a story, by someone who is in the story. There are no storyless prayers. Story is to prayer what the body is to the soul, the circumstances in which it takes place. And prayer is to story what the soul is to the body, the life without which it would be a corpse. Prayers are prayed by people who live stories." -Eugene Peterson
We are people of a narrative and we are here because of a story. We must not neglect the first story - the story that makes any other story, the story where God stepped into time with us, the story of God's persistence to love the unlovable.

- The reality of Christ is greater than our theology.

- "Faith does not take away from the reality of this evil. In fact, faith enables us to look squarely at the truth and not shrink back from it" -Susan Cohn Wu

- Live a life larger than your fears. Approach prayer in this.