Summit family,
I’ve got an exciting update to share with you. If you remember, during our Christmas services at DPAC we collected a special offering for one of our partner organizations. We chose to give the offering to World Relief, a faith-based non-profit that resources our church to care for refugee families resettling in the Triangle and works around the world caring for families at risk.
You responded in a huge way: in the largest DPAC offering we’ve ever head, you gave more than $50,000 to support World Relief! Just a couple weeks ago, several of our refugee ministry leaders surprised our staff with the check, and we were able to pray together for their ministry in this new year. The director of the organization sent the Summit a thank you note simply titled “Unbelievable.” That’s the kind of God we serve: he takes the unbelievable and crafts it into reality.
I’m encouraged by your generosity, but I’m also encouraged by your willingness to love and serve these families. Our local outreach team told me that more than 60 new Summit members have joined World Relief teams welcoming refugee families to our community. As we often say around here, “People are the mission.” What that means is that while money goes a long way, people will ultimately make a difference in the lives of people. In many ways, I’m more excited about the long-term potential of these 60 people than those 50,000 dollars.
A lot has been said recently about the political issue of immigration and refugees. From our perspective, as a church, I want us to realize that the refugees relocating to the Triangle present us with both a responsibility and an opportunity. Yes, our government has its own questions to answer regarding the best policies to take regarding refugees. Those are important questions and they need careful thought. But those are not the same questions presented to us in the church. Our responsibility—what Jesus expects of each and every one of us in the church—is to respond in love to men and women and children that God puts into our community, however they got here.
The refugees in our country and in our neighborhoods are people created in God’s image—people that Jesus loved so much that he left heaven, crossing every imaginable border to seek after them. Those of us who know that love must demonstrate compassion and sacrificial hospitality, because that’s precisely what Jesus extended to us. Think about it: we were refugees seeking a home in God’s presence, having been exiled through our own sinful choices. And at great cost to himself, Jesus brought us in.
As God has been to us, that is how we should be toward others. The presence of refugees in our midst is not a moment for us to shrink back in fear, but to recognize that God has placed this amazing opportunity in our laps. Here, in our own backyard, are people from closed countries—countries where we’re sending our own church planters—who would never have had a chance to hear the gospel otherwise…and now they’re your neighbors. It’s not by accident.
Join me in praying for the staff at World Relief, for our refugee ministry teams, and for people from every tribe, tongue and nation to be saved – right here in our backyard!
