Welcoming the stranger

By Adam Maarschalk

“I’ve seen the bumper stickers in Dade County in Miami, even in church parking lots, where they say, ‘Will the last American to leave Miami please bring the flag?’ I’ve seen the propositions in California that want us to build a wall to keep the world out. But they haven’t read—obviously—Psalm 24 which says, ‘The earth is the Lord’s.’ This country is not ours. It is the Lord’s.”

These are the words of Ray Bakke, chancellor and professor of Global Urban Studies at Bakke Graduate University in Seattle, Washington. Ray shared these and many other thoughts in a 23-minute Moody Radio address given on November 24, 2011. Titled “Compassion: The Drama of Urban Evangelization, Part 2,” it’s a thought-provoking message very much worth listening to (audio available here).

Ray provides many fascinating statistics demonstrating what God is doing, particularly in US cities, to bring the nations of the world to our doorstep. Ray also brings a probing challenge to the body of Christ to respond accordingly. I’d like to summarize his address here.

Ray begins his address by speaking of Onesimus, the Biblical slave of Philemon who became so dear to the apostle Paul that most of the book of Philemon is made up of Paul’s appeal for Onesimus’ freedom. Ray refers to Onesimus as “a refugee who became the Bishop of Ephesus,” as it is believed. He suggests that it was Onesimus who first gathered together the Pauline letters of the New Testament, a point that Eric Sammons of the Diocese of Venice in Florida also emphasizes. Later in his address, Ray reminds us that Jesus was born in Asia in a borrowed barn, before He and His family became refugees in Africa.

“The Lord is spreading the world out, and the frontier of world missions has shifted,” Ray adds at one point. “No longer is it across the ocean only.”

God has a history of taking care of refugees and immigrants, and calling His people to love and show hospitality to the strangers He sovereignly brings to live among them. A reading of the Law given through Moses to ancient Israel will confirm this. How is God granting such opportunities to the body of Christ in America today? Ray shares these highlights:

A. There are more Jews living in New York City than in Israel, more in Miami than in Tel Aviv.

B. The United States is the second largest African nation, after Nigeria.

C. The US is the third largest Spanish-speaking country in the world.

D. Pittsburg has more than 50,000 Serbs.

E. There are more than 250,000 Arabs, Chaldeans, and Iraqis living in the Dearborn, Michigan area.

F. Representatives of 123 nations (i.e. 2/3 of the world) live in just one New York City zip code, in the Flushing neighborhood in North Central Queens, home of the World’s Fair in 1964-65.

G. Chicago, Los Angeles, Seattle, and other cities have become “catch basins of the world.”

Ray goes on to describe what God is doing in other parts of the West and elsewhere (Yes, despite strong rhetoric in certain Evangelical circles to the contrary, I do believe God is behind these things):

A. London: The east side of the city is largely Asian, the west side is largely Arab, and the south features a large number of black and Caribbean peoples. “There were 52 nations in the British empire. Now all 52 nations live in London,” but “the British church is not ready for this.”

B. France: “There are 46 countries in the world on 5 continents that speak French, and 26 of them are in west Africa… The French, for 150 years, were messing up those countries in many interesting ways. Now those people are coming back to France, and the people in France don’t like that one bit.” (Does the body of Christ there have a different stance?)

C. The Chinese people: “God has scattered about 80 million Chinese into all the major cities in the world,” Ray adds, and many of the believers among them are “linked up by fax machines and email and a common mailing list of the Chinese Coordinating Committee for World Evangelism in Hong Kong [this is the first I’ve heard about this]… Could God be scattering the Chinese through the cities of the world to prepare for an Asian Pentecost in the 21st century?” In Birmingham, Alabama, there were 6 Chinese restaurants in 1990. Six years later there were 66.

D. Rapid urbanization: In 1900, only 9% of the world’s population lived in cities. Now over 50% do. Presently there are some 400 cities with 1 million people or more, 100 cities with more than 2 million, and 23 cities with at least 10 million people.

Ray believes that there are at least five specializations in urban ministry:

1. Working with at-risk people who have come to our cities

2. Community organizing and church-based development (Ray says, “Christians can actually adopt the last, least, and lost in the worst neighborhoods in our cities, and move into those cities, and establish a beachhead of the gospel, and then rebuild those neighborhoods.”)

3. Multi-lingual (Ray cites 1st Baptist Church in Flushing, NY, with 63 nations in membership)

4. Laity (many are also called into professions to take personal faith into public places)

5. Pastors (they can learn how to enable congregations to worship beyond our own limited cultural experience)

On a sobering note, Ray adds that gated communities in the US are growing faster than ghettos at this time. “Middle-class Americans, including Christians, flee the cities, just when the Lord sent the world to the cities.” May it be that this trend does not hold true among God’s people, and that we engage with the lost, the hurting, and the needy instead of retreating from them. May God open our eyes to see the incredible open door He has given us to minister the gospel to growing numbers of unreached people just down the street, a few blocks away, or in the nearest city.

“Just when it was expensive to send missionaries over the ocean, they [the nations] are coming here at their own expense. It’s the great bargain in world missions. But will the church be there for them?”

This is a condensed form of an article that originally appeared here. Used with permission