Stephan Bauman - Imagine What Is Possible: Saying Yes to Changing the World

I MAGINE W HAT I S P OSSIBLE
P UBLISHED BY M ULTNOMAH B OOKS
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All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version, NIV. Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984 by Biblica Inc.TM Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com. Scripture quotations marked ( NIV 2011) are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version, NIV. Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica Inc.TM Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com.

Portions of this booklet have been adapted from Possible, copyright 2015 by Stephan Bauman. Details in some anecdotes have been changed to protect the privacy of the persons involved.

Trade Paperback ISBN 978-1-60142-750-2
eBook ISBN 978-1-60142-751-9

Copyright 2015 by Stephan Bauman

Cover design by Kelly L. Howard

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Be who God meant you to be and you will set the world on fire.

C ATHERINE OF S IENA

During an otherwise normal worship service near Washington, DC, I received a text message I couldnt ignore. A rebel militia was wreaking havoc in the Democratic Republic of Congo, one of the worlds most Christian countries yet also one of its poorest and most violent, especially for women and children. My wife, Belinda, was receiving similar messages on Facebook. Gunshots and mortar fire threatened the lives of people we loved.

I sat down to exchange a flurry of texts. Belinda sat down to cry. She was thinking about her friends in Congo. Only a few months before, Belinda knelt with Esperance, a victim of sexual violence, on the dusty concrete floor of a rural church, where they laughed and cried. You remind me I am still human, Esperance said.

When you and I hear stories about violence, war, stolen girls, boy soldiers, or hungry children, we feel helpless, exasperated, sometimes even physically ill. When we learn about senseless poverty, mind-boggling violence, or preventable disease, we feel overwhelmed. We pray. Sometimes we give. But we struggle to do more.

We cannot change the world. Or so we think.

Why?

Because we cannot change the world.

Or so we think.

A handful of years ago a friend from Indiana, Joe Johns, began to ask hard questions about conflict, faith, and peace in Congo. He and a Congolese pastor named Marcel began to help people see how local militias were turning neighbors against one another. Tensions between churches, they realized, mirrored tensions between tribes. So Marcel convened a group of fellow pastors to help them see where they were wrong. Some shed tears as they forgave one another. Others knelt and prayed together. All committed to developing a better future, making peace a priority, and promising to mobilize their communities to help people become peacemakers.

And mobilize they did.

Meanwhile, back home, Joe inspired his church to take on the impossiblesaving Congo. His friends began to recruit their friends to help. Others gathered resources. Hundreds ran in their local half marathon to raise awareness. One group even rode bicycles across the country in a race to end Congos suffering.

Across the country Micah Bournes, rapperpoet and Joes friend, began to speak out on how tungsten, tin, and tantalumall components in our cell phones and other electronicshelp fuel the war in Congo, exploiting tribes and perpetuating violence against women. A few people from Bend, Oregon, also took the risk to talk about Congo, the impossible situation no one wanted to tackle. But they did anyway.

Esperance and her sisters found strength in each other. Now they are helping other women.

A group of women from across the United States heard their appeal and traveled to Congo to meet those most affected by the conflict. Belinda joined their cause. They met ten women, including Esperance. All ten had been victims of violence and had overcome incredible odds to start businesses, provide for their children, and even forgive their perpetrators.

They asked Belinda and the others to tell their stories so the world would know about the vilest scramble for loot that ever disfigured the history of human conscience. So one began to tell the world through art, another through digital portraits, and others through blogging.

And they havent stopped since.

Esperance and her sisters found strength in each other, their communities, and their new friends across the world. Now they are helping other womentheir sisterssome as young as fifteen, to heal from rape and rebuild their lives. Today thousands of peacemakers are changing

A poet and a blogger, a few warrior moms, two tenacious pastors, and a crew of volunteers offered their gifts, their strengths, their vulnerability, and their grit to inspire a sea of Congolese women, heroes on the front lines of suffering, to change their forgotten corner of the world in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

People like you want to give their lives to something more, something greatersomething possible.

Can we change the world? I believe people like you will do extraordinary things when given the chance, turning some of the most entrenched, seemingly intractable situations of our day into something hopeful, something

Possible.

There are no ordinary people, only people bold enough to think they can save a life, or some corner of the world, and fierce enough to try.

I am convinced the worlds suffering lingers not because people arent willing to help. Faith, compassion, and justice stir the souls of many. They are bloggers, technicians, musicians, entrepreneurs, artists, writers, nurses, electricians, rappers, moms, politicians, PhDs, lawyers, students, researchers, and doctors. They are you, and people like youa groundswell of individuals who simply refuse to accept the world as it is. They