Gary A. Haugen

The good news about injustice is that God is against it. God is in the business of using the unlikely to bring about justice and mercy. In Good News About Injustice, Gary Haugen offers stories of courageous Christians who have stood up for justice in the face of human trafficking, forced prostitution, racial and religious persecution, and torture. Throughout he provides concrete guidance on how ordinary Christians can rise up to seek justice throughout the world. This landmark work, featuring newly updated statistics, is now part of the IVP Signature Collection, which features special editions of iconic books in celebration of the seventy-fifth anniversary of InterVarsity Press. A five-session companion Bible study is also available.

God's heart for justice resonates through Scripture. With Good News About Injustice, Gary Haugen helped thousands of Christians catch this vision and be empowered to join God's work around the world. Now the Good News About Injustice Bible Study guides you deeper into biblical texts and themes that have informed Haugen's groundbreaking book. These five easy-to-use studies will challenge and enrich your understanding as you encounter what God's Word says about justice and what it means for you today. As companions to the IVP Signature Collection, IVP Signature Bible Studies help individuals and groups explore and apply biblical truths found in classic books. Each session features quotations from Good News About Injustice matched with Scripture passages, reflection questions, and application ideas that will equip readers to connect the text to their own lives. A leader's guide is also included.

"I'm tired of helping others enjoy God—I just want to enjoy God for myself." With this painful admission, Ruth Haley Barton invites us to an honest exploration of what happens when spiritual leaders lose track of their souls. Weaving together contemporary illustrations with penetrating insight from the life of Moses, Strengthening the Soul of Your Leadership explores topics such as responding to the dynamics of callingfacing the loneliness of leadershipleading from your authentic selfcultivating spiritual communityreenvisioning the promised landdiscerning God's will together Each chapter includes a spiritual practice to ensure your soul gets the nourishment it needs. Forging and maintaining a life-giving connection with God is the best choice you can make for yourself and for those you lead. This expanded edition includes the popular "How Is It with Your Soul?” assessment for leaders and a flexible six- or twelve-week guided experience for groups.

"There must be more to the Christian life than this—more than church each Sunday and waving to my neighbors and giving some clothes to Goodwill when I go through my closet each spring." These aren't bad things, of course. But they're safe and comfortable and easy. And there's a reason they're not satisfying your desire for something more significant and meaningful—we're created by God for adventure. International Justice Mission president Gary Haugen has found that engaging in the fight for justice is the most deeply satisfying way of life. This book shows how we too can be a part of God's great expedition.

A Washington Post bestseller While the world has made encouraging strides in the fight against global poverty, there is a hidden crisis silently undermining our best efforts to help the poor. It is a plague of everyday violence. Beneath the surface of the world's poorest communities, common violence -- like rape, forced labor, illegal detention, land theft, police abuse and other brutality -- has become routine and relentless. And like a horde of locusts devouring everything in their path, the unchecked plague of violence ruins lives, blocks the road out of poverty, and undercuts development. How has this plague of violence grown so ferocious? The answer is terrifying, and startlingly simple: There's nothing shielding the poor from violent people. In one of the most remarkable -- and unremarked upon -- social disasters of the last half century, basic public justice systems in the developing world have descended into a state of utter collapse. Gary A. Haugen and Victor Boutros offer a searing account of how we got here -- and what it will take to end the plague. Filled with vivid real-life stories and startling new data, The Locust Effect is a gripping journey into the streets and slums where fear is a daily reality for billions of the world's poorest ,where safety is secured only for those with money, and where much of our well-intended aid is lost in the daily chaos of violence. While their call to action is urgent, Haugen and Boutros provide hope, a real solution and an ambitious way forward. The Locust Effect is a wake-up call: Its massive implications will forever change the way we understand global poverty - and will help secure a safe path to prosperity for the global poor in the 21st century.

World poverty is both an intractable and ever-mutable problem. It has afflicted humanity since the earliest times, but its basic features -- aside from the constant, want -- have evolved as history has moved from epoch to epoch. Today, there is broad recognition that a significant segment of the global population (the 'bottom billion,' to use Paul Collier's term) is impoverished despite the globalization of the world economy. Two questions -- why destitution is so persistent despite massive global economic growth and what can be done about it -- have animated debates among development scholars and poverty researchers for decades. Those who concentrate on the first question focus on the failure of anti-poverty efforts and typically stress why particular solutions on offer have not worked. Those addressing the second question have focused on either improving material conditions or on creating institutional frameworks (economic, social and political) that will allow the masses in poor countries to escape from poverty. Yet until now, virtually no one has addressed in a substantial way the most basic precondition for alleviating poverty: human safety. In most poverty-stricken areas of the world, violence is endemic. Whether it is generated by criminals who operate with complete abandon or by the state itself via predatory police forces, violence and threat of it have locked hundreds of millions of people into poverty. Gary Haugen and Victor Boutros's The Locust Effect focuses on the central role of violence in perpetuating poverty, and shows that if any headway is to be made, this issue has to become a top priority for policymakers. Simply put, if people aren't safe, nothing else matters. Shipping grain to the poor, helping them vote, or assisting their efforts to start a farm is irrelevant. Whatever material improvements we provide will simply wash away in the face of the corrupt police forces, out-of-control, armies, private militias, organized criminals, and -- not least -- failed justice systems that plague poor countries. Throughout, the book will feature real-world stories ranging from Thailand to Bolivia to India to Nigeria that vividly depict how violence undercuts antipoverty efforts. While they argue that this violence is the fundamental issue facing the antipoverty movement, they do not merely identify the problem. They also draw from their experience running the International Justice Mission to show that ground-up efforts to reform legal and public justice systems can generate real, positive results. Sweeping in geographical scope and filled with unforgettable stories of individuals trapped within the mutually reinforcing cycle of poverty and violence, The Locust Effect will force us to rethink everything we know about the causes of poverty and why it is so difficult to root out.

Om författaren: Gary A. Haugen är ordförande och verkställande direktör för International Justice Mission (IJM), en människorättsorganisation med säte i Washington D. C. Innan han grundade IJM arbetade han på avdelningen för mänskliga rätttigheter vid U. S. Department of Justice och var ledare för Förenta Nationernas folkmordsutredning i Rwanda. Gary Haugen har en examen från Harvard University och är doktor i juridik vid University of Chicago.

"There must be more to the Christian life than this--more than church each Sunday and waving to my neighbors and giving some clothes to Goodwill when I go through my closet each spring." These aren't bad things, of course. But they're safe and comfortable and easy. And there's a reason they're not satisfying your desire for something more significant and meaningful--we're created by God for adventure. International Justice Mission president Gary Haugen has found that engaging in the fight for justice is the most deeply satisfying way of life. This book shows how we too can be a part of God's great expedition.