Though born in Malawi, for the past eight years, I actually have made Liverpool my home. In this UK port city where, for hundreds of years, thousands and thousands of immigrants have passed through and at times settled, the colourful migrant community is small but connected. Each June, for example, we rejoice the Africa Oyé festival, a live music event that pulls tens of hundreds to town annually.
At the identical time, a lot of us who recently arrived or whose families are relative newcomers know the fragility of our feelings of belonging. Three years ago, for instance, three Black players on the English team missed their penalty kicks in the course of the European Championship match shootout and were subject to a torrent of racist insults.
In recent weeks, Liverpool has been the epicenter of the anti-migrant riots which have rocked the nation following the horrific stabbing of three young white British girls by a Black British teenager of Rwandan heritage in a close-by suburb. Since then, furor over these devastating murders has changed into nationwide riots targeting Black and brown communities (including each those born and raised within the country and people newly arrived) and their properties.
As a frontrunner in a multicultural Liverpool church, I actually have found the past weeks to be strenuous. We have contended with the logistical nightmare of creating sure that migrant communities (my circle of relatives included) are protected, including temporarily relocating children and the elderly to calmer neighborhoods and ensuring their houses and cars are protected. We have also been trying to offer immediate and future psychological support for those traumatized. Among other violent actions, far-right protesters have attacked migrants, burned their cars, and smashed their windows in addition to vandalized organizations and hotels providing support and housing to asylum seekers.
Serving my community in this manner is, after all, not only draining but additionally isolating. I attend certainly one of only a number of congregations which have intentionally established a spot where white, Black, and brown Christians, native-born and migrant, come together to worship. But many UK churches are segregated, and I do know many Black and brown Christians who’ve experienced racism while attending majority-white congregations.
However, as a missiologist who’s a migrant and is currently ministering to migrants, I feel that the white UK church may have already got what it must initiate hard conversations inside their churches and to defend migrants to the country at large. For greater than two centuries, this country has sent quite a few prolific missionaries all over the world. And if there may be one community outside the diplomatic circles within the West that knows a thing or two concerning the migrants and where they’re coming from, it’s missions organizations which have trained and sent hundreds of British people to serve in mission all over the world for a lot of a long time.
Returning missionaries arrive back home within the UK having learned latest languages, made latest friends, found latest families, and developed acute awareness of the challenges of acclimating to foreign cultures. Of course, not all missionaries who’re on furlough within the UK have the identical capability for ministry while at home as they do on the mission field. Yet returned and retired missionaries—and particularly those leading missions agencies—should recognize the identical opportunities for missional presence in their very own neighborhoods.
What if these missionaries and missions agencies used this information to discover with the migrants of their neighborhoods? What in the event that they used these lived experiences to support communities like mine as we navigate the anxiety of national unrest? What if these Christian groups were the primary Brits to publicly condemn the racism that too often inundates this country?
Of course, engaging in mission amongst migrants requires a unique posture, skill set, and relational abilities. But it may possibly generate catalytic fruit. Migrants who come to Christ or reaffirm their faith have the credibility to achieve people from their home countries which may take missionaries a long time to realize. Standing up for migrants also rebukes the false narrative that missionaries have only a self-interested relationship with those they seek to convert and as an alternative reminds the world of the love for people themselves that propels these believers to mission.
I propose 3 ways the missions community can embody this during this fraught time within the UK.
Advocacy
For many missionaries, returning home can mean easily slipping back into familiar cultural comfort zones. Yet their experiences of living as migrants in foreign cultures, their understanding of each the migrants’ and their very own cultures, and their connections with churches amongst their very own communities are treasures that give them a singular vantage point to assist. These missionaries not only can follow the lead of those that have already organized counterprotests but additionally can protect asylum centers and mosques and offer food, water, and shelter to those in need of either substance or comfort. They can raise their voices to talk against racism, Christian nationalism, and the antimigrant rhetoric of the far right.
When far-right antimigrant groups stoke fear and hatred to the purpose that, as I wrote earlier, a few of us must temporarily leave our homes, what if missions agencies organized efforts with local churches to create protected places for migrants? What if a missions agency offered a hotline to consult with distressed migrants during a riot? Or to assist migrants searching for shelter when their homes are unsafe? Or what if missions organizations offered counseling and psychotherapy support to those affected?
Reimagining missions theology
During the 1910 World Missionary Conference, out of the 1,215 delegates in attendance, 509 were from the UK—18 greater than the United States and Canada together. In parts of Africa and Asia, many missionaries took advantage of British colonial rule to successfully spread Christianity. Their ministry was reinforced by the thousands and thousands of European Christians within the 1800s who immigrated for economic purposes.
In the top, several former British colonies corresponding to Nigeria, Uganda, Kenya, Zimbabwe, and South Africa embraced Christianity en masse. Nigeria alone, for instance, has greater than 102 million Christians, about one-and-a-half times the whole population of Britain today. Now, for a long time, many individuals from these countries have arrived within the UK, together with their faith.
God has often used events we may not appreciate or may even fear to hold the gospel all over the world. He who dispersed the Jerusalem church through persecution in Acts 11 now sends Africans and Asians—a lot of them believers—to parts of the world where Christianity has all but evaporated.
Every day we’re bombarded with pundits that ask us to view mass migration from a political and economic perspective. But a part of the mission community’s duty is to teach the church that this very migration will proceed the spread of the gospel and to see the newcomers amongst us as people whom God wants to make use of.
Bridge constructing
Returned missionaries and their missions agencies must play a vital role in creating higher understanding and respect between British Christians and the broader UK community and newcomers. Missionaries’ command of multiple languages and grasp of the intricacies of various cultures can play a critical role in helping white Brits understand the explanations and motivations of those living amongst them.
In fact, in the course of the colonial era many missionaries did this type of work. Some, like William Carey, provided language training to foreigners while translating the Bible and other books to local languages. Today, though not missionary-sending ministries as such, organizations like Welcome Churches, Sanctuary Foundation, and the International Association for Refugees help Westerners learn the way to work with the migrants.
During the recent riots, one of the best antidote has been white British people confronting racism in their very own communities and defending migrants to fellow white Brits. Missionaries’ lived experience could allow them to go one step deeper and explain from a private perspective what it’s wish to live in a latest environment as someone far-off from home. Their knowledge of straddling multiple cultures can offer a far more nuanced perspective of the migrant experience and a more detailed have a look at the alienation, loneliness, and fear that may accompany constructing an identity and lifestyle from scratch.
Returning the favor
Sadly, though I actually have met many missionaries who’ve challenged and grown my faith, I actually have also observed many missions agencies and churches ignore African migrants of their neighborhoods while sending their people to Africa to serve. Ironically, few seem focused on engaging Africans, Asians, and Latin Americans once they’ve migrated to Britain.
I remember attending a multi-agency mission conference in Manchester discussing the unfinished task of evangelizing my home country, Malawi. To my shock, the organizers of this excellent conference didn’t think to ask a few of the many Malawian pastors leading their (Malawian) congregations in Manchester.
When I lived in Minneapolis, our church sent nurses to Ghana for mission service but never cared to attach with the Ghanaian congregation that was round the corner to us. Sometimes I cynically wondered whether it was the exotic nature of working in Ghana and never necessarily working with and amongst Ghanaian those that drove most of that effort.
These oversights pain me because they appear to disregard hospitality—that’s, the chance to honor and welcome newcomers. Most missionaries know that it is a fundamental a part of mission work all over the world and that much of their work hinges on the generosity and kindness of local people. Even Jesus told his disciples to maneuver on to other homes and cities if such hospitality was lacking. “But if you enter a town and will not be welcomed, go into its streets and say, ‘Even the dust of your town we wipe from our feet as a warning to you” (Luke 10:10–11).
As someone who grew up around missionaries in Malawi, I saw how our communities went out of their solution to be hospitable to visiting Western Christians. Once, members of a church I knew sold all their goats and cows to pay for a missionary’s housing repair. My experience is removed from the minority; long before they migrated to the UK, many individuals warmly received Westerners, even at personal cost, risking their very own livelihoods to assist missionaries’ ministries thrive. Could those that were once welcomed now do the identical for these migrants?
Harvey Kwiyani is a Malawian theologian and leads the Centre for Global Witness and Human Migration (Acts 11 Project) at Church Mission Society in Oxford, England.
