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Baptists Honor Alum For Human Rights Work
Lauran Bethell says it's difficult to plan in her field of ministry. The 1985 graduate of ABSW lives in Prague and spends 70 percent of her time traveling around the world to encourage projects for women, youth and children who live on the margins. For nearly 20 years , she has given particular attention to the plight of women caught up in sex trafficking. The work calls for presence among people often shamed and excluded, and she can't predict what will happen when she shows up. So her leadership is about "preparation" rather than "planning." The task, Bethell says, is to always prepare the ground through the development of relationships. "I've always felt that it was God's work, and that I was just God's happy helper and a colleague of many, many other people who felt as passionate as I did about sharing God's love with exploited and abused women and children," Bethell told a crowd of 10,000 at the Baptist World Alliance Centenary Congress in Birmingham, England, last July as she received the Human Rights Award. Bethell is a global consultant for International Ministries of the American Baptist Churches. She cofounded the New Life Center in Chiang Mai, Thailand, in 1987 to care for young women coming out of prostitution. The center provides literacy and vocational training. Economic development is a critical component to helping women trapped in prostitution, Bethell says. The importance of "business as mission" will be highlighted at the upcoming International Christian Conference on Prostitution, to be held April 22-27 at Green Lake Conference Center in Green Lake, Wis. The conference will provide encouragement and support to the growing body of leaders who share Bethell's vocation. "Praise be to God," she said in accepting the Human Rights Award, "who is with us now, and will continue to guide, lead and give us wild, wonderful, surprising visions for the redemption of the ‘least of these.'" |
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