Global Leadership Summit | Gary Haugen

Gary A. Haugen is an American attorney who is the Founder, CEO, and former President of International Justice Mission, a global organization that protects the poor from violence throughout the developing world. International Justice Mission partners with local authorities to rescue victims of violence, bring criminals to justice, restore survivors, and strengthen justice systems. Haugen founded the organization in 1999.

Gary pointed to the scene of Jesus with his friends at the now-known last supper. Everything he’d taught, everything they’d experienced as the Kingdom – all of it could be undone because of FEAR. 

FEAR will paralyze and derail any leader. Fear is the silent destroyer of dreams. 

Sitting with my daughter, Liv, during this session, she leaned over to me and said, “I don’t think it’s FEAR… I think it’s LIES. And I think she’s right. FEAR has no basis unless there are lies about what is possible. Lies about our identity. Lies about the dream. Lies about passion. Lies about potential. 

But about the dream… it is about LOVE.

And LOVE casts away FEAR. Wherever the fear comes from. 

When fear mounts, when the lies become louder than the dream… the focus shifts to ME. And the passion, the will, the dream risks fading.

Lies about our identity, about being a failure, about being embarrassed. FEAR of FAILURE stops us.

  • Be ruthless about self-evaluation – otherwise we risk leading out of fear and insecurity. 

And when leadership is driven by fear and insecurity, the leader is motivated to prove him or her self. Leading becomes self-serving.

  • Play offense rather than defense. 

Protecting, guarding, positioning to maintain what has been. Standing against. This is not the advancement of dreams – of any kind. It’s an exhausting, non-advancing fight.

  • Form and live-in community that is courageous about the DREAM.

In the account of the teaching of Jesus from a mountain, he describes the dream of the Kingdom… mercy, poor in spirit, thirsty for what is right and loving, pure in heart… 

The Kingdom of LOVE can only be lived in relationship. LOVE is only experienced, only felt, only transformative in RELATIONSHIP. Living in the FLOW of the Triune God who invites us into His dream to redeem and restore the world to justice and love. 

What dream am I dreaming? What lies keep me from embracing that dream? Who are the people who will experience LOVE because I refuse the lies and deny the fear?