By CBF Executive Coordinator Paul Baxley

The Cooperative Baptist Fellowship is committed to ministry among immigrants and refugees.

This statement is true today and it has been true for our entire history. From our inception, we have been commissioning field personnel to serve among migrant populations of the world and for more than two decades we have had a team of field personnel serving in the United States doing ministry with people from other countries.

A significant number of CBF partner congregations are engaged in direct ministry with immigrants and refugees, either through partnerships with our field personnel, relationships with local faith-based nonprofits or ministries they have developed themselves. Some of those ministries are explicitly focused on immigrants and refugees, while others serve immigrants in the context of ministries with a wider focus such as feeding ministries, housing ministries and educational programs.

In these days there are voices and powers increasingly politicizing questions about immigration. Cooperative Baptist Fellowship partner congregations who engage these ministries range from our most theologically conservative to our most theologically progressive and represent everyone in between. People who volunteer in those ministries voted in every way imaginable with every possible emotion in the most recent and previous elections.

Beyond the work of our field personnel and the ministry of our congregations, our Fellowship also stewards partnerships with other organizations who are similarly involved in these ministries.

Why is this so?

As followers of Jesus the most important answer is that we are doing what Jesus tells us to do. Most directly, Jesus said in Matthew 25: “I was a stranger and you welcomed me.” Many people forget that as a child, Jesus himself lived life as a refugee. His parents took him in his earliest years and fled the country of his birth because of the cruelty of Herod’s regime.

In the faces of immigrants and refugees who are fleeing political or religious persecution, or who are seeking sanctuary from tyrants, we see nothing less than the face of Jesus. To welcome a stranger is to welcome Jesus.

Furthermore, in his first mission sermon, Jesus announced that his calling was to “bring good news to the poor, release to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind and to let the oppressed go free.” When we show hospitality to immigrants and refugees, when we help them find home, health, life and opportunity among us, we are fulfilling that mission of Jesus.

Jesus’ command to welcome strangers and therefore welcome him, continues a prominent theme of Old Testament scriptures. In Exodus and Deuteronomy, the Hebrew people are charged to welcome strangers because they were once strangers in Egypt. The prophet Micah commands that faithful people “do justice, love kindness and walk humbly with God.”

Other New Testament scriptures affirm Jesus’ mandate as well. In Romans 12:9, Paul commands that we show hospitality to strangers. In Ephesians 2:19, Paul promises “you are no longer strangers and sojourners but fellow citizens with the saints.” In Hebrews 13, the writer affirms that when we show hospitality to strangers, we entertain angels without knowing it.

Jesus told us to and the Bible commands us to minister among immigrants and refugees. Those are the most powerful reasons Baptist Christians do anything.

We have other reasons as well. When we meet immigrants and refugees from around the world, we see children of God, made in the image of God, loved unconditionally by God as are all people of the world. We know the Gospel of Jesus Christ is intended as “good news of great joy for all people” because that’s what the Christmas angels told us.

With the most quoted words of Scripture of all, we know that “God so loved the world.” For this, reason among many others, we reject the dangerous ideology of white supremacy or any suggestion that God loves people of one nation more than God loves people of other nations.

The most essential identifying mark for Christians is not documents we hold but rather the professions of faith we make in Jesus and a life we live together in the power of Christ.

Since the beginning, the church has been a global community. Ever since Jesus gave the Great Commission, the church has had a global vision, as he charged us to make disciples among people of all nations.

We have sisters and brothers in Christ from every nation, who speak every language, so we are not surprised that many of the immigrants and refugees we meet in our communities share a common commitment to follow Jesus and just like us are “citizens of the household of God.”

The waters of baptism are more powerful than national citizenship, heart language or any other barrier.

Because God’s love is global and because the church is global, we also know that God has always worked in the world by sending people across borders and boundaries. That was true early in the biblical story when God called Abram to leave his country and go “to the land I will show you.” It was true when Paul travelled across the known world working with people from many cultures to start churches.

There has always been an unmistakable connection between the mission of God and migration. God sends people from us and to us to do God’s work among us. That’s why when we receive strangers we entertain angels. God sends people from other places with other gifts to strengthen our faith and advance the ways we serve God’s mission.

Prior to my call to serve as CBF Executive Coordinator I had the privilege of joining a group of lay leaders from a church in a visit with one of CBF’s Global Missions field personnel who served among migrants in another country. One of my deacons asked the field personnel: “Why do you think God is calling CBF to serve among migrants?”

The answer: “Because God is sending those migrants to renew the church here.” Put differently: “Show hospitality to strangers because in doing so you entertain angels without knowing it.”

As I stated above, in these days there are voices and powers increasingly politicizing questions about immigration. For almost all Cooperative Baptists I have met, this question is not first and foremost political. Our ministries with immigrants and refugees are a matter of deep faith in that they flow from the commands of Jesus and the teachings of Scripture.

Our Fellowship has been faithfully engaged in these ministries long before most of today’s state and federal leaders entered public office, and our congregants participating in these vital ministries come from both major political parties in the United States. The mandate to which we respond was issued thousands of years ago and its truth has been borne out across history.

Why do we still do ministry among immigrants and refugees? Jesus commands it. The Bible requires it. God’s love is Global. The church is Global. Or, as the hymn sung in many of our congregations puts it powerfully: “On Christ the solid rock I stand, all other ground is sinking sand.”

Rev. Dr. Paul Baxley serves as Executive Coordinator of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship