More books followed on the same theme along with ministry opportunities all over the world. When Grady spoke, God brought women to receive healing from gender-based violence including emotional, physical and sexual abuse—and also brought the men who abused them to repentance. Many of the abusers were pastors and church workers. There were so many opportunities and the Holy Spirit was bringing such freedom to abused and abuser alike that in 2010 Grady knew the time had come to turn the editor’s desk over to someone else and launch into full-time ministry.
Today The Mordecai Project’s vision is to empower women to succeed and in doing so transform nations. That is accomplished in part by building safe houses for girls and women who have suffered gender-based violence and helping them to heal, be educated, and be positioned to transform their own societies.
So far The Mordecai Project has initiated projects in Guatemala, Peru, Colombia and India. Grady is planning to launch similar projects in Malawi, El Salvador, Ecuador, Bolivia, Kenya, Nigeria, Uganda and additional cities in India. He also plans to build homes in the U.S. for Native American women, in Canada for First Nation women and in Australia for aboriginal women. “In the U.S. the women with the highest percentage of abuse are Native American women living on reservations,” he explains. “And when you look at abuse against women in Canada, it’s the native women who are at the top of the list.” It’s a similar crisis among aboriginal women in Australia.
In launching this “network of compassion projects,” Grady’s goal is partnership. First he identifies a local church with whom he already has a relationship. “I launch the project with them, but they own and operate it. I want it to be an indigenous, self-governing project.” At the same time he links them with a church or ministry that will “fund it, visit it, support it and be part of building something significant.”
“I haven’t met anyone in all of my years of ministry who champions the cause and call of God’s daughters like Lee Grady,” says Quentin Beard, an Assemblies of God pastor from South Dakota who frequently ministers with Grady. “He truly believes that half the body of Christ has been displaced and disregarded.”
Why All the Injustice?
Abuse against women happens everywhere—the developing world and the developed world, in families with high income and low income, with higher education and no education, in slums and in mansions. It takes many forms: sex abuse, rape, domestic violence, female infanticide, denial of education to girls, forced prostitution, sex trafficking, labor trafficking, female genital mutilation, mistreatment of widows, honor killings, making 8-year-old girls marry grown men, forcing women to wear heavy burkas in desert heat, or throwing acid on girls who dare to go to school.
Grady believes that injustice against girls and women is rooted in original sin. God told the first woman, “Your husband … will rule over you” (Gen. 3:16). “The pain so many women experience today first entered into the world because of the curse of sin,” Grady says. “It’s a global problem that takes many different forms and manifestations.”
Please consider donating to The Mordecai Project, India and help put a stop to the horrific atrocities these women face daily.
To donate, visit christianlifemissions.org.
