Church work with refugees

Solange Agnès Belluz D.Min.

The main purpose of this portfolio was to develop a cross-cultural congregational engagement framework that would facilitate greater participation of congregants in hospitality with newcomers and refugees at The Peoples Church in Toronto. A central principle that emerged was the need to shift our ministry perspective from doing things to people to doing things with people. The framework developed as a result of this research included eight key principle and four key components: Learn, Engage, Assess and Participate (LEAP).

Hospitality is about welcoming others and making them feel at home. As someone who came to Canada over 30 years ago as an international student, I am sensitive to the needs of newcomers and refugees and the role that congregants could play in creating welcoming and inclusive spaces for them. I am also a firm believer that leadership is influence and that, through cross-cultural transformational leadership, we could create an environment where congregants would be motivated to welcome well.

This research demonstrated that there is value in meeting the physical needs of newcomers and refugees. However, effective engagement with the migrants and displaced needs to go beyond food, housing, and education. The research highlighted the need to create spaces where they belong; where they could be anchored to; where they can recover the feeling of belonging that has been lost in migration.
 

Deborah Suikhinmawi D.Min.

Preaching provides the opportunity to express God’s everlasting love, care, and presence, and to nourish a healthy self-esteem in the hearers as beloved children of God. This thesis project focuses on preaching that aims at instilling in its hearers the truth of their identity as people valued by God. It is concerned with the development of a message that restores self-esteem to persons who have experienced persecution, discrimination, and systematic oppression that have stripped them of their self-worth. Preaching the affirming truth of God’s love, care, and presence has the power to heal, remove self-doubts, restore confidence, and rejuvenate spirits of those individuals being dismissed as refugees, immigrants, or socially and culturally other.

Nakhati Jon D.Ed.Min.

Islamic marriage is a contract, and biblical marriage is a covenant. These two principles intersect and form a point of reestablishment in the marriages of believers from a Muslim background (BMBs).

Islamic contractual marriage ideas remain in marital relationships of BMBs. The intent of this study is to explore and understand the influence of Islamic contractual marriage on believers who now embrace the ideas of Christian covenant marriage.

The qualitative research will explore the believers’ understanding of their Islamic contractual marriage and their beliefs concerning biblical covenant marriage. BMBs retain a contractual view of marriage because they have not applied the ideas of covenant marriage, thereby affecting negatively their spousal relationships. Additionally, the use of certain cultural and religious terms reinforces their understanding of their marital relationship, often reflecting either a contractual or covenant perspective.

For BMBs and missionaries there is a deficiency of available literature that compares and explains the differences between the Islamic and biblical views of marriage. This study hopes to be a foundational resource to highlight areas which possibly are retained in these marriages.

Ye Yeong Park

This thesis begins with raising question of how to overcome the identity crisis of North Korean refugees as the reunification is drawing closer. From the sense of difference, this paper analyses the identity crisis of North Korean refugees who are currently residing in South Korea and observe how they become surmounting the conflict through bible studies. North Korean Refugees will play a critical role as a bridge in interaction with North Koreans as the reunification is coming closer. Accordingly, this paper aims to prove that North Korean Refugee Christians, who have experienced both systems of socialism and capitalism, are right persons to be acted a medium that eventually connects Two Koreas.

[Note about entry: Abstract submitted to the Atla RIM database on behalf of the author. The text appears in its entirety as it does in the original abstract page of the author’s project paper. Neither words nor content have been edited.]

Walter J. Mark Knutson III

We live in the midst of a global refugee crisis, with 68 million people displaced by violence, poverty, and hate. Twelve million vital members of our communities in the US are living in constant fear. Simultaneously, our nation demonizes immigrants by taking actions that viciously harm families while assaulting our core values as people of faith. Using the experience of Augustana Lutheran Church in Portland, Oregon, a Sanctuary Congregation since 1996, the author, who serves as pastor, designed a speaking and teaching process to inspire congregations and judicatories to publicly stand in solidarity with immigrants by embracing the Sanctuary movement.

[Note about entry: Abstract submitted to the Atla RIM database on behalf of the author. The text appears in its entirety as it does in the original abstract page of the author’s project paper. Neither words nor content have been edited.]

Biak Lian Thang D.Min.

This thesis project focuses on preaching to offer assurance of grace to the people who are living in the midst of struggle, and to help them see ‘who they are, what they are, and where they are’ as Burmese-Chin refugees in the U.S.A. It is based on the belief that preaching assurance of grace and of God’s saving act in their journey of life to encourage in a foreign land and assures the congregation of God’s presence and care. The thesis project seeks to show that preaching can offer the assurance of grace that helps a congregation experience God’s grace in their lives so that they can reach the community as the faithful witnesses through the guidance of the Holy Spirit, even though they are invisible, insignificant, and minorities in the society.

Peter (Seung) Park

The purpose of this dissertation is to develop effective evangelism methods for North Korean refugees. The writer revisited Korean Christianity and reclaimed the Trinitarian concepts of relationship with respect to healing and recovery. One of the findings is that the precepts of early Korean Christianity was based on the doctrine of the Trinity, which seemed to be missing in relation to the North Korean refugees' ministry. The people who utilize the research could help the North Korean refugees understand and recognize the biblical doctrine of the Trinity, seeing its contrast with the false Trinitarian concepts of the Juchean ideology.

Carol A Mack

Becoming neighbors in biblical perspective is the believer's task, which encompasses the life-long cultivation of Christian virtues that touch humanity and exemplify Kingdom character. With the assumption that knowledge and understanding of another's experiences generally diminishes negative feelings and prejudices, this project employed the Scale of Ethnocultural Empathy (SEE) created by Dr. Yu-Wei Wang as a pre- and post-test. Tests measured participants' attitudes toward people of different ethnic origin and cultures than their own. After engaging participants in a six-week series on global people movements and cross-cultural engagement with refugees, t-tests results showed an overall increase in ethnocultural empathy.

Peter M Wathabi

A true church of Jesus Christ is one that obeys His command in Mathew 28:18-20 to make disciples of all nations. As the world continues to face human crisis and internal conflicts, a new call to disciple displaced persons is becoming urgent. This candidate developed and taught eight Swahili lessons, based on the parables of Jesus Christ, to help select members of Voices of Hope Community Church in their heart language become mature disciples of Jesus Christ. The purpose is to make them change both their attitude and character as they serve Jesus Christ on earth.

Tracy L Hughes

Solidarity circles, a revised refugee ministry praxis for United Church of Christ congregations, offers a practical approach of accompanying refugee women survivors of war in the process of healing from traumatic experiences through a multi-disciplinary congregation-based ministry including the formation of small group woman-to-woman circles and sister church relationships. This thesis-project articulates how African women in diaspora are able to transform their traumatic past so that their memories take on new meaning thereby renewing their lives. Solidarity circles will hopefully be a useful resource for congregational leaders who seek to create a vibrant refugee ministry in their communities.