First Posted: 3/3/2015
LIMA — According the Ohio Human Trafficking Task Force, over 1,000 children become victims of sex trafficking and over 3,000 are at risk of becoming victims. It is these numbers that drove Kari Taylor and Melanie Starr to partner with Crime Victim Services and the Northwest Ohio Rescue and Restore Coalition to put together the Break Every Chain conference which is happening March 21 at Lima Senior High School.
The conference has a two-fold purpose.
“The first part is to bring trafficking awareness,” said Starr, wife of family life pastor at Lima Community Church, the Rev. Phil Starr. “Specifically, we want to bring awareness of trafficking in this area and how women can get involved and how they can fight this. The second part is that women of all backgrounds often find themselves in all kinds of bondage, from food and low self-esteem to fear and anxiety. The reality is, we were not meant to live in bondage.”
The idea for the conference has been a few years in the making. For Starr, it started three years ago when she was at a retreat for youth and heard someone speak on the issue of human trafficking.
“I learned a lot,” she said. “I was very burdened, and from there I started to learn, to read, to attend seminars and watch documentaries.”
At the time, Starr and her husband were ministering in Grand Rapids, Michigan. When the couple came to Lima Community Church two years ago, she heard Carla Sunberg, president of the Nazarene Theological Seminary speak on this topic. “At the end of the service,” she said, “I felt God saying, ‘Now is the time.’”
It was around this time that Taylor, whose husband, Rev. Brad Taylor, is the executive pastor at Lima Community Church, asked to speak with Starr and shared the idea for the one-day conference. The two women began holding awareness parties where 20 to 30 women would show up, and Starr and Taylor would share information and stories concerning trafficking and also about the idea for the conference.
After three of these awareness parties, they then developed a team of women to start putting the conference together.
“It was something that started small,” said Starr, “and then God just has blown it up.”
Although both Starr and Taylor’s husbands work at Lima Community Church, Starr said there were quite a few churches involved represented within the planning team.
The all-day conference is divided into four main sessions. Each session will start with worship time, and then move into an awareness piece featuring speakers from International Justice Mission, Crime Victim Services and the Northwest Rescue and Restore Coalition. In addition, there will be testimonies, a message which will be given by Taylor, a time for women to process what they have heard, and each session will close with worship.
The first session will focus on global trafficking; the second on trafficking in Ohio; the third on trafficking in Lima, and the final session will show women what they can do to fight trafficking.
Taylor will be giving the message portion in each session. “My part is to bring the faith aspect into all of this,” she said. “Every woman can be enslaved to something, and we are not meant to live that way. I will be talking about Exodus.”
Her sessions are titled “I Will Bring You Out;” “I Will Set You Free;” “I Will Redeem You;” and “I Will Make You My Own.”
Taylor is also writing a Bible study with fellow church member Jenny Earl entitled “The Time of Our Freedom,” which will be sent home with every woman.
In addition to the four main sessions, attendees will also be able to visit over 60 vendors that will be there. Some of the vendors will be selling items, but according to Taylor over half are agencies about prevention of human trafficking and restoration for the victims.
“We want women to find a table that grabs her heart,” said Taylor, “and see where it leads her.”
To that end, Taylor said there will be a table with the pictures of over 600 missing girls in Ohio. Attendees will be encouraged to take one or more of the pictures and pray for them.
Starr and Taylor are hoping the conference ministers to women and encourages them, not only that they can live free but they can do something to help others be free also.
“We want them to leave encouraged, but also facing the truth,” said Taylor. “We want them to live in their own freedom to they can help girls to be free.”
Added Starr, “I feel this conference is important because it’s (trafficking) a hidden thing and so many are not aware. We need to be aware so we can step in and help these girls — and boys, too. We want to live in freedom, so that we can fight for these women and children who are not free.”
