EMQ » January–March 2022 » Volume 58 Issue 1
[memberonly folder=”Members, EMQ2YearFolder, EMQ1YearFolder, EMQLibraryInstitution”]By Ed Grudier
In 2007 I returned to my passport country, the United States, after serving for twelve years in a predominately Muslim country in Central Asia. My wife and I felt a calling to participate in raising up the next generation of missionaries, but we had no idea of the many other avenues of ministry God had in store for us. God provided a pastoral position in a church located in the metro Washington, DC, area, an area where we had not previously lived. It took time and energy to readjust to American culture, learn my new role as Global Missions pastor, and help our Third Culture Kids (TCKs) learn to live in this country foreign to them. It was not long before I started to notice the large Muslim population living in our midst. After some research I learned that many had come to our area as refugees.
My knowledge of refugees at the time was woefully inadequate. First, I learned the official United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees’ definition of a refugee: “Someone who is unable or unwilling to return to their country of origin owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion.”[1] Next I learned of the nine refugee resettlement agencies that work with the UNHCR to resettle refugees in the United States, and specifically of the three serving our area: Lutheran Social Services of the National Capital Area, Catholic Charities Diocese of Arlington, and Ethiopian Community Development Council.[2]
From interactions with these organizations, I learned that the vast majority of refugees in recent years coming into the Washington metro area originated from Afghanistan, Iraq, and Iran. All three of these countries have a Muslim majority population comprised of 176 Unreached People Groups (UPGs).[3] My heart was energized as I grasped the truth of Al Mohler’s assertion, “In terms of the Great Commission, right here in our home, right here in the United States, right in our own towns, we have never faced such a Great Commission responsibility. We have never faced such a Great Commission opportunity.”[4] I began to realize my opportunity to be directly involved in reaching UPGs did not end with my move back to the United States.
Developing a good working relationship with one of the resettlement agencies was the next step in my journey. Every interaction gave fuel to my interest, which led to doing more research into the needs of refugees and the sections of our area where they lived. I worked with our church in its newly forming Refugee Ministry to launch some events at our church with the goal of introducing our members to living, breathing refugees. I also developed and gave some training on refugee ministry and took church members along as we visited refugees in their apartments. As our church members began to learn more about the plight of refugees through face-to-face interaction, their minds and hearts were captured by the reality stated by J.D. Payne that of all the migration occurring in the world today, refugees represent those in greatest need of help with compassion and exposure to the good news.[5] The participation of our church family increased as we hosted refugee-focused events such as World Refugee Day, back-to-school parties, and a Thanksgiving potluck dinner. This led to individuals and families moving forward relationally by visiting refugees in their homes. The real learning process became more intense as people came up with numerous questions and faced unfamiliar scenarios through their engagement with refugees. I saw our church family depending on the Lord in new ways.
Our Church – Changed!
Connections with people who had fled devastating contexts led to deeper awareness of various aspects of our church’s global missions distinctives. Our church emphasizes, encourages, and supports our cross-cultural missionaries in the devoted pursuit of excellent language acquisition. Members engaged in local refugee ministry quickly became aware of and felt language challenges. These language challenges were particularly acute in interactions with many refugee women who had pre-school children they cared for at home which prevented them from attending English language classes.
Even when language schools with childcare options existed, cultural and family norms that did not value learning for women and/or prioritized cultural isolation and preservation, often prevented refugee women from accessing these language learning opportunities. This opened the eyes of many in our church to the challenges that language barriers create and that produced a new appreciation for the commitment of our missionaries who devote years to learning their host culture’s language. The new face-to-face experiences with refugees ignited prayer within our church for our missionaries who experience the long and often discouraging, but extremely important, process of language learning.
Church members also learned that language was not the only obstacle to overcome when developing relationships with refugees. Cultural differences came to the forefront and forced a genuine evaluation of our own cultural rigidity: Taking off shoes when entering a home; greeting with a kiss on each cheek; eating meals together with new foods and traditions; and perhaps hardest of all, learning that a visit to a refugee family took hours – many hours. These were all part of the cultural learning process. Sometimes cultural learning created stress; other times moments of excitement and joy.
One of our church members, a family with six children visited a household where two refugee families lived – both with many children. The host family threw out a large cloth and the nearly twenty adults and children sat on the floor to eat dinner. A few days later, one of the children from our church asked, “When can we go back and visit that family? I like sitting on the floor to eat dinner!” Once again, the Lord extended the cultural experiences and learning with refugees to produce a new appreciation for what our missionaries face in their efforts to bring the gospel cross-culturally and it better informed our church’s prayer efforts for our missionaries. The need to address linguistic and cultural challenges in ministry with refugees in our city helped our church members become more effective cross-cultural ministers themselves and gave them real connections with the experiences and needs of our overseas workers.
Lifestyle and Discipleship Issues
Involvement with refugees challenged our church members in important lifestyle and discipleship issues. Visiting the homes of refugees, hearing their stories, and observing their struggles of adapting to life in America caused members to realize the great hardships refugees have endured, and continue to endure, in their earthly lives. Refugees have all suffered great losses – family, friends, careers, homes, home culture, prestige – the only variance is the combination and depth of loss for each individual or family. This has challenged many of our church members to re-evaluate the primacy they have given to comfort and how they view wealth, particularly discerning more accurately the difference between needs and wants. Watching the monthly struggle to pay rent and buy groceries and realizing that vacations, IRAs, 529 Plans, and even a simple visit to the dentist simply cannot be contemplated, has catalyzed a shift. Refugees have taught us how very little in our lives falls into the category of true needs and just how much of our perceived needs are actually luxuries afforded to us by affluence.
The generosity of refugees in their poverty, providing rich hospitality has challenged many of our members. Our cultural definition of hospitality has been exposed. We typically think of hospitality as socializing with friends or family. The root concept of hospitality, brought out by Amy Oden, had been lost on our congregation,
“At the very least, hospitality is the welcoming of the stranger. While hospitality can include acts of welcoming family and friends, its meaning within Christian biblical and historical traditions has focused on receiving the alien and extending one’s resources to them. Hospitality responds to the physical, social, and spiritual needs of the stranger.”[6]
Interacting with refugees, being on the receiving end of their version of hospitality, has awakened a fresh perspective in our members of the need to extend hospitality to the stranger in our midst. Physical and spiritual resources are being shared in the process. An extension of grace and generosity is being realized.
A particularly encouraging outcome of our refugee ministry has been the broadened cultural diversity of our church body. Nana Couffie, who himself lived as a refugee, challenges the church to see refugees as potential disciples.[7] Indeed, refugees from Iran and the Democratic Republic of the Congo have become members of our church. They are worshipping with us, praying with and for us, are active members of small groups, and use their gifts to serve our church body. The investment of time and love by our church family in helping these refugees adjust to life in America now provides returns to our church in immeasurable ways.
Taking the gospel to the remaining UPGs of the world has been the clear and compelling focus of our church’s global missions’ efforts for over thirty years. However, for many, this remained either an abstract concept or something that was done far, far away. Involvement in refugee ministry locally helped enlighten the reality of the unreached peoples concept. Church members began interacting with people who grew up in cultures where there was no church, no place to purchase a Bible in their language, no awareness that a Bible in their own language existed, and no one that they knew personally who identified themselves as a follower of Jesus. Putting a name, a face, a family to this missiological concept of UPGs made it suddenly a personal reality. This impact created by local engagement with refugees carried over to our church’s overseas involvement. In 2017, after President Trump took office, the flow of Syrian refugees being resettled in the United States was reduced to far lower levels than resettlement agencies in our area originally planned. Our church made the decision that if we could not minister to them here, we would go with gospel ministry to where Syrian refugees were living. We began focusing prayers, sending short-term teams, and funding projects to minister to Syrian refugees living in Lebanon.
This Follower of Christ – Changed!
The impact of refugee ministry has not only been felt in our church, but also in my life personally. Perhaps the biggest surprise to me was the reciprocal nature of refugee ministry. I am embarrassed to admit that the following quote describes my mentality when I first started in refugee ministry: “Mission or ministry with people who are poor or vulnerable often assumes that ‘our’ task is to meet ‘their’ needs. Whether their need is for the good news of Christ or for bread and a place to sleep, we tend to think that we have the resources and they have the needs.”[8] I saw refugees as needy, and I viewed myself and my church, as having an abundance of resources, materially and spiritually, to help them. I saw refugee ministry as one-directional: we would meet their needs. The more time my wife and I spent with refugees, the more I realized how much we needed to learn from them and to re-learn from our time living in Central Asia. Their perseverance in the face of extreme hardship, their resilience in the midst of forced adaptation, their ability to survive on razor-thin budgets, and their devotion to and pursuit of meaningful community are all traits that inspire me to grow.
Refugee ministry also re-taught me God’s design of holistic ministry. The membership of the church where I currently serve consists largely of people who have successful, financially stable, comfortable lives. Ministry to our members, for the most part, can focus mainly on their spiritual needs. It is too easy for me to be lopsided in ministry or to lose sight of the whole person. In contrast, most of the refugees my wife and I have gotten to know, with very few exceptions, face high level needs in multiple areas of life: physical, emotional, relational, and spiritual. The first visit that my wife and I would make to a refugee family almost always included bringing them some sort of household item they needed. This led to conversations that led to opportunities to address emotional or relational needs.
One particular mother was distraught that her limited English prevented her from being able to help her children with their schoolwork. Many expressed their deep loneliness due to feeling alienated from their home culture but not yet accepted in American culture. This backdrop of meeting practical and emotional needs opened the way for conversations like the one when I explained the meaning of Christmas to a newly arrived Afghan family we visited one December. After sharing about the birth of Jesus and why it was necessary in God’s plan of salvation for Jesus to become a man, the father looked at me with what appeared to be genuine sadness in his eyes and simply said, “I have never heard that before.” My ministry interactions with refugees stretch me and are growing my ability to see people holistically and to minister with an integrated approach.
Since engaging in refugee ministry, I have often traversed back in my memories to the many national friends my wife and I had during our twelve years serving in Central Asia – such as the many hours they sat with us when we could hardly say a sentence, the time they spent teaching us to cook their food, finding items we needed to buy, or just sitting answering our questions about their culture. During my involvement in refugee ministry, I often feel ashamed when I bemoan how much time my new refugee friends require from my week for help with the same sort of tasks and issues my Central Asian friends so graciously helped me with years ago when I lived in their country. I realize how much control I like to maintain over my schedule and how this can hinder relationships with people who have a vast array of needs. I also remember the large amount of time that friendship and hospitality in many non-Western cultures demands. This struggle continues to rage in my heart as I face the painful reality that, unlike my Lord, I am still far more task-oriented than I am people-oriented.
Conclusion
Befriending and serving refugees provide multi-faceted potential for impacting your church and you personally. Local cross-cultural ministry provides insights into what overseas missionaries face and experience with language and cultural issues which creates empathy and fuels more informed prayer. Refugee ministry provides the opportunity to make disciples of nations that have come to your doorstep. In stepping out to meet the needs of refugees you will likely experience that you are far more needy than you realize for the lessons you can learn from your refugee friends. Your church may experience the joy of seeing refugees come to faith and join in the life of your church and your involvement overseas among UPGs may expand. Refugees provide a Great Commission responsibility and opportunity that you and your church cannot afford to neglect.
Ed Grudier currently serves as the Senior Associate Pastor of Cherrydale Baptist Church in Arlington, Virginia. He and his wife, Kathy, served as missionaries in Central Asia for twelve years with WEC International.
[1] “What is a Refugee?” UNHCR: The UN Refugee Agency, accessed August 30, 2016, https://www.unhcr.org/afr/what-is-a-refugee.html.
[2] “Resettlement Agencies in Your Area,” UNHCR: The UN Refugee Agency, accessed August 30, 2016, http://www.unhcrwashington.org/resettlement-agencies-your-area-0.
[3] “People Group Lists,” Joshua Project, accessed April 20, 2020, http://joshuaproject.net/countries/.
[4] Albert Mohler, “The Briefing”, October 22, 2014, accessed November 1, 2016, http://www.albertmohler.com/?p=33009.
[5] J. D. Payne, Strangers Next Door: Immigration, Migration, and Mission (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 2012), 107.
[6] Amy Oden, And You Welcomed Me: A Sourcebook on Hospitality in Early Christianity, (Nashville: Abingdon, 2001), 19–20.
[7] Nana Couffie, Loving the Stranger: A Divine Mandate for Refugee and Migrant Ministry (Newburgh, IN: Trinity Press Publishing, 2013), 123.
[8] Christopher L. Heuertz and Christine D. Pohl, Friendship at the Margins: Discovering Mutuality in Service and Mission, Resources for Reconciliation (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 2010), 19.
EMQ, Volume 58, Issue 1. Copyright © 2022 by Missio Nexus. All rights reserved. Not to be reproduced or copied in any form without written permission from Missio Nexus. Email: EMQ@MissioNexus.org.
