By Grayson Hester
For most CBF folks, the onslaught of news related to recent immigration policies is just that – news. For those Christians living in non-border states, or states with low migrant populations, headlines are mere information. But for Christians such as Tiffani Harris, DaySpring’s associate pastor for community life in Waco, Texas, the names listed in news stories are friends; the headlines are families; the statistics are church members. She knows the need to take care of them and protect them is nothing short of the work of the Gospel.
“In many ways, what we’re doing is the essence of Christianity — loving and caring for the other person,” Harris said. “Our congregation is really experiencing what it means to be a follower of Christ, to love and care for the least of these. It’s not just immigrants who are on the margins, but they are some of them.”
For Harris and the DaySpring community, this call has predated the current Trump administration in that it is not an anti-Trump love and care, but a pro-Jesus love and care. Since 2019, the church has been serving as a mid-term shelter for women and children seeking refuge from their home countries (predominantly Central and South American). Since 2021, it’s been doing it in an official capacity with Naomi House, a literal house dedicated to this purpose in the memory of Biblical characters, Naomi and Ruth.
“Often Ruth is the heroine of their story, but Naomi, in her bitterness and grief, changed her name to Mara and chose to bring this young Ruth with her back to her people and vouched for this foreigner in this land,” Harris said. “The people of God are the real heroes. They wrapped their arms around these two women and loved them back to health. It was a trauma-healing community. It was the community that did that with the Holy Spirit working through them.”
DaySpring has embraced this distinctly Christian vision for welcoming the “stranger” and, six years of ministry later, has begun to witness undeniable fruits of this Holy Spirit work.
The first family they hosted had fled from their home country and, as such, were labeled by the United Nations as a persecuted people group. But, within the arms of a trauma-healing community, they have been labeled beloved, friend, Sunday school teacher, worship leader.
These refugees seek precisely what most, if not all, people seek – stability, love, community and the chance for their family to thrive. The welcome they’ve found at DaySpring has helped them find it. “It’s beautiful to see; they take so much leadership in leading and teaching and worship, and we’re really, really proud of them,” Harris said. “And grateful. They’re on some of our leadership teams, helping us plan together. It’s been fun to be in it long enough to see the fruits.”
It’s also a CBF ministry, its assistance motivated not by charity or pity, but by partnership and presence. This family – whom Harris did not name for reasons of safety – is teaching DaySpring just as they are being taught; they are receiving the Spirit just as they are expanding the church’s view of what the Spirit can do.
Which is why mere legislation cannot stop her when she decides to move.
On February 24, a lawsuit, which CBF joined, made its way to the U.S. District Court of Maryland, which ruled in favor of the plaintiffs and against Department of Homeland Security, the federal agency over U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Because of this ruling, all CBF partner churches are restored to protected status, meaning that ICE, or any other agency working with them, cannot “enter houses of worship to carry out enforcement operations unless they have first obtained a warrant signed by a judge, or there are exigent circumstances,” according to this press release.
This, of course, includes DaySpring, and the families around whom they have wrapped their arms. “It is nice knowing that we do have that protected status, because we have some women and vulnerable children who are scared, and they bring their friends to church,” Harris said. “We don’t know what people’s immigration status is. We don’t ask. We’re there to minister.”
That ministry certainly predates the current Trump administration, but it takes on renewed importance and vitality now that the administration has returned to office, with reignited cruelty and imposition of fear.
But just as it was in Ruth and Naomi’s time, and as it was in Jesus’ time, so it is in ours. When the powers target the least of these the Gospel is needed most. And the murkier the politics, the clearer Jesus’ call. “That’s the silver lining in the political chaos: It’s even more stark and even more jarring to see the Church doing what it’s supposed to be doing, in contrast to the political chaos and vitriol,” Harris said.
In following Jesus’ footsteps, who was himself a refugee targeted by the state, it is appropriate that DaySpring’s resistance take similar forms – community, worship and shared tables.
The Church is most lively and caring when people break bread and drink, especially while doing good work, during times of social change. Demonstrating this is Carlos Navarro, pastor of West Brownsville Baptist Church. All the families who found their way to DaySpring were, in large part, because of him; the fruits of the Spirit witnessed by this community in Waco were first planted by a Baptist community hundreds of miles away at the U.S.-Mexico border.
“Pastor Navarro came up to Waco from Brownsville a month ago, and we invited everyone he had sent to us and had a dinner,” Harris said. “So many people came because of him and his ministry. They sang and voiced prayers and blessings for him. Many of those who have come through his church prayed for him. It was a prayer of thanksgiving – beautiful and full-circle.”
In total, 15 or 20 people, whom Pastor Navarro helped send and whom Pastor Harris helped heal, got to share communion at Christ’s table — where all are made one, and where the borders and barriers fall away.
Perhaps from this one story, a Gospel resistance strategy might start to form. It is simply not enough to pray, nor is it adequate solely to fight in the courts or the streets. It is also not just a fight; it is a building of community and a sharing of those things that make us most human. It is a holistic, comprehensive effort for which DaySpring and West Brownsville Baptist Churches stand as exemplars and pioneers. It is not what we are against that defines us, but whom we are for – for whatever we do unto them, we do unto Christ.
“That’s exactly what it means to be a follower of Christ. There are political responses, but the response of the Church should be an embodiment of what it means to follow Christ,” Harris said. “We’re a little piece of God’s kingdom on this earth; we interact with the world differently. We love and care where the world might hate and fear.”