1 - Who Is My Neighbor?

2022 No 1

“But wishing to justify himself, he said to Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”
--Luke 10:29

Who is my neighbor? In almost any city around the world, most pastors can look outside their door and ask the same question. In most places, they are not like us. In one church where I served, the school system had students from families that spoke over 100 different languages. They, and their parents, were first-generation immigrants in our community. As a church, we were called to do more than just see them; we were to love them in such a way that they would discover the hope of the gospel. It was not easy. The difficulty was not a matter of the heart; it was a matter of understanding and capacity.

Several years ago, I stepped away from my role as pastor of that local church to take on a much larger role. Today, my wife and I spend our time serving alongside global pastors as they lead their churches. Their passion is to share the love of Christ in their communities, minister to their neighbors, and disciple those who come to faith. And as it was in our community, one of their biggest challenges is to understand their neighbors. These pastors want to know who their neighbors are, how and why they arrived, and what are their burdens. Our goal is to find the answers that can guide these pastors and their ministries. And yet, those answers can be elusive and their application difficult.

Our Position Determines Our Perspective

Our goal has been to fly in the proverbial 40,000-foot range. That way, we can see the bigger picture while occasionally landing to engage both migrants and ministry practitioners on the ground.

One of the first challenges we face is that many people in our churches view migration through the shaded lens of experience. It is often a stereotypical view that places neighbors into a categorical box of ethnicity, politics, geography, or need. The difficulty is that once migrants are placed into a box and given a label, one can easily justify one’s biases and perceptions about that box. When that happens, one’s neighbor ceases to be a person and becomes a “poor migrant," or an “illegal migrant," or an “unwanted migrant." Have you ever noticed how hard it is hard to love a label! Somehow, we must begin to lead our people to the place where their neighbor has a name, has a story, and has the same value to us as they do to our Lord.

A second challenge we face is that many who serve in ministry positions at the church tend to view migration through the lower part of their bifocals. They become so strategically focused that they can only see certain things. Some are only focused on specific ethnic groups in their community. One may undoubtedly find Africans in New York City, or Paris, or Istanbul, and then summarily miss all the other ethnic groups who live beside them. Others are only focused on refugees, trafficking victims, or street vendors. In so doing, they miss the multitudes of students, professionals, and laborers who arrive legally and are working so hard to be successful. Care must be taken because those in ministry, with good intentions, can become tunnel-visioned. This view can limit their perception of the larger community and how the Lord may be seeking to engage them.

A third challenge we face is that many in the academy view migration through a microscope. In so doing, researchers can get very close to the issues surrounding migration. Much literature speaks to the various components of migration, parsing in detail the drivers of movement, the sociological impacts, the theological implications, and a host of other subjects of precision. A simple search of “migration” on JSTOR, an academic database of journals, generates over 600,000 results.^[1] This observation is neither a criticism nor a call for scholars to do differently. It is simply a recognition that if not careful, one can fall into the proverbial trap of not seeing the forest for the trees! From such a position, one's perspective can quickly become purely academic. When that happens, migrants become a topic to be studied rather than a people to be loved.

For our work, I have found that it is essential to find a place that allows a balance of perspective between the high view of migration and an on-the-ground, individual ministry among migrants. Each is dependent upon the other. In April 1960, the Television Infrared Observational Satellite (TIROS) came online. It began to take the first photos of the Earth from space. It revolutionized the science of meteorology. Morris Tepper, the deputy director of space applications programs at NASA, remarked, "pictures taken by the TIROS satellites showed that the Earth's cloud cover was highly organized on a global scale. Coherent cloud systems were found to extend over thousands of miles and were related to other systems of similar dimensions.”^[2] Scientists first applied this new technology to understand hurricane development and the predictions of landfalls. Until that time, local meteorologists had been experts in their regions due to their experience and vast knowledge of regional climate patterns. With this new "high view," they could now connect their local weather to what was happening halfway around the world.

The analogy helps us to understand that our position determines our perspective. A high view of migration allows one to understand the principles at play in our migratory neighbors' lives. Understanding the broad constructs of how and why people move can grant insight into building the relationships necessary to meet their spiritual needs. Care must be given, however, not to get too high. Even the forest will get lost in the larger picture if one gets too far away. Our goal has been to fly in the proverbial 40,000-foot range. That way, we can see the bigger picture while occasionally landing to engage both migrants and ministry practitioners on the ground. It is a process of discerning principles that are true among most migrants and then seeking validation by experts in their local contexts.

Today, there is a need for those who can bridge the gap between research and pragmatic ministry, who can fly high enough to see the larger global landscape and yet stay low enough to influence local strategy. Too long in one position will potentially lead to a distortion of perception and a consequential loss of effectiveness. We pray that finding the middle ground will allow us to discern the kinds of principles that may be true for all people, in all places, and at all times. Such may be a stretch. But even if we can identify a few principles that could be globally applied in a ministry context, we hope that they would serve the local church well in her community.

Some may question, “Why then is your focus on sub-Saharan Africans?". The answer is primarily pragmatic and intended to maintain the above balance. There are over one billion people on the move in our world today. That number is greater than the population of the world as a whole in 1800! By focusing on SSA, we can reduce the number of migrants by a factor of five… without losing any of the details. It would appear that almost every form of migration can be found in Africa, and the principles behind those movements can be applied in virtually every global context. Our focus on sub-Saharans allows us to maintain an optimum altitude to understand these movements and communicate what we are learning to those on the ground.

This blog, M2M3.org, has been established to bridge the gap between migration research and pragmatic ministry in the local church. At a high level, movements can be identified, trends can be established, and principles can be discerned. We can discuss things like migration, involuntary displacement, refugees, and other broad topics at that altitude. The challenge is that individuals become indistinguishable from one another from a distance as a tree might blend into the forest. And as mentioned above, understanding the forest is a good thing… but not at the expense of the individual. Therefore, we must balance the high view with what is happening on the ground. It is here that migrants become people. They are human beings who desire the best for their children, seek to provide for their aging parents, suffer when cold and hungry, and are loved by our Father. They are our neighbors. As such, we hold in our hands the only thing that can truly satisfy all their needs, that is the hope of the gospel and the life of Jesus Christ.

May this article be the first of many that might offer the kind of information the local church and missions practitioners can use to offer such hope to a world on the move.