BENJI.ZIMMER.MN


Did you know I moved? Well I did. VISIT BENJI.ZIMMER.MN to stay in touch with Read more

Happy 1st Birthday Alexis Grace


Milestones define most of our lives: The moment I met Ashley. The day we got married. The day she walked into my work to surprise Read more

Lent Recap


By a show of hands, how many of you knew that Lent was 47 days? Okay you can put your hand down now & Read more

When It's Your Turn


A few weeks ago I posted about: what is the hardest thing you have endured? A few days later we watched and prayed Read more

Be encouraged.


In Paul's first letter to the church in Thessaloniki , he offers some closing words in chapter 5. "For God chose to save us Read more

Creating Doubt


Lately I have been thinking a lot about . . . DOUBT. Do you think it is healthy for churches, pastors or Christians in Read more

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» Sex Slavery

ICSEX – Day 2: So Frustrating

Posted on 09/29/2010 by Benji Zimmerman Posted in Honesty, Personal, Spiritual | 1 Comment

I am a sponge for knowledge. I love to learn and I especially love to learn about things that maybe I have none or very little knowledge about. I generally want to be able to have a conversation with someone about any topic. Knowledge can be very powerful if leveraged for good. Knowledge can be terrible if all you become is a know-it-all. Unfortunately I tend to become the second rather than the first.

The Idea Camp is amazing because it brings together all these brilliant people who have years of knowledge and experience and  who are leveraging their knowledge for good. The people that show up for the idea camp are the ones who are being the change they want to see in the world, or are very close to stepping out and doing something. As Charles Lee said so well, “The collective knowledge of the room is so much greater than one individual.”

Scattered throughout the room during the Idea Camp were a handful of us that play no active role in any of the subjects presented and some of us who even have no knowledge about some of the issues presented. I am guilty as charged. I will admit that I know very little about sex trafficking and homosexuality.

Why?

I didn’t want to know. The things we want to know about we seek out knowledge. When it came to the topics of homosexuality and sex trafficking I choose not to learn about them because it made life easier and safer. I am tired of easy and I am tired of safe. The reality is that very few people in this world live in a safe and easy environment and those of us who think we do I just blind.  I don’t want to be blind anymore.

The very fact that I want to step out of my own self admitted ignorance and into the light of knowledge about these subjects is what really excited me about day 2 of the Idea Camp. The topic line-up seemed heavy on the conversation of trafficking and homosexuality among a few other topics.

<PUT BLOG POST ON HOLD>

Have you ever tried to accomplish something and everything went wrong? Ever wanted to be apart of something and things just kept preventing you from attending?

<RESUME BLOG POST>

From the afternoon break out on Monday with Andrew Marin from the Marin Foundation and throughout the day on Tuesday, every time a subject came up that I wanted to learn more about something would get in the way. You name it, it went wrong on Monday afternoon and Tuesday: lunch meetings, morning deliveries, warehouse issues, lost orders, unshipped orders, etc, etc. It was a bad idea to try and work and go to a conference at the same time. By the time I had left work on Tuesday to get home to my wife and daughter I had successfully been interrupted almost a dozen times throughout the latter part of Monday and all of Tuesday.

As a result of the interruptions I missed most of the second day of the idea camp and I definitely missed most of the conversations I really wanted to be apart of. Running into roadblock after roadblock was extremely frustrating and almost upsetting, but at the end of the day I realize that I was able to make the connection to the right channels to learn more about these conversations. I am sure that as my knowledge grows I will leave my thoughts on the table here. In the mean time I challenge all of you to take time to write down 2 or 3 subjects that maybe you have limited knowledge about. What are you doing to gain more knowledge? How do you plan to leverage that knowledge for good?

Let’s Talk About Sex Baby

Posted on 09/26/2010 by Benji Zimmerman Posted in Honesty, Spiritual | Leave a comment

Ah yes, the old Salt N Pepa lyrics bring back a lot of memories of high school for me when my parents and I completely avoided conversations about sex, human sexuality and everything in between. I will admit it, the topic of sex scared me when I was in high school, let alone junior high. I wanted nothing to do with the subject and avoided it all costs.

I was not the only one avoiding the topic of sex. There is a religious institution called the CHRISTIAN CHURCH that seems to like to avoid the same subject. After working with churches, pastors and ministry workers for the last 15 years I have come to a couple logical assumptions: church leaders do not want to talk about sex and church attendees can’t stop talking about it. Sex scares everyone in church except the people who attend.

The most requested books I have in the store besides personal hang-ups and addictions are for books related to human sexuality and relationships. God hard wired us for relationships and sex is a big part of the intimacy that God designed for us. The subject of human sexuality needs to be addressed with in the safe and grace filled community like the church. Unfortunately this isn’t the environment that most churches extended on a regular basis, let alone related to the topic of sex.

That is where The Idea Camp comes in:

The Idea Camp is a collaborative movement of idea-makers who facilitate hybrid conferences and develop resources for people who desire to move ideas towards implementation. Facilitated by a growing collective of innovative thinkers and practitioners from numerous disciplines, participants gather around topics of interest to encourage & inspire one another, share practical wisdom from the field, and develop viable networks for idea-making.

I am excited to say that for the next two days Central Christian Church is the host site for The Idea Camp on all things Sex. I won’t be able to attend all of the sessions and breakouts but I am excited to be apart of the conversation as much as possible. Their are some amazing people attending to discuss topics like: homosexuality and the church, pornography, abuse, prostitution, slavery, trafficking and many more important subjects that get overlooked within the church.

The general sessions will be live online for those who want to tune in and check it out:

Live Broadcast
Mobile Broadcast

Or if you are on Twitter you can use #ICSEX or #THEIDEACAMP to follow the conversation and ask questions.

Social Injustice

Posted on 02/22/2010 by Benji Zimmerman Posted in Honesty, Other | 1 Comment

Social injustice is more than the buzzword of the 21st century. Social injustice is more than just becoming a fan of a cause on Facebook. Social injustice is real and it is happening every single second of every single day. Millions are dying from HIV/Aids, millions are dying from a lack of clean water and millions more are being sold into sex-trafficking.

Every single second of every single day there is more pain and heartache around the world than we will experience in a whole lifetime. It is hard to understand, let alone comprehend the pain the world goes through every second of every day.

I was listening to a sermon recently by Tim Rotman a pastor in Vriesland Michigan. He was teaching from Richard Stearns book, A Hole in Our Gospel. During the sermon Pastor Tim mentioned that 25,000 children die everyday from preventable causes. Tim thought that number seemed really HIGH so he dug deeper. . . To be honest, I don’t like what he found. Every single day 25,000 thousand children UNDER THE AGE OF 5 die from PREVENTABLE causes.

Oh dang. Seems overwhelming doesn’t it?

A hundred thoughts race through my brain: “I can’t pay my own bills, feed my own family and survive in this (spoiled) economy we live in, how am I going to make a difference in the world?”

Truth be told I want to make a difference in the world. But how?

This week I am going to post about different causes that are worth your time and immediate investment. I am not talking about just becoming a friend on Facebook, but really getting involved, leading out and calling others to action. The posts will be set-up like this:

Tuesday: 3 causes worth supporting right now and I how I do that

Wednesday: 3 causes I want to support in the near future and what you can do to support them now

Thursday: 3 causes I hope to support in the long term and when I plan on doing that

Friday: Recap

What is my goal? My goal is to challenge, to inspire, to encourage and to maybe help you take a step towards making a difference in the world. Because no matter who we are or what we have been through there is always someone who needs our help, our time and our financial assistance. You can make a difference and it doesn’t require an empty bank account.

Broken Hearted

Posted on 07/12/2009 by Benji Zimmerman Posted in Other | Leave a comment

What does your heart break for?

A few days ago I posted this on Facebook and I gathered a few response . . .

  • Lack of tolerance
  • Human trafficking
  • People who don’t know Jesus as their savior
  • Thirsty people who can’t get clean water
  • Little kids born into terrible situations
  • Loss of a loved one
  • Others that are hurting
  • The elderly
  • Abused, neglected & starving children

I think that deep down inside of all of us there is something that stirs something in our soul that says, “That is just wrong!” I know at numerous times my heart have broken for the atrocities of this world. Hungry children, unclean water, sex-slavery, genocide, civil wars, human slavery, death, or disease; you name the injustice and there is someone out there whose heart breaks for that particular cause. So what does your heart break for?

But beyond that, I think the better question is: what are you doing about it?

The people that posted the previous list on my Facebook people that are doing something about the things that they care about. But the question is not whether they are moved to action, but whether you and I are? I hate apathy. But yet it bleeds out of me. I spend my time doing what I want: reading, blogging, running, working, and out with my wife. My actions represent my heart.

Over the years there have been plenty of things that have broken my heart, but my actions have done very little about it. I am tired of being apathetic. I desperately want to make a difference in the world.

My wife and I are venturing into the world of developing a non-profit that fights drunk driving by providing free rides home to bar patrons. Making a difference in the world requires small steps of action. This is my wife and I moving from apathy to action.

How about you? What breaks your heart? What are you doing about it?

Taken

Posted on 02/22/2009 by Benji Zimmerman Posted in Other | 1 Comment

On Friday night my roommate and I were in a discussion on whether we should see Slumdog Millionaire or Taken that night in the theater. I proposed the question on Twitter and Facebook and got the same amount of votes for each, so we decided to see Taken . Not sure if that was a mistake or not.

Liam Neeson plays an anal retentive father who was progressively absent throughout his daughters life. When she needs permission to head to Europe for the summer he grants it to her reluctantly. Within minutes of arriving in Europe, Neeson’s on screen daughter played by Maggie Grace a former LOST cast member, is taken hostage. Set in Paris the movie is centered around the theme that a group of Albanian profiteers have an underground world of capturing women and then selling them as sex-slaves. Neeson is on a mission to track down his daughter and save her from being permanently lost as a sex slave.

Besides the obvious rants that Neeson shoots his target dead with almost every shot and rarely gets hit himself. Or that the writers and producers overlook so many continuity issues. Or the fact that there was barely a secondary plot line and it was poorly developed at best. My biggest beef with Taken is the fact that the producers opened the door to a subject that is rarely talked about in main-stream media: sex-trafficking. There are very few movies like Taken that deal with the subject. A couple that come to mind are Trade and Eastern Promises. Taken is an action packed flick that is getting lots of numbers at the box office, but I guess I hoped that the movie would shed some light on this heinous industry that generates billions of dollars of profit each year.

BUT IT DIDN’T DO THAT.

So here I am to trying to give a voice to the voiceless. I don’t even know where to begin. . .

Did you know that sex-trafficking generates over 7 Billion dollars a year in PROFIT in the US alone?
Did you know that in the next 12 months somewhere between 2-4 million women will be sold into sex-slavery?
Did you know that every year over 1 million CHILDREN are sold into sex slavery, some for as little as $10 dollars?

I believe that this situation is only getting worse. My prayer is that in the years to come the church in America will grab hold of this injustice and shed light on it. I just wish Taken would have used its platform to make a stand against this evil. I would recommend that you watch Taken if you want to see Liam Neeson kick some tail. After you watch the movie I would hope you would stop by a few of these websites and educate yourself on how you can help make a difference. . .

International Justice Mission
Initiative Against Sexual Trafficking
Somaly Mam Foundation
Coalition Against Trafficking in Women
Human Trafficking

(According to the various sources I read that the numbers have increased since this graph was published, but it gives a good reflection of what happens with those trafficked into the United States)