Tearfund has launched a new resource pack this month full of information and practical, innovative ideas that focus on slavery and its modern day equivalent - people trafficking.
The launch of the Freedom pack marks 200 years since Christians led a movement to end the transport of slaves into Britain and the resource is ideal for churches, small groups and leaders, featuring a CD with the new song How Long, by Al Gordon and features additional tracks recorded by Tim Hughes among others.
Hughes and Gordon have both contributed extensively to an inspirational guide enclosed for worship leaders.
The renowned Holy Trinity Brompton worship leader Hughes stressed the need to make justice a central aspect of worship as he called on Christians to engage with the issues of slavery and trafficking.
"We have a responsibility as worship leaders", he said. "In many ways it's the songs we sing that mould and shape people's theology. So let's engage with these issues. Let's be a people who remember poor communities, who sing about God's heart for the widow and orphan - who look to God to fill us up and send us out to be good news to marginalised people."
He hopes the pack will be both challenging and envisioning, "and dare I say it - uncomfortable," adds Hughes. "It's not easy to look at the reality of life for many people on this planet and compare it to the relative luxury we live in. More than anything, we hope that it might propel you into action."
The pack also contains a short film on DVD capturing an imaginative journey from an everyday world to the darker life haunted by modern day slavery, the film being based on Tearfund's work with trafficked girls in India.
The resources, which include useful sermon notes and youth activities, are threaded through with powerful stories including that of Olaudah Equiano, a former slave who was central to the anti-slavery campaign and whose work turned the hearts and minds of the British people against the slave trade.
Central to the resources is also the story of the young Yorkshire MP, William Wilberforce, the well connected and eloquent Evangelical who campaigned relentlessly against slavery. A dozen times he tried to get the Abolition Bill passed and each time it was rejected until 1807 when parliament finally passed the Bill - to a spontaneous eruption of three cheers.
