By Paul Baxley
You have read news in recent days of the fatal shootings of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo and Johan Sebastián by federal immigration agents. Even as these events took place in Houston, Texas and Biddeford, Maine, we have received reports of increased immigration enforcement activity across the nation, including in communities served by CBF partner congregations.
Like me, many of you have friends, colleagues, fellow church members, sisters and brothers in Christ, who are living in increasing fear, anxiety and uncertainty. These deep emotions exist among immigrants and refugees who are citizens of the United States or who are working and living in this country with proper documents even as it does among those who are not. Even as fear and anxiety are growing, so are deep concerns and questions among citizens of all races and ethnicities across the theological and political landscape.
This moment is impacting our congregations in unmistakable ways.
An overwhelming number of Cooperative Baptist Fellowship partner congregations serve their communities by hosting or actively partnering in ministries that serve immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers explicitly or as part of larger ministries designed to meet the needs of those experiencing hunger and poverty. CBF congregations also host Spanish speaking congregations and other worshipping communities consisting of people from all over the world. A growing number of our congregations are themselves racially and ethnically diverse, and the number of brown and black congregations in our Fellowship is higher than ever. And, the overwhelming number of our congregations include people who vote every way imaginable in elections with every conceivable attitude about their votes, so the increasing polarization in our nation also impacts the lives of our congregations in unique ways.
On top of all of that, our congregations are unique in that our church properties are still sensitive locations when it comes to immigration law enforcement because of the preliminary injunction granted us as part of the lawsuit we joined more than a year ago.
In the face of so much anxiety, uncertainty and concern, it is tempting to reach the conclusion that there is nothing we can do, or to be paralyzed by fear. But I want to suggest to you that we respond with bold faithfulness and resurrecting love, we are uniquely positioned to offer a witness to Christ’s love and power in this moment.
Doing so will require that we proclaim that the work of welcoming the stranger and serving those in poverty, fear and hunger is the work of the Gospel and a faithful response to the call of Christ, who said “I was a stranger and you welcomed me” and who announced that his mission was to “bring good news to the poor, release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind.” It will require us to remember that from our very beginnings the church of Jesus Christ has been racially, ethnically and linguistically diverse.
So it was on the Day of Pentecost, when the church was born among people who spoke every language from many nations. So it was in the congregation at Antioch of Syria that commissioned the first Christian missionaries. That’s why Paul himself believed that in the church, we should no longer be “strangers and sojourners but fellow citizens with the saints and members of the house of God.” And that’s why Revelation reminds us that Christ is moving us toward a day when people who speak every tongue will unite their voices in offering unceasing praise.
Welcoming strangers and fostering beloved community is not a political agenda. It is the Gospel of Jesus and the mission of God. Because so much else is being said, we must proclaim this with conviction. Silence surrenders the Gospel in favor of partisanship and nationalism.
Because we have been guided by these truths in our Fellowship’s life since our founding, and since our congregations have been led from them since before CBF existed, we must also profess that our commitment to ministry with and among immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers is not something we have come to recently.
We have sent field personnel among immigrant communities since we began appointing women and men to serve in Christ’s Global Mission. Our congregations have come forward for many years to volunteer in those ministries in our nation and around the world even as we have operated our own ministries and endorsed chaplains and pastoral counselors to serve in specialized settings among immigrant and refugee communities. Our commitments here are not new and are not based on any politician’s directive. They have been core to our calling and flow from our primal decision to follow Christ as Lord of our lives and our congregations.
Responding in this moment with bold faithfulness also requires us to be who we are at our very best. In the more than seven years I have visited CBF partner congregations, I’ve found that we’re very good at showing welcome. We have a deep commitment to the well-being of our communities. We work with other congregations and people of good will in our communities to pursue the common good. We’re getting better all the time at using our properties as places of community transformation. I’ve been inspired to hear the stories of congregations doing so more than ever, particularly in light of the temporary injunction that allows people of every background to gather in our spaces with less fear.
These commitments of our congregations mean that members of our congregations are building relationships with people from every walk of life, including immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers. More often than ever, we know names, faces and stories. Those relationships position us to be ambassadors of love and healing not just through the ministries we offer but in the relationships we form.
It is because we believe our Fellowship is called to be bold witnesses to Christ’s love in this moment that we are sharing resources that can help you reflect on how you and your congregation are uniquely equipped to serve in this moment.
Christ has placed us in our communities and in this world right now to be embodiments of his love, instruments of his healing and demonstrations of a Baptist witness that is beautiful. I pray that we will allow Christ to calm our fears and set us free that we might love more and more as He does.