Finding God in the Seeker

Photo credit: Robert Bishop

By Stephanie Evelyn McKellar

“I lift up my eyes to the hills-- where does my help come from? My help comes from the LORD, the Maker of heaven and earth. Indeed, the One who watches over Israel will neither slumber nor sleep.” - Psalm 121

When you think of the Mexico-United States border, do you feel powerlessness, Church? 

When my colleague Robert and I joined a Courts and Ports trip led by Texas Impact in August 2019, we felt the powerlessness. I saw the tents kept only steps from soil where I enjoy freedom. We heard stories of seekers, organized and hopeful, turned away and dismissed. I paid a quarter to cross from Mexico to the US, a paltry fee compared to the thousands paid and livelihood-sacrifice for the journey towards a chance at safety. 

(It’s legal to seek asylum, by the way. It’s legal to walk into the country, request asylum, and wait in safety and sponsorship as you work through the legal process.)

Since our trip, we’ve been sifting our heartbreak. We’ve been researching. We’ve connected with excellent practitioners and organizations who are already connecting the dots to housing, social support, and sustainability. The need is great; the wisdom is out there. The Missional Wisdom Foundation is creating a resource to help the Church become a surrogate community for those seeking asylum. It’s in an online education platform, and it will equip the Church to welcome, support, befriend, and empower the asylum seeker, to invite them to dwell among your community, and connect to the community resources you know so well. It will help you help them find their way and steady footing. It will help you cultivate friendship and mutual support with the asylum seeker, to broaden your understanding about humanity, belonging, and our abundant and beautiful God. 

It is the God we love who joins them on the road, who pleads for asylum alongside them, who keeps company with the downtrodden and brokenhearted. It is the God we love who can be known in the foreigner and the stranger and who can be offered hospitality. We, the Church, living to be the Body of Christ: a healthy, life-giving, mutually-equipping, sustainability-cultivating community, Christ’s family, are family to all who are weary, burdened, and in need of rest. 

My US passport makes me privileged, it does not make me more worthy. This is our brother, sister, mother, father, arriving at our border; Jesus names them as such.  We have an opportunity to meet our family in a new way, a new story, to meet our God in a new face. 

Here’s what you can do: Schedule a meeting with Robert and me and we’ll show you the course we’re putting together. Give us your feedback and let’s imagine together what it could be like to build relationship with the asylum seeker. Invite the God who wandered as a refugee to know welcome and belonging in your community. 

The Missional Wisdom Foundation is creating a resource for churches looking to co-create community with asylees, refugees, and other displaced persons near them. This living document draws upon our experience of equipping pastors and laypeople to imagine, launch, and lead alternative forms of Christian community, and is being developed in consultation with immigration experts and reform advocates. The project is funded in part by a grant from Texas Methodist Foundation.