Ideas Have Consequences

P*rn & Human Tr*fficking | What Every Christian Should Do | Lance Cashion

• Disciple Nations Alliance • Season 3 • Episode 11

Share episode

Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.

0:00 | 1:19:17

Modern slavery doesn’t start in the shadows. It starts with demand.
And the darkest injustices in our world are often hidden behind the things that we tolerate.

Today we talk with Lance Cashion, founder of the Forge Room Foundation, about the connection between pornography, commercial sexual exploitation, and sex trafficking. We dig into the worldview behind these evils and how when sex is detached from God’s design and people are reduced to objects, exploitation follows. But this issue isn’t just “out there.” Porn use inside the church almost mirrors the culture, including among leaders, yet few churches offer pathways to healing. How can the Church confront exploitation without addressing what’s happening within? We discuss real solutions: biblical clarity without shame, repentance with structure, and pathways to restoration. We also cover prevention, including the role of early literacy in reducing vulnerability, and close with practical guidance for parents on preparing their kids and creating a culture of honesty without shame.


🎙️Guest: 

Lance Cashion is the Founder and CEO of the Forge Room Foundation and a pastor at King’s Cross Fellowship in Fort Worth, Texas. He previously served as a Local Outreach Pastor, leading strategic partnerships and outreach initiatives.

Before ministry, Lance worked in business and the music industry. He holds a B.A. from Rollins College and is a Colson Fellow, receiving the Charles W. Colson Medal in 2022.

Lance is passionate about equipping Christians to think biblically and engage culture. He writes, speaks, and hosts the “Revolution of Man” platform and is actively involved in efforts to combat human trafficking.


👉 Recommended Course

👉 Recommended Book

👉 Guides & Resources

👉 Podcasts Eps

👉 Recommended Videos


📩 Ask us anything: info@disciplenations.org 

Setting Up The Issue

Scott Allen

Well, we're really excited today to have back with us on the podcast Lance Cashin. Uh Lance, great to see you again. Thanks for taking time to be with us on Ideas Have Consequences.

Lance Cashion

Thanks for having me again. It's it's I enjoyed our last conversation, and that's been probably about a year ago. And uh thank you all for having me and covering this topic today.

Scott Allen

Yeah, we're we're going to we're gonna get into the subject of pornography, sex trafficking, um, just some of the most vulnerable people uh in our society today. And you know, it's often kind of on the sidelines, unseen, out of sight, but God sees and God really cares. It's such a dark, dark thing, and we're gonna we're gonna we're gonna get into that. But before we do, let me just reintroduce Lance to any new listeners. It's been a while, Lance. Lance is a native of Fort Worth, Texas, and he's the founder and CEO of the Forge Room Foundation. He is also a local pastor from 2014 to 23, served as a local outreach pastor at a church in Fort Worth and was involved in domestic outreach initiatives and strategic partnerships. And Lance, you mentioned your pastoring again, is that correct?

Lance Cashion

Yes, sir. Just uh started uh a church about a year and a half ago called King's Cross Fellowship, and I serve as a lay pastor and elder uh at King's Cross.

Scott Allen

Wonderful.

Lance Cashion

Back in it.

Scott Allen

Well, good for you. Good for you. That's great. Um couple other things about Lance that are there's so many things I could talk to. He's had such an interesting resume, but I'll keep it kind of to the top line. He's uh been very involved with our good friends at uh the Colson Center for um for biblical worldview. Um he's a Colson Fellow, and um he's uh focused his work in that capacity on worldview, cultural analysis, applied apologetics, and was awarded the Charles W. Coulson Medal in May of 2022 for his pioneering efforts in launching a Coulson Fellows program in his local church. So he's really, Lance, you've done a great job of taking what you've learned there and uh really applying it. Uh at a this is what I remember from our conversation last year was just how great you did at taking these ideas and doing something very local with it, you know, kind of organizing locally to make a difference. Right. So, anyways, thank you for that. Lance is passionate about helping fellow Christians think clearly and articulate a biblical worldview and to fulfill their mission through serving others and sharing the gospel of the kingdom. Uh in addition to all of these things, Lance has a calling and a commitment to combating uh exploitation of the vulnerable and ending the modern-day slavery of sex trafficking. He uh serves on uh the uh Texas Governor Greg Abbott's Governor Response Against Child Exploitation Initiative, or Grace. And Lance, I understand you often speak and train on this subject of human trafficking. Is that correct?

Lance Cashion

Yes. And um I'm part of the Five Stones uh task force, which is a local uh collaborative effort under the Fort Worth Police Department that started about 12 years ago when I linked up about 10 years ago and went from zero to 100 miles an hour very quickly once I discovered just the pervasiveness of sex trafficking, particularly of children in my own community. I wasn't aware of that uh going on.

The First Local Trafficking Wake Up

Scott Allen

Let's start right there, Lance. I know we want to get into the ideas and the worldview behind that's driving this, but just give us an overview of what you've learned in terms of the scope of the problem that we're dealing with here in the United States, in Texas. I know where uh Luke and I live here in Central Oregon, this is a real corridor for trafficking as well, up I-5. And uh um, so it's it's all around us, but just give us a sense of what you've learned uh in terms of what we're dealing with from a from the standpoint of the scope of the problem. Well, just even the problem itself. So just yeah.

Lance Cashion

Yeah, so um just to go back to when I first really learned about it, it was uh May 4th of 2016 when two ladies came into our church where I was serving as a local outreach pastor and uh proceeded to um bring me evidence and actual cases of sex trafficking of children in in my city. And I knew that there was, I'm from Fort Worth, so I knew that there were there was prostitution and and gang um organizations, organized crime, and things like that. Uh what I wasn't aware of was the child sex trafficking. I always thought that it happened somewhere else. It happened, you know, particularly overseas. You always think of the movie Taken or Sound of Freedom, something like that, where this is happening somewhere else. It's not happening to children in my own neighborhood. So once uh I left that meeting, I remember uh walking upstairs uh to my office in the church building, and the first image that popped into my mind was my daughter, who was very young then. And and I just it broke my heart, it broke my spirit, and I remember just having righteous anger and confusion and helplessness, and I just I said, not on my watch. This this my daughter and my son are not gonna grow up in a world I'll I'll do everything I can so that when when they're adults they can look back and you know look at me as their father and say he did everything he possibly could do to fight this evil and bring restoration. And so that put me on a path that then led to me learning more. I was surrounded by national experts, and many of these folks that are involved in the Five Stones Task Force, I'd say 90% of them are Christians. Um there's a lot of great national and local NGOs. We have a great uh Tarrant County has a great sheriff's office, Fort Worth PD has a great trafficking unit, the governor is involved, HSI, which is Homeland Security Investigations, all these different government organizations, and then you have um nonprofits that are serving in the space. And then I saw my position as a catalyst and a connector. How do we connect the local church, the people of God, get them praying, first of all, before we head into the darkness, and then um look for partnerships and collaboration in the city where we could mass on this target, and then also look for those other organizations, foundations, nonprofits that were connected to trafficking but weren't necessarily trafficking organizations. Those would be your foster and adoptive care ministries and organizations, um, CPS, um uh ministries serving uh those experiencing homelessness because there's a large contingent of youth that are homeless that are very vulnerable. So it was kind of helping the community connect and then catalyze um the a community of people that were gonna fight human trafficking in our city. Uh it's a big problem, but we have to shrink it down very locally, down to what am I doing in my home to protect my children from exploitation and um grooming and things like that. So uh the the issue is big. Um the United States is the number one uh producer and consumer of sex worldwide. Uh we are producing the demand for our own children, um, and that goes for pornography and commercial sex. Um and there's really a couple of different ways just to help define terms because human trafficking is really broken into two segments. You have sex trafficking um and then you have labor trafficking. And so just so your listeners, and we know what we're talking about here. Um, if you don't mind, I'm just gonna read the short definitions for these two, and then that brings some clarity. So sex trafficking is the recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, obtaining, patronizing, soliciting, or advertising of a person for the purpose of commercial sex act, in which the commercial sex act is induced by force, fraud, or coercion, or in which the person induced to perform such an act is not attained the age of 18. So the key words are force, fraud, and coercion. Those are used in both sex trafficking and labor trafficking. So the definition for labor trafficking is the recruitment, harboring, transportation provision or obtaining of a person for labor services through the use of force, fraud, or coercion for the purpose of subjugation and voluntary servitude for financial exploitation, debt bondage, or slavery. So those are the two that's human trafficking broken into its two areas. I focus on the sex trafficking part, but what you'll find when you start to dive deeper into the issue in your own city, your own community, is that oftentimes sex trafficking and labor trafficking are connected. Women and children that are being labor trafficked trafficked are oftentimes sex trafficked as well. And so there are some connections there, not always, but oftentimes you'll find those. But those are the definitions that that come from the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000. So those are the two definitions that we're dealing right with. And the key words are force fraud and coercion.

Scott Allen

Lance, you mentioned that this is um um uh you know the the United States, I should say, is the largest. Uh it was the the way you put it kind of caught my attention. Producer and consumer, or how did you put that?

Defining Trafficking And The Demand

Lance Cashion

So we're the largest

Speaker 3

uh producer and consumer of sex worldwide.

Scott Allen

So explain what you mean by when you say producer, what what are you talking about uh there? Trevor Burrus, Jr.

Speaker 3

So um the United States produces more pornography than any other nation in the world. Um we produce the demand, but we also are the number one consumers based on statistics from you can pull statistics from like Pornhub and be careful when you do. I always warn people, when you do research on sex trafficking, just be really careful when you start going on the internet to look for this the stuff. Make sure you tell someone that your your wife or your husband that you're gonna be doing this because you'll come across stuff that that you'll need to you know close the window and things like that. But in any event, the the um the United States is really um sadly, but not surprisingly, from a worldview perspective, be become the number one producer of of pornographic material and uh also CSAM, which is child sexual um material. And so the United States puts it out there, but we're also the number one consumers of pornography, but we're also a hub for human trafficking, for sex trafficking, so commercial sex. So we're driving a demand, and then we're also the consumers. So it is has to be seen as an industry, it is a business. And I think, you know, as we talk further, as the church has a unique position to combat human trafficking, particularly on the demand side, because if you cut off the demand, you cut off everything else. If there's no demand for your product, your business dies. And I think the church really has a role, men in the church have a distinctive role in that that work.

Scott Allen

Aaron Powell I really want to get to that. We're gonna, I think, kind of leave that to the end in terms of just what we as Christians and churches can do about this, Lance. But uh just just to unpack a little bit more about what we're talking about. Is it a gr it's a growing problem? Is it, you know, the United States is the largest. Is it uh consumer and producer of pornography leading to sex trafficking? Uh is just in terms of the scope and and the trajection, is it is it is it growing, is it shrinking? Where are we at here with this?

Speaker 3

Um I I don't know statistically, I I typically go to two years back on statistics. Um and the when we think about you know sex trafficking and pornography, um always like to have people picture or imagine an iceberg. And we're just seeing that the tip of the iceberg that's above the surface of the water. The the largest part of the iceberg is underneath the surface, and because this is criminal illegal activity, it goes unnoticed and unseen below the surface of the culture in a community. So the stats that we have, we just have to take them with a grain of salt. Now, um the pornography stats, we can get a good handle on those just because we can pull data from from the internet from these websites, but there is a dark web out there that people don't normally have access to. That there's a lot going on there. There's texting applications, uh things like that. There's a lot going on on social media that you know we can't see all of it. But I would have to assume, and this is I'd be happy for someone that's an expert in this area to correct me, that uh the problem is growing. Now, generationally, it appears that uh Gen Z is uh less um enamored, I guess would be the right word, uh, with pornography and sex. There's there's the a shift going on. And I don't know what the what the core causes of that shift. I think it might have might just be they've seen this the spurious glitter of pornography and sex and they're turned off by it because there's just so much of it. It's like if you have too much of a of something, you it just becomes commonplace and it's not interesting anymore. And um, working with some college students, I found that they're more interested in families. They're not, you know, they want to get find a spouse, get married, start a family. They're not as interested in um leading lives of chasing pleasure and hedonism as when my generation, I'm Gen X. We that's what we did. We we uh chased pleasure, a lot of us, unfortunately. Ends up in some bad places. But you know, I'm I'm hopeful to see how this might change in the next you know five, ten years to see how these statistics bear out. And I know there's a lot of legal um and legislative activity going on to uh limit pornography uh in the United States. And that's a great thing. Praise God for that.

Scott Allen

Lance, how did you again, how did you what was your first encounter you mentioned that you was it uh because this is something that you you have to kind of look for it, right? It's like you say it's an iceberg, there's a lot that's below the surface. It may be happening in your neighborhood or your community, but you don't see it. How did you uh encounter it again?

Speaker 3

So after I had this this meeting with these two ladies from my church, they had been involved with the Five Stones task force. One of them was leading a uh uh local nonprofit, which is now a national, international nonprofit that um serves children that have been trafficked. Um and uh they when they came to that meeting, they basically brought the receipts. They had been to Five Stones meetings with Fort Worth PD, Tarrant County Sheriff's Office. And umce I started attending these meetings and then joined the steering committee, that's when we were we had one of the assistant DAs in there, you had the sheriff's office, you have all these experts that are bringing these cases. And um I tell you, uh some of the things you see and hear uh will affect you for the rest of your life. And praise God for uh his grace to be able to compartmentalize some of those things. Um, but you know you when you join that community and they're and they're sharing this information appropriately, then you just learn what's going on, and and then nothing really surprises you. So when you have something like Epstein, it's horrible, but it's not surprising. Um if that makes sense. Um it's horrible. You don't want it to happen, but it doesn't surprise me. And um so and I don't think it surprises others in the trafficking community. And I've met, I've had the privilege of meeting two Epstein survivors who are doing wonderfully well, and I work with a lot of leaders that have served those victims. And but it's again, it's not just something that's over there, it's it's happening in our own communities. And if we if we ignore that or deny it, we're denying reality. And as Christians, we we can't deny reality.

The Iceberg Problem And Hidden Data

Scott Allen

Well, Lance, I want to see it as it is. I want to applaud you just as a brother in Christ, because um, when I listen to you talk, I I'm I'm the parable of the Good Samaritan is is running in my mind. And you know, the the parable of the Good Samaritan, the setup is, you know, who is my neighbor, right? You know, love the the Pharisee says, love God, you know, with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. Love your neighbors yourself. And the question then was posed to Jesus, who's my neighbor? And tells this story, you know, of a man beaten up and left to die. And I often think that, you know, that that person beaten up and left to die, um, you know, it's that person that's on the, it's in the that you don't see, you know, you don't want to see them. It's easy to walk by them. And Jesus makes the point in the parable that several people just ignored that person, even though they just didn't choose to see them. Um but you did, you know, and I think that was the the Samaritans' first act was to to stop and look and and really look, um, and you know, uh have compassion, you know, uh, on the victims of this, um, and then to take action, you know. And that's the neighbor. That's that's what we're all called to do as Christians. And I just want to applaud you, Lance, for for doing that, for, you know, for not ignoring it, not putting your head, you know, in the ground or just focusing on whatever agenda you had. Let's talk about the worldview a little bit behind this. You mentioned Epstein survivors, and just it's a very dark place, but there what is the worldview that you see kind of when you think of people like Epstein and that whole, again, that whole world, which is quite large, what there's a worldview that's driving it, that there's a set of ideas about uh about reality, human nature um uh that that are driving things like pornography and sex trafficking. Talk a little bit about that, Lance. What do you see as the kind of the key worldview kind of drivers of this?

Speaker 3

Right. Um well I think uh fundamentally pornography and and human trafficking are symptoms of a deeper issue. And if you know worldviews uh you know based on on are based on assumptions, and if if if human beings are evolved uh from primordial slime and were not made in the image of God, there's going to be implications um to that that worldview. And um and some of those implications, there's a loss of meaning and purpose. Uh there's there's uh disruption or disorder of of you know God's creational norms, and then you move into um this the separation uh of man from God, and we're no longer contingent or see ourselves connected to to God as image bearers, and then we untether sex from marriage and children from sex, and then we have uh a distorted theology of the body, so that distorts purpose. You have this expressive individualism and and you know moral relativism that that plays into that worldview, so it's really this this stream of really bad ideas that that will have you know bad consequences uh when it comes to the worldview. So there's this the idea of of uh a culture I I forget who it was said that all cultures are religions externalized. And so whatever we worship um is going to form and shape um What we believe about ourselves and our place in the world. And I remember, you know, in studying anthropology, that's what we would study is what do these people worship? And then that will tell you about their culture. And unfortunately, uh, we live in a time in a in a nation where generally speaking, um, self, sex, pleasure, and autonomy are are the things that are that are worshipped, ultimately self. And in turning away from God and the biblical worldview, we're dealing with the fruit, the consequences of of a culture that has shifted away from God and the Bible. And now we're we're living in that reality that we've kind of created for ourselves. And so there's a there's a lot of things that I think flow into the worldview that drives it. But again, I think you human trafficking and and pornography are symptoms of a much deeper fundamental issue um in our communities or churches in the nation as a whole. Absolutely. And even civilized Western civilization.

Scott Allen

Absolutely. I want to just remind our listeners, we um uh we had Seth Gruber on recently, and we talked at some length about the the biblical worldview roots of the sexual revolution. Um, you know, he has a documentary called Lucas, it's the 1916 Project. 1916 Project, yep, exactly. Yeah, and I just want to encourage people to watch that because he does a really great job in that of getting down to the worldview roots of uh, you know, going back to the late 1800s in Europe and um, you know, certainly Darwin, as you mentioned, but many others, um, you know, Margaret Sanger, and just there's a whole dark set of ideas that have really driven um the way that people understand sex, um, uh, you know, the human body, as you said. Um it's it's it's important to understand. I and I think Christians largely haven't understood that. We've kind of honestly, we've kind of gone along with the flow with this, and you know, I think even in some ways absorbed a lot of these ideas. Um anyways, I've got some I've got some stories I could tell, but I probably won't, you know. But Lance, yeah, what what what what do you what are your what are your thoughts on that, you know, from the standpoint of the church and our response to all of this that's happened in the culture, both worldview at the level of ideas and you know, policy practice as well.

Worldview Roots Behind Exploitation

Speaker 3

Um yeah, and and you mentioned that, and I there's a book uh by Christopher West called the um Our Bodies Tell God's Story. It's it's basically a concise articulation of Pope John Paul II's Theology of the Body, which is a multi-volume piece, um, which is incredible, and praise God for that, um, for the the work that Christopher West, because what he was trying to do in that book, and I think he did a good job of it, is is trying to communicate a theology of the body to evangelicals and Protestants. Um, because I think we owe the Catholics a a lot as far as their their theology around life, the body, you know, and things like that. That's where yes and amen, and many Protestants like myself, you know, we were kind of late to the game when it came to pro-life issues. That's right. Yeah. But I think that um, you know, Seth Gruber has been in this space, and and there is a, you know, because he's done a lot of work on the on the abortion side, fighting abortion, and there's a direct link between pornography, commercial sex, and abortion. There's a there's a pipeline that runs that way. And I think, you know, as far as church, churches getting involved, because a lot of pro-life churches are like, yes, and amen. We're preach pro-life messages, we have pro-life ministries, you know, post-abort care, all those type of things. But I found in in our church context that um we made uh human trafficking, sex trafficking a pro-life issue. We put it under that uh umbrella of ministry, and people were like, well, why? That doesn't that doesn't make sense. This is something different. And it is uh ultimately a an attack on the image of God by attacking the image bearer, and there's a direct link to abortion and the ideas of of pornography to, you know, someone doesn't just a man doesn't just wake up, young man doesn't wake up one morning, go from zero, and then say, Oh, I'm gonna buy another human being, right? So there there are steps that decisions that are made, death by a thousand cuts that then lead to that pornography being one of those, those, the main first step. And then um, but from a worldview perspective, uh, I think uh so many times the church, and I'm preaching to myself here, has it's a fragmented, segmented worldview where it's not this full orbed kingdom vision, an integrated kingdom vision, an integrated worldview where these things are actually connected under a bigger um worldview understanding of the problems in the world, the sin in the world, and then how do we deal uh with that sin as the as the church? And as far as the church is involved, um, you know, judgment begins in the house of the Lord. And the statistics bear out that um I'll share a few of them. Um 67% of pastors have a personal history with pornography. 18% of pastors in the United States currently struggle with porn. Only 70 per only 7% of pastors report that their church has a ministry program for those struggling with pornography. Um and 54% of practicing Christians watch porn, 75% of which are men, 40% are women, and 22% of Christians view pornography at least once a week compared to 31% of non-Christians. But if you look at the statistics, how they bear out, we're not much different from the world and we're to be distinct. So, from my perspective, um, I have a dear friend of mine, uh Carrie Grace, who's been in this work. I've interviewed her um uh recently on a podcast on human trafficking. Um, she served Epstein victims, all those things. I've been to Iraq with her. That's another story. But but she uh makes a great point is when when the men in the church repent, believe the gospel, and get help, it's game over. It's game over because it's gonna take the men, it's captured the hearts of men. Men are driving pornography and human trafficking, but when the men stand up and say no more, I'm gonna go from being someone who exploits and dehumanizes and objectifies to someone who protects, defends, and cultivates, it's it's game over, and it's really a shift in the heart of the individual man. And I had to, you know, being when I was a young man, I I had to I had to reflect back, you know, several many years ago on how did I contribute to this problem. And every time that um a man or a woman clicks on an image, but let's focus on men. Every time a man clicks on an image or or a video, pornographic video or image, he's creating demand for his own daughters and boys. Boy young men and boys are the grow the fastest growing segment of exploited um people in human trafficking, and no one wants to talk about the boys. Um it's usually you know girls and and women. So in any event, I I I hope that gets to answering your question.

Scott Allen

I went f far abroad on that, but no, you didn't go at all far abroad, and I'm so glad you you went right there because and I I think you're when you say game over, this is so important because this is a pervasive problem in the church. We are drive, you know, we are part of the problem right now in terms of one of the darkest evils in the nation. And that can't continue. It ha the change has to start with the house of God. You know, it has to begin with us, and and it can. I mean, God can honor that. And you say that when a church makes decisions to really address this directly with its people, with its young men or women, uh, you think change can can happen. Uh, I want to bring Luke and Tim in, but Lance, if if you are a pastor or leader of a church and you want to make some moves in this direction and address the issue of pornography and sex trafficking amongst the people in the church, and there's a lot of people that are struggling, they're caught up. It's it's this this is highly addictive. You know, that's part of the problem with this. It's just hard to get out of. Uh what do you recommend? How do they start? What what are organizations, trainings um that they can go to, or whatever it is that uh will get them moving in the right direction on this?

Porn Stats Inside The Church

Speaker 3

Well, I I think that's a great question because uh the church uh provides a liturgy, a teaching and discipleship, and um the world provides a liturgy and discipleship. And and um pornography is uh a an evil liturgy. It is this distorted view of God, humanity, sex, marriage, all of those things. And the church is the only institution on left on the planet that has full access to the family. Fathers, mothers, children, brothers, sisters, grandparents, uh, cousins, aunts, uncles, uh, adoptive children, like we have full access to the family, and we forget oftentimes because our churches are somewhat siloed, you have youth ministry and women's ministry, and and and so bringing the church together to understand that um this human trafficking is modern slavery, but this is not something new. We've dealt with this before. And and when where have we dealt with it? I always go back to Wilberforce. You know, Wilberforce and the Clapham sect, they changed the world. Small hinges swing big doors. Um, and it took generations for him to accomplish that, but that then what they did in England then washed over into the United States. We fought a war over it, uh, over slavery, and yet it's come back. But then the question is why? And helping pastors understand this is because when we untether ourselves from our Christian foundation as a nation and and a culture, we don't progress to something new. We fall back to a former worldview, which is paganism. We'll look like Rome. You know, slavery, um, pornography. Yes, in Rome there's pornography, debt bondage, all of those things were happening in Rome. And what do you see happening in America now? The same thing. Well, the church is the answer. So, practically speaking, I think uh it's it's pastors need help. They need help, and we need to recognize that pastors are have struggled with pornography or may struggle with pornography now and sexual issues, that we should um approach them not with shame and guilt and judgment, but with a hand of fellowship and and and say we are here to help our pastors repent, believe the gospel, walk in the light, and then bring other people onto the path of life of repentance, belief in the gospel, and being discipled uh away from the darkness and into the light. So that all begins with, I believe, churches, pastors having serious conversations among themselves and among their elders and trusted people in the church, deal with the problem in the heart of the pastors. Once that's dealt with, have um establish an intercessory prayer ministry that that prays specifically for these issues, both in pornography, human trafficking, pro-life issues, and have them, I call them the howitzers of heaven. Get them blasting the the darkness, lighting up the darkness. And while you're doing that is is asking the Lord, what do you want us as a church to do? Open those doors because you have to, I believe, and we did this at my church, is before we took a step into anything related to human trafficking, we had our intercessors, which I was one of them, you know, praying about this issue because without that prayer coverage, I don't want to send volunteers and leaders into this dark space because they will see things and experience things that they can't unsee. And so you have to have the right people. The pulpit has a prophetic voice, meaning it can speak the truth about an issue biblically, um, address human trafficking and pornography and sexual sin from the pulpit appropriately, right? Um, and then equip the family unit and the family of faith to be able to deal with this issue with a heart of repentance, um, a redemptive vision and with the eye toward restoration, and then deploy volunteers, provide resources and fundings, funding to nonprofits in the space. And that's where volunteers, you know, you start talking about this from the pulpit and say we are gonna take a step. We don't know what that is. Be up be don't say we have a plan, just say we are we want a plan. And we're we're we're just asking for your help, congregation, members, that if you have a heart for this issue or you have connections uh in in our city, in our community of different organizations and nonprofits that are fighting this issue, um, we want to talk to you and then set the table, talk to them, and then figure out how to support them. The pastor is often overwhelmed with enough. This is a wonderful opportunity to equip the saints to do the ministry and send your top two or three people into that space and then report back and then connect volunteers and resources into those areas. Find out ways where your people and your church can volunteer uh in some of these anti-trafficking organizations, pray for them, and then as God provides resources, help them with grants. It's so difficult. I've worked in the nonprofit space now uh for three years. And um, it's difficult for nonprofits to find church partners, churches that will come alongside and say, we're gonna provide volunteers, but we're also gonna write you a check every month or every quarter. You can depend on us for this amount. It doesn't have to be a lot. It just God will multiply those gifts. But the idea is that it gets lonely for these frontline ministries and their leaders. And when they have a church, if they have several churches that are with them, it gives them the dynamism, encouragement to continue forward. And they know that they have the prayer support as well from those churches.

Scott Allen

Lance, what are some nonprofits that you know you would recommend that churches could look to partner with if they wanted to support?

Speaker 3

So my focus is really locally, but there's some national um nonprofits. Uh Unbound Now is a great nonprofit. They're they're global and they really focus on um uh advocating for children, and they also uh do some other things, education, training as well. Um there's great resources as far as like Fight the New Drug, which is a secular resource, but they do the brain science behind pornography. Um Epic, which they have local and regional um programs in multiple states. I think they're they may be out of Oregon, or I think they may be out of Oregon, but they have a program that we call men against sexual exploitation. They do cyber patrols in different cities where they basically set up fake ads and men call in to basically purchase sex, and they have an intervention with them, tell them what they're doing, tell them about the problem they're contributing to, and offer them a way out with no shame or guilt. Um and then the the the other thing I think is important to even though it's not a non nonprofit resource, um, because those are often very localized, like pregnancy centers. Right, right. Um, you have your local pregnancy centers, but I recommend churches, um, either the the pastor or a local outreach pastor or a key volunteer reach out to local uh law enforcement and ask them, what are your needs? What are you seeing in our community? Who's working on this problem? How can we help? That's great. Rather than, hey, you know, because you can't arrest your way out of this issue. This is a hard issue. But I've found that local law enforcement is often very willing to share. They'll they'll tell you the partners in the in the area, and and a good way for um people to Christians to fight human trafficking, and this kind of this this will make sense in a minute, is that um go to your local schools, your local public schools, um, find out if there's reading programs there. If a child can't read before the third grade, they're already setting on a trajectory for exploitation and failure and potentially suicide, jail, trafficking, drugs, all of those things. Because until the third grade, you're reading, you're learning to read. After the third grade, you're reading to learn. So if you can't read at a third grade level, you are basically illiterate and you can be exploited for the rest of your life. So, what a volunteer from a church can do is go in to a school, talk to a counselor or principal, and say, I want to help a child learn how to read in first, second, third grade. And um because this is my heart, this is a great mentoring opportunity, but what you're doing is lowering the vulnerabilities for that child. And if you look at many of the children that are um struggling with literacy at grade level, oftentimes they're coming from a family situation that's that's very adverse. Um there's problems in the family, and oftentimes they'll be on free and reduced lunch programs. I don't know how different states do it, but Texas, we have free and reduced lunch for kids in schools. If they're on free and reduced lunch, and that volunteer, even if they're on limited income, says, you know what, I'm gonna buy an extra box of groceries once a month or once every couple of weeks for this family, that lowers the food insecurity. If you're helping that same that child from that family read, learn how to read, you're lowering two huge vulnerabilities at the same time in a school context as a Christian. Anyone can do that. And that's a simple way where you do you only have to be connected to a national organization. You can just walk into a local school. And that's just one example. Um, the other, you know, you can advocate for effective legislation in your state, and then obviously influence culture and as a Christian, be a collaborator in the city. Um, because even pagans, non-believers, believe that human trafficking and slavery is wrong, that sex trafficking in children is wrong. So there is a an apologetic bridge that can be built across the worldview divide where you can say, we can agree on this. An atheist that's against human trafficking, and I'm against human trafficking as a Christian, we can agree fundamentally that this is wrong. Now we can have conversations about why it's wrong, you know. But they know fundamentally. And so it just, you know, once you step into this dark area, God in his providence provides the light in the community and the opportunity to be his witness. And it doesn't take great leaders and great some great amount of money and influence. It just takes one that that's willing to leave the 99 and go after the one.

Scott Allen

Yeah, that's awesome. And I, you know, I want to come back to oh, go ahead, Luke. Yeah, right. Come on in.

A Practical Church Response Plan

Luke Allen

Well, I just I just wanted to backtrack a little bit. That's super practical, and it's all those resources, all those applications. I love I love the going into schools and helping kids read because that's that's really Really at the heart of a lot of this is like you were saying, preparing students and kids to not be as vulnerable as they could be otherwise. Um, but all the other ones as well, super helpful. Uh I also just love how much you stress the prayer groups, the Howard Scissor of Heaven. I love that. Uh it's so true in this area, is you know, this is one of the probably Satan's stronghold, one of his his most powerful strongholds in the world today, where he's manipulating the world for evil. And as such, if Christians are gonna go after this, you better be ready for a fight. Like where the battle rages most is where there's gonna be the most resistance. So um going into it with prayer, going into it, you know, preparing yourself with the armor of God, the belt of truth, um, starting there with the belt of truth, you know, what's what are the biblical principles that Christians need to have absolutely grounded in their worldview before they think about uh you know entering this fight? Uh what are what are what are the some of those key key truths about you know what it means to be human, what it means to be an image bearer of God, sexuality, beauty, justice.

Scott Allen

Yeah, just on that, Lance, I love your your comment about you know how we need to broad we have a pro-life kind of movement now that's pretty active in evangelical churches, but broaden it out to include pornography, sex trafficking, these issues that surround it, and then turn all of that into a discipleship opportunity. These are some of the you know, the area where I feel like we we we've done such a poor job as Christians discipling people on, you know, biblical sexuality, sex marriage, you know, just biblical view of the human body and human dignity. I mean, boy, what a great opportunity to start really discipling. What about birth control? You know, what just issues that don't get talked about, you know. Um so this is a really a gold mine for discipleship if you if you handle it correctly.

Luke Allen

Practical discipleship, yeah.

Scott Allen

Right.

Speaker 3

Yeah, it's and it's interesting because the you know, there's we're dealing back to the church. Um we're we're dealing with with uh two issues. You have these two fundamental problems, you have the you know the pornography issue and the sexual sin issue. At the same time, you have um a worldview issue among the pastors. You know, you've you guys have read the Barna studies about the number of pastors that have a biblical worldview. It's shocking. Yeah. So you have low biblical worldview by church leadership all the way down through youth ministry, and then you have high porn use and exposure to pornography among pastors all the way down to youth ministry. So you have these two things, these big problems that that converge to create an even bigger issue. But I think um these are easily articulated, hard to address, but um, you know, why not start addressing them and pulling them together? That the pornography issue, like you guys had mentioned, the pornography and and trafficking issue is a worldview issue, but we we're lacking the biblical worldview within within the church leadership. So therefore the people are uh starving in a lot of ways, and so they're looking for significance and and all those things out in the culture. And back to prayer, Luke. Um what I always appreciate about prayer, and I I pray often, but don't pray often enough, um, is that um it reminds me that we have a supernatural worldview. You know, it's like, wait a second, God intervenes, he intervenes in my life every day.

Speaker 4

Praise God.

Speaker 3

He protects me from things I don't even know about, but he also opens doors of opportunity, he puts grants favor, he answers prayers, but our worldview is grounded in a supernatural worldview that our God reigns even in the midst of this darkness, and then that gives me hope. I can wake up after going to a you know meeting and hearing horrible things, have any children like, well, wait a second, this isn't the way it's supposed to be. This isn't the way God designed the world, it's fallen. Um, I have a role and responsibility. Everybody can do something. You pick one thing, you know. What's the um crisis or opportunity right in front of you that you can take initiative or responsible responsibility for? That's what um Oz Guinness always says. And serve God's purposes in your in your generation. And so everyone can do something, and it might be helping protect your children or grandchildren uh from grooming or sexually explicit material or whatever that is, or it may be teaching the kid to read in school, it may be jumping in with an anti-trafficking organization, it may be helping men get free of sexual sin. There's a lot of things.

Scott Allen

Yeah, no, absolutely. And I think um, you know, just addressing the issue of the the you know, the epidemic of pornography use, including in our pews, in our churches, just addressing that and then providing resources. Luke, in the show notes here, I'd like to uh reference uh we have a good friend Steve Wagner in Phoenix who runs a really powerful, very biblical, very practical ministry to help young men, especially and women too, but mostly men who are trapped, who are addicted to porn and trapped in that world, get out of it. And uh so I'd like to to, you know, if you if you don't know where to start, or if you need some help in terms of how to navigate that in your congregation with the people that are struggling with it, uh Steve's ministry is uh I just can't recommend it highly enough. I wish I had the name of it off the top of my head. But Lance, uh you know, the I'd love to hear your response to this question. I think a lot of times when churches are looking at these issues of justice, um they they still kind of fall back on this, um, you know, well, that's political, that's cultural, you know, we we you know, that's not our lane. We need to be uh getting people saved, getting them into churches, getting them into heaven, and and these kind of more cultural issues are or distractions. You know, that they're they're gonna take off our focus away from the most important things that we need to be focused on. I'm sure you still hear that. What is your how do you respond when you hear that? Because I just feel like at some at the at the end of the day, that's still one of the biggest problems that we face.

Speaker 3

Yeah, get get people saved and wait for Jesus to come back and don't worry, don't get it.

Scott Allen

And this world is full of evil and it's always going to be that way, so why bother? You know, is kind of is the subtext, you know.

Partners That Help And Simple Prevention

Speaker 3

Exactly. And I think um that's a that's not a full orb world worldview, gospel-centered worldview. That is a very privatized, um, church, church-centric, but not theocentric worldview. And then it gets um uh it then the privatized faith, um you know, deeply personal, and it's about you know your spiritual formation and discipline and personal holiness and the community of the church, which are all very important, but that's not the full-orbed gospel vision, which is for disciple of the nations, teach them to obey everything that Christ has commanded to go forth. And so, and while you're going forth and living in your daily life, you are bringing order, you're you're um bringing uh restoration and a redemptive vision and seeing what's broken and trying to to fix it and bringing light into the darkness just by living our lives as Christians, because I think I forget who it was, um, said that you know, Christianity's um deeply personal, the gospel's deeply personal, but was never meant to be private. Like we have a uh a public theology that is to be lived out where it's the combination of of um you know our personal salvation and a public witness, and there's going to be social action. Um I would love you know to bring William Wilberforce back to respond to that question. Um of these wonderful saints from the world.

Scott Allen

Well, we we have to recover that theology and that way of thinking that Wil Wilberforce and his colleagues uh you know had. It's lost uh, you know, largely in the evangelical church. I just really, you know, that's my part and prayer is that we can recover that. You know, it's it's biblical, it's his it's our historic Christian understanding of our identity and mission. But boy, we've really kind of neutered it, you know, so so deeply, you know.

Speaker 3

Well, this disciple the nations by its definition is we're discipling our own nation too. Most people tend to think that's you know, missionary work over. So he's like, no, we're discipling our own nation. And um what that whole uh what you just mentioned made me think of a quote from uh Lord of the Rings, um Gildor uh is talking to the the fellowship and he's talking to Frodo and and and the gang, and he says, the wide world is all about you. You can fence yourselves in, but you can not forever fence it out. Because if if we are, in other words, if we are so insular as the church and so focused on our inside the church and inside ourselves, that the world will encroach on that, the darkness, because you've put the light under a bushel and um the the world becomes a very dark place. But once you take that bushel off and allow the light to shine, I mean I I I use the example of we have um ATT Stadium here. It's I think it's still called AT, it's we call it Jerry World with the Dallas Cowboys play. Jerry World. And and it's huge, it holds 100,000 people or whatever. But if if us, you know, if we could sit, us four could sit on the far side of that stadium up in the nosebleeds and completely darken that entire place where there's no lights whatsoever, and someone went down to the far end zone and lit one candle, you would be able to see it in that huge, massive stadium. You could see one candle. Now imagine if someone went down there and lit a hundred or a thousand candles, eventually you would be able to see the inside contours of that darkened stadium. And that's what we do as Christians. But you have to have the light first, it has to be healthy and burning. That happens with personal discipleship inside the church and in that community, and being in God's word and prayer and all of that, but it's made to shine. And um, I think that uh when we see ourselves as lights in the world, that everything we do has purpose, and God, even in the small mundane things we think that no one ever will see, that God sees it and he will be honored by it and he multiplies it. He multiplies the effect of it, that we will never uh we won't know this side of eternity, the impact that we've had, just doing the small things faithfully uh in the world around us and in our communities.

Scott Allen

Speaking of uh Tolkien, have you ever read uh his book, Leaf by Nigel?

Speaker 3

No, I haven't.

Scott Allen

Oh, read that, because that's exactly what he's talking about there. You know, that uh we're working on little leaves, but there's a tree in heaven, and God's putting that together, and it's just it's a highly encouraging uh uh you know picture of what you're talking about. Lance, you'll you'll you'll it's a short uh little book, and I encourage you and all of our listeners to read that book because you're exactly right. I mean, we we trust God for the big thing, you know, the He's He's got it, but we we have to be faithful in the part that He's calling us to play, right?

Speaker 3

You know so Yeah, it's it's it's it's you know we have a ministry of trying. We try and leave the results to God. Get up every morning and try and leave the results to God and put your head down at night in his providence, knowing that he's in control and he'll use our our you know fallen state, he'll use our our messy work to for his glory and the good of of ourselves and and the people around us.

Luke Allen

Amen. Amen. I'm still stuck on that picture of the Dallas Stadium. I love that. It's it's an interesting, I it's interesting how often that word light is used in the Bible. I always perk up to it because my name actually means light. Right. Uh and you know, it's all over the place. I'm just thinking of John 1. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. And it I love light because lights, it's not like light is a um and darkness are have equal forces.

Speaker 3

Right.

Luke Allen

Darkness can't advance. Light can. Darkness is only the absence of light. Right. So wherever the light goes out, the darkness will be there, but it's not advancing and taking out the light. Then when you light that little candle, it takes over the room. So I I don't know, I get lost in that sometimes, but it's it's it's just such a beautiful word picture.

Speaker 3

I think that's why you know God gives us that gift of of you know, you know, these the um that figurative, almost poetic language of so we can understand and yet we still can't fully understand the power of light.

Luke Allen

Yeah. But but back to this concept of uh, you know, uh th this being an issue that a lot of people can agree on. This is wrong, this is evil. Christians, non-Christians alike, they recognize this, and we can join for kind of link arms in this, in this, in the battle against septicing, against pornography because we recognize it's wrong. It's dehumanizing, it's degrading to people, it's um taking away their dignity. And yet when we go back to that idea of the light, it's it's the only reason there's light here is because this is God's truth in God's world, and that's why it's shining. And yet the un the unchristian or the non-believer recognizes this and says this is wrong, but they don't exactly know why. And the Christian can say, the reason that you think this is um you know hurting people's human dignity is because humans do have dignity. Where does that come from? It comes from us being image bearers of God, and it really comes back to that is the only reason that that you know, back to what you said at the beginning of this lance where uh Darwinistic evolution says, you know, humans are just evolved animals, therefore survival of the fittest. There's zero human dignity in that worldview. There's none. Which when you play out that worldview, it leads you to exactly where we are today. It makes perfect sense. Ideas have consequences. Right. And yet Christians say, no, no, no, no, humans have dignity, and that comes from from God being inside of each of us, is the the the we are image bearers of Him.

Public Faith That Pushes Back Darkness

Lance Cashion

Right. And when you get involved with with um, you know, getting involved in the in combating human trafficking and those things, you back to you brought up justice, and I forgot to to mention that, is that what we are are doing to the best of our abilities with God's help is demonstrating to the unbelieving world what justice looks like. And I, you know, when when you have someone that has struggled uh with pornography or sexual sin, and you've you've helped them see the light, you've helped them walk to Christ, you've helped them take that sin to the cross, and you've seen them change and they've turned, they've they've become a a different person. Um

Speaker 3

and that is a beautiful form of justice. When you help um uh a victim of of human trafficking, of sex trafficking in some way, um, then you are demonstrating to that individual that a just God um it won't take away what happened to them, but it helps them have meaning. This is what happened, and and this that's doesn't define me as a human being. This happened to me. I am not a victim, I'm a survivor. And now you've demonstrated uh what God's justice in a very tangible form, what that looks like. And then you look at it politically, when you start uh applauding, uh, I remember when Trump, his first administration, within the first 30 days, he had his first human trafficking summit. A friend of mine was on, was uh deputy chief of staff uh for the vice president, and he sent me a screenshot of of that uh agenda in the White House and human trafficking. Uh I think it was a human trafficking advisory board committee committee. He uh um appointed a special advisor on human trafficking for the cabinet. And I was like, yes and amen. The they had never had that before. Um but even locally, when you know, local law enforcement department that's struggling with budgets and things like that, and they don't have the resources to set up a trafficking unit, like, okay, how can we help them? Um, get it to the um city council, the mayor. They're the ones that write the budgets, city managers. You know, you start pinging them and say, we want we pay taxes, we want a trafficking unit set up, or at least one um detective or officer that's over human trafficking. So I mean, uh that you could I always go down to the practical, like what can we do in our city?

Scott Allen

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I appreciate that so much about you, Lance. And we have much to learn from you on uh uh applying all of this truth in your local city, starting there. I mean, this is really where we we all have to be faithful, right? Right with in the world around us, our families, our churches, and our local communities. And you've you've really modeled that, Lance. And so listen, uh, you've been super generous with your time, Lance. Uh very encouraging. Um I just I want to be cautious of taking any more of your your precious time, but this has been so helpful, Lance. And look forward to having you back on. Luke, uh, any final comments from you or thoughts?

Luke Allen

I want to hear from Tim. Tim, Tim, uh summary, summary takeaway points from this. Yeah.

Scott Allen

And Tim, yeah, you've been very quiet here on this podcast.

Tim Williams

Absolutely. Oh man, I've just been soaking it in. I've been enjoying it. Uh, I'm grateful for you and the opportunity to to listen and reflect on the principles and paradigms. And um, you know, one of the spaces that my own head has gone to is I've got a house full of girls. I've got four daughters, and you know, the baby is six, and the oldest is going to be turning 17 in a matter of weeks. And, you know, there's there's a a parental anxiety about devices and exposure, and um, you see all kinds of different approaches by parents um, you know, who are fearful of uh of what uh their children are gonna be exposed to, or they're gonna be exposed to pornography. You know, when is when is that gonna happen and and how's that gonna be handled? And um, and and there's all kinds of restrictions that you can put into place. Um but what I was really encouraged by in this conversation uh was just the the the sense of man, what if we can give our our children a world view to where when they are exposed to evil, they're horrified by evil. You know, when they're exposed to to darkness, they they want to figure out how can they be um people who are carrying the light into those spaces. And um so I was just really encouraged by a shift in my own fear-based thinking, you know, to kind of uh think about it in in more worldview discipleship ways that that can help them uh feel more empowered and equipped, you know, when when that happens as a you know, so yeah, yeah, yeah.

Parenting For Identity And The Light

Lance Cashion

I think the question is is, you know, you bring up a great point, Tim, and we can go a little longer if you want, but uh just real quick, um, is you the the real question is when not if. Right. Um it's it's it's preparing the children for when. Right. And and I think the core um thing that that I've tried to to help my children understand is is uh identity. Um because that's where um the exploitation comes in. Is you're you've you've you've grabbed on unintentionally or intentionally onto another identity. I'm this, I'm you know, rather than I'm created in God's image with intrinsic value, worth, dignity, and purpose, I am a new creation in Christ Jesus, He is my identity. Um and that um you know preparing them for that is back to practical, is is like with my son. I say, okay, when you know one of your friends, you know, we have protections on phones and technology and things like that, but those only Go so far, they have to be able to self-protect, be situationally aware. And so when you know a friend shows you a video or an image that's inappropriate, what are you gonna do? Make the decision now. Okay, there's you have a few options. Okay, son, you can walk away. Yes and amen. You can tell your friend that that's wrong and why and what that leads to. Yes and amen. You can come tell your father, because I love you, you'll never get in trouble for sharing the truth. I'm not gonna shame you for something that you know you weren't responsible for. So bring it into the light, always bringing it into the light, bring it into the light. And if if they do struggle, you know, and fall into sin, then well, what's the option there? Well, the restorative, you know, redemptive vision is oftentimes it's the shame and guilt that keeps it in the darkness. That's where the enemy has you know, plays his game. And um, if you can help someone who's struggling, if one of your children or whoever, understand, because what it feels like is that you're in a dark room all by yourself, that you have the secret and the shame and the guilt and all these things, and then if you're a Christian, you're you know, struggling with assurance of salvation, you're struggling with all kinds of things because the enemy's hitting you, your own sin's hitting you, the world is hitting you, and you have that shame and guilt. That if you can be the person that can walk into that room, that dark room, with that child sitting there, and you flip on the lights, and the light, the room is now filled with light, and that they see that they're not alone. There's other people in the room that are

Speaker 3

struggling with exactly what they are struggling with, and they're on different, you know, paths, but they are they're not alone, and that there is help. And as a as a man, I can say, look, I've struggled with these things. I know the way out of this. It's it's to Christ. It's through Christ, it's to Christ, and through Christ, and with Christ. And and remove the shame and the guilt, replace that with grace and and structure to help them have this path, give them the tools that they need and the support they need in order to walk in the light, because there will be someone behind them, one of their own children or a friend, that will be in the darkness and that they will have that opportunity to disciple them into the light. And that's that's what we're we're Christians. So, you know, in dealing with girls is gonna be a little bit different, but the same thing really for girls is is identity, grounding their identity. And I tell my son you're a protector, you're you're a guardian, you you are um you're a champion, you're you know, for Christ, you are a man. I tell my my daughter that you have intrinsic value, worth, and dignity. I try not to um um lift up immutable um characteristics, like body things. I try to to find things about her character that she can change and things that you can celebrate. You're very creative. You're man, you you're so smart. And I saw that you did this, or you're demonstrating patience, or whatever that is, and then that grounds them, reminds them of their identity rather than things that they can't change about themselves. Um, but that's kind of two approaches I've found that have been helpful in my own family and with others as well, Tim.

Lance Cashion

So I I appreciate you sharing those. Yeah, I'm also you know, just really encouraged with a sense of, you know, I think that uh everyone is is on a search for for meaning and purpose. And as we can speak into those spaces, that uh can only further help uh the situation and problem.

Speaker 3

That's right. That's right.

Scott Allen

Well, Lance, thank you so much for your time today and just really practical advice, even what we just covered right there, super helpful and practical for those of us who are parents of children who are uh young. I just really appreciate all that all that you're doing and look forward to having you back on again.

Speaker 3

So thank you guys so much for having me and all that you guys are doing. Y'all are a great resource, and praise God for y'all.

Scott Allen

Appreciate that, Lance. Yeah, God bless you. All right, thanks.

Head Shot

Scott Allen

Host
Head Shot

Darrow Miller

Co-host
Head Shot

Dwight Vogt

Co-host
Head Shot

Shawn Carson

Co-host
Head Shot

Tim Williams

Co-host
Head Shot

Luke Allen

Producer