Pastor Ryan Gaffney

Earlier this week I wrote on awareness. I wasn’t terribly nice to the awareness industry. I beat up on it, I asked hard questions of it. I did it for a reason.

A while back an old friend by the name of David sent me a message about a sex trafficking documentary he wanted me to raise awareness for, and I let him have it! I wrote him about my concerns with the endeavor and suggested in no uncertain terms that he should consider throwing his support behind somebody who already gotten started.

He did something incredible.

He wrote me back!

Hi Ryan. Thanks for your concern. All of the issues you have raised have been concerns of mine as well, and it’s great to know that others are thinking like this. For our first documentary (www.motherindiafilm.com), our budget was only $30,000, and I personally invested $10,000 of that. I’ll never see a penny of any profits. In fact, we haven’t seen one. The ministry that we interfaced with uses it as a fundraising tool, and if and when we receive money from the distribution company, 100% of it will go directly to that ministry (www.harvestindia.org). From my experience with the first film, there is very little money to be made through the second documentary. If any significant money comes in, it will be through the worship album, which will be sold for the benefit of Abolition International (www.abolitioninternational.org), and they’ll be heavily advertised in the process. In terms of the devotional/study guide, 50% of any revenues will be directed toward Abolition, who is focused on real-world action through their network of 30 after-care centers (25 of which are in the US). These are passion projects for me to help the organizations that we profile in a subtle way in order to ensure they are still documentaries and not advertisements. I make a living through my marketing business – not these films. Natalie Grant founded Abolition 7 years ago, and she now speaks about it at all her conferences and sits on the board. They are doing amazing things. In the film, we’ll be profiling the stories of freedom and hope that are emerging in 5 of their after care homes in 5 different US cities

The film is called “In Plain Sight” and the website is www.storiesoffreedom.com

I’ve corresponded with David several times since this initial interaction, I kept asking hard questions, and I can say now with full confidence that this is the real deal.

Give this guy money. Share this link!

And if you are involved in leadership of a church or college ministry and would like to do more, e-mail me and I can put you in touch with him directly about starting small groups and movements in your cities that will grow with the movie, from fund-raising, to showing the film, to multiplying the influence as we fund and empower shelters to put an end to slavery!

Non-Profits love people like me. People with initiative and influence, people who already care, who don’t need to be sold on why the mission is important. They love to give me flyers, they love to link me to Facebook pages, they love to sell me T-Shirts, and accept donations. But I have a hard time finding agencies that will let me or my college students do anything else.

“Raising Awareness,” it’s called. Although in any other context we would just call it “marketing.” Letting people know that there is a problem and there is an organization which has something to do with the problem. Some of these organizations actually do something about said problem, but they only want awareness from me. A lot of them exist solely to raise awareness.

The result of all this is that I sit here knowing lots of stuff. There are more slaves today than at any time in human history; diamond miners and cocoa farmers are not paid; coffee and tea growers are paid unfair and unlivable wages. Apple is using sweatshops; Abercrombie hates fat people; Bank of America hates the poor. There are genocides going on in at least 6 different places globally; Syria is using Sarin Gas; Sudan has an issue with refugees; Uganda has an issue with child soldiers; every country in the world has an issue with sex trafficking; North Korea just has issues. Cancer is a thing and so is autism and so are our troops. We are destroying the environment. The NSA is spying on the internet; Habeas Corpus is dead; Gitmo is still open; Monsanto is growing mutant corn; and McDonalds sells food that’s bad for you!

I haven’t done much to solve any of those problems. But I’m happy to know that I am, nonetheless, the 99%.

I think awareness has gotten away from us a little bit. It’s an important first step, but if that first step isn’t followed by more steps (and it almost never is) it’s pretty useless, and can actually be detrimental to the cause.

You’ve probably heard of the Susan G. Koman foundation. They have raised over 1.5 billion dollars. Less than 15% of that goes to actually curing breast cancer. The money goes to letting people know breast cancer is a thing and getting them to give more money to the Susan G. Koman foundation so they can tell more people. But the problem with breast cancer isn’t actually lack of awareness. The problem is rapidly multiplying cells that kill people. By raising awareness you don’t actually solve the problem and you take money away from researchers that do. (Here’s a link to the ACS).

This profitable Awareness market becomes especially problematic when it entails the poorest of the poor. Suddenly there are kids in Haiti that live on 3 cents a day and literally eat dirt cookies but I need $200,000 to make the documentary starring me. Next week I’m staging a fun run for amputees. The winner gets a golden pair of Nikes.

With the best of intentions, we end up perpetuating the same cycle of exploitation that we are raising awareness about. Money is being made off the misery of people who will never see a portion of the profits. Women who were sold into sex slavery now have their testimonies sold to enable companies to go out selling more sex testimonies. Images of child soldiers lead armies of white privileged hippies through the quad. “Stop Child Labor Now” is written on T-Shirts, but the kids don’t cash the checks.

I’m interested in hearing your ideas for alternatives. Rather than offer a pithy solution to this problem I’d like us to think about real things that can be done by people with full time jobs. Sound off in the comments.

Guys, summer is over. Can we please stop with the posts policing women’s bodies?

I’m not sure why but after years of relative silence the issue of women’s modesty has become “a thing” this year. It seems to have started with a fashion designer who made some vintage style swimsuits. I wasn’t going to talk about it initially because it’s not important, and there are too many unimportant things for me to write about all of them. I’m not stoked about my religion being used as a tool to sell clothes but I figured it would blow over with the end of swimsuit season and we would all move on. But here we are in fall and there is a whole new crop of viral posts making the rounds.

The newest one features a mom from here in Austin who bespeckles her article with glamor shots of her shirtless sons flexing while threatening the ban hammer on any and all teenage girls on the internet who arch their back for a photo, thereby causing her poor little boys to stumble. In linking, one friend of mine challenged “C’mon men, help your sisters in Christ by being truthful about how we really work.”

Well as Taylor Mali said, if you ask for it; I’ve got to give it to you.

Ladies, I’m a Christian man who struggles with lust. I want to believe that all women are created in God’s image to be loved and appreciated and cared for but that head knowledge doesn’t always reach my heart and sometimes I have a tendency to think of women not in terms of their value as individuals but in terms of their capacity to gratify me and satisfy my felt needs. This process in my head is called objectification. Turning full people with needs and wants and backstories in my imagination into objects that exist for me. That’s a problem, especially because it has a tendency to slip over into the real world and affect how I interact with women.

But let me be clear about something. Objectification isn’t an accident. It’s not like stubbing my toe. It’s an inherent and ongoing sin in my life and I’m really really good at at. So good in fact that I have no trouble objectifying you in a one piece swimsuit. The glamor shots that I am getting from these Christian modesty blogs create no fewer thoughts and feelings in me than ordinary bikini pictures do, and if you are winking at me while trying to do your best Audrey Hepburn pose it will probably do a little more.

Needless to say if stopping me is your goal, and you are photographing yourself from the breasts down, with a hand reaching up your inner thigh, as if to say “this is a good swimsuit to take off”. You’ve failed completely.

The good news for you is that that’s my problem. You don’t have to feel guilty for me objectifying you, I have to feel guilty for that. And that’s true no matter what you are wearing. If you want to help me, forgive me! And pray for me.

As to the culture that says it’s all on you, I feel a bit responsible for that too. Do you remember how I said objectification has a tendency to slip from my mind into the real world? Well I think it did. Somewhere along the line some men, probably in spiritual leadership like me, struggled with objectification, and it slipped into the real world and they decided that the best thing to do is cover these objects up so they could stop being such a problem for us. We decided that if only we could impose our will on you we could get our needs (for sexual purity) met more easily.

It was a dumb idea.

Now I’m not saying don’t be modest. I’m not saying you don’t know best what to wear. What I’m saying is quite the opposite. Wear what you want because you want to. Don’t let someone like me make you responsible for my sin.

All pictures in this article come from ReySwimwear.com where all the swimsuits are named after Audrey Hepburn characters. Audrey, who quite rightly said “there is more to sex appeal than just measurements. I don’t need a bedroom to prove my womanliness. I can convey just as much sex appeal, picking apples off a tree or standing in the rain.”