On September 29, Goldenwood hosted a special event in partnership with the International Justice Mission. Joined by Keynote speaker Brad Twedt (Former Director of IJM Guatemala and Senior Advisor, Violence Against Women and Children) and Panelists Faith Lee (CEO, Bird & Branch Coffee), Jovana Mullins (Co-Founder and CCO, Alivia) and Malik Ashiru (Director, Devices & Services Partnerships, Google), it was a rich evening filled with stories shared of how each had awakened to the call of justice and how that call continues to echo throughout the whole of their lives.
“For the longest time I thought of my career, narcissistically: My job was primarily about me–my success, my reputation, my significance, my need for validation, my family, my need for a sense of security. But all that started to change, sort of suddenly, in December of 2008. That was the month that I heard Gary Haugen, the founder of International Justice Commission, give a message at my church on the Chicago area. Gary talked about God’s ‘passion for justice’. And he told a story about some young girls who are trapped in a brothel, on the other side of the world, somewhere in Asia. This talk that he gave just wrecked me. That’s the thing I remember most vividly about that talk is that it just wrecked me and it shifted in earthquake fashion the way I saw the world and my relationship to the world. He told us about these girls who were trapped in this brothel and being sold to men for sex every single day. Again and again and again, every single day, literally enslaved, with no hope of escaping, no power to help themselves, likely destined to spend the rest of their young lives there, likely they’re going to die young, and die there, right in that brothel. And I heard this story, and just wept…”
– Brad Twedt
Brad retold a story of his childhood when he and his best friend had been swept out to the middle of the lake in their boat, tipped over by the wind and left struggling to get back up into the boat, flailing and desperate for someone to see them and come and help. The next day his father went down to the lake to retrieve the canoe they had been in, and learned that one of the neighbors on the lake had seen them, in fact, had been watching them the entire time through his cabin window with a pair of binoculars, while his motorboat sat just a few feet away, tied to the dock. While acknowledging that his own experience is a far cry from what these girls are experiencing, Brad challenged us to imagine: “Don’t you think those young girls in the brothel are asking these same questions: Doesn’t anyone see me? Isn’t someone going to do something to help?”
Led in conversation by Goldenwood Co-founder David Kim, each of the three panelists proceeded to share the arcs of their own unique stories and how their vocational lives have expanded as a response to the call to justice. In framing the panel conversation, David said, “The greatest misunderstanding with respect to calling is this idea that calling has more to do with what I’m supposed to do with my life versus who it is I’m supposed to primarily listen to. And one of the things we hope to do is to help each of us hear the voice of the Caller so that we can see how justice is a part of everyone’s call, because it is part of God’s love for this world.”
“A lot of my life, I felt like God would call me to [a place where He could use] my gifts, right? He would call me to work where I was gifted, and I always thought that was singing because I was gifted in singing. And I had chosen to be gifted, I took lessons, I dedicated a lot of time to it. But I’m realizing now, now that my life is completely different, that God gives you giftings where you’ve been called. And that’s–I sort of get emotional about this because I think for most of my life I did not understand that, and I squandered most of my life doing things for myself because I expected God to bless what I wanted to do. So I think a big lesson I’ve learned is that most of my life I had been asking God to give me a calling. I’d say things like, ‘Just tell me what to do and I will do it.’ ‘If you could just give me an audible voice, I will go and do it.’ But in actuality I’ve only given him like two or three choices: you can let me be one of these three things and I will do those three things! I had never allowed him to come in and uproot my life.”
– Faith Lee, Founder of Bird & Branch Coffee
“So, five years ago, one of my very closest friends invited me to go with him to the Middle East. And I’ve always been interested in the idea of peacemaking and justice. So I went with a group to Israel and Palestine. As an ideas person, as a problem solver, we want to go in and very quickly try and boil it down to the essence, come up with, you know, three-pronged approaches and then boom, hand over the solution, and then things will work out. So the first couple of days that was my stance, it was very heady…and then you start to get into the stories. We spent two and a half weeks with 10 families, five on the Israeli side, five on the Palestinian side, they both lost children to the conflict. I remember sitting down with the deputy mayor of Bethlehem, and he was going to church in a certain zone in Palestine and this car opened fire on his car. It was him, his wife and two daughters. He got hit. His daughter got hit nine times… and his daughter dies in his arms. I remember just sitting there… you don’t pontificate ideas when you hear stories like that. So imagine 10 stories like that. And suddenly you move away from trying to enforce justice the way you see it, and you sit with people’s stories and actually see how broken the world is…
– Malik Ashiru, Director, Devices & Services Partnerships, Google
With the same group, I did a trip through the American South, through the history of slavery, and today I sit on the board of that non-profit. We do a lot of immersive trips that send people into areas of conflict trying to solve intractable problems and how the people who have a difference of opinions or styles of governance come together to try and find peace in the middle of conflict.”
“Throughout my whole career I had this calling that I felt God really wanted me to work with people with disabilities. But that calling actually started when I was really young, when I was six years old. Well, long story short, I left my full time job in the [fashion] industry to do part time consulting. And that allowed me to have more free time to volunteer on the weekends… My husband and I both began volunteering at the Center for All Abilities and working with youth and young adults who have disabilities. We started as mentors and then I saw how talented they were and as an artist in the fashion world, I was like, ‘Oh my gosh!’ I saw this artwork they would create and I was like, ‘This needs to be on a garment! This needs to be on a scarf!’ And that’s kind of how the whole company came to be. But it was truly all God putting this idea in my heart and realizing that there is this group of people that is often overlooked. They have a crazy high unemployment rate, which boggles my mind because there’s so much talent and so much ability there. And they’re wonderfully and beautifully made in God’s image and they have so much to offer [the world] and offer the workplace. And so that’s what my whole mission is, not only to create beautiful clothing to show off their talents but also to encourage other people to see beyond a disability and hopefully encourage other employers to include people with disabilities…”
– Jovana Mullins, Founder of Alivia, a women’s wear brand inspired by the creative expression of people with disabilities
“We’ve heard some really amazing stories and some really helpful principles, but… it doesn’t boil down to principles. It does boil down to the person, who it is that you’re listening to. We want to spend these last few minutes opening up a space for you to listen.” David closed the evening by leading a time of guided listening, giving each attendee the opportunity to tune their own ears to hear God’s calling for themselves as individuals, that as a community we might reflect God’s justice into our world and press into the brokenness around us with a love that arises from Christ’s sacrificial action towards us.
You can listen here and be guided into this time of stillness and discernment on your own:
Hann you for sharing these stories in a way that I can hear them even though I am a thousand miles away!
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