Looking for home

                                                     

               

Maya, age 7, loves bananas, cartoons and her pink teddy bear.

She had to leave the teddy bear back in Syria when her family fled to Lebanon to escape the worsening civil war. “It’s probably riddled with bullets now,” Maya says. She’s probably right: Homs, the city they left, is now essentially a pile of rubble.

At least she has a stuffed blue Smurf to keep her company. But she doesn’t have many human friends her age in the “home” she occupies with her parents and her teenage brother, Hammoudeh. For more than 1,000 days, they have lived with other Syrian refugees in the crumbling Gaza Hospital in Beirut. It ceased to be a medical facility during Lebanon’s own civil war decades ago, but has played host to generations of refugees from the region’s conflicts.

It’s more comfortable than the tents, sheds and hovels many Syrian refugees endure in Lebanon. But Maya — a goofy, giggly girl with tons of energy — feels like she’s growing up in a prison.

“I’m a kid! I want to have fun,” Maya complains. “Who am I supposed to play with? I’m surrounded by 10 walls. … When I get bored, I go outside. I don’t find anyone so I come back in. I keep going in, out, in, out. I drive Mum crazy!”

Syria’s civil war bled into a fifth year in March, so Maya has little chance of going home anytime soon. She doesn’t understand the larger forces that are destroying her homeland, or why she and her brother can’t go to school, or why her mother seems sad most of the time. She laughs and dreams and makes the best of an awful situation. But she knows something is wrong with a world that snatches a home and a teddy bear from a little girl. You can see it in her eyes.

Let Maya tell you her own story here. It’s one of five brief, quietly powerful video portraits of Syrian refugees in Lebanon, part of the Al Jazeera series “Life on Hold.” Watch them all if you want a glimpse of what it means to live in exile. You can even post a message to Maya.

You will also meet young Omar, who misses his assistant chef’s job and his sweetheart back in Damascus. He cares for a leg shattered by an exploding shell before he fled Syria, reads the Quran, prays, checks out the latest songs and videos online, and waits. Haifa, a widow who closed the hotel she owned in Damascus to seek safety for her three children, misses home so desperately that she wants to go back — even though conditions are far worse now than when she departed. “At least if I die, I die in Syria,” she says. Hajj, an older man who cares for his sick wife, wonders if his 200 olive trees have withered and died. He has lost 38 family members in the conflict.

Al Furati, an award-winning poet and former government worker, cries for lost friends, co-workers and simple pleasures back home. He worries about his children missing years of school, part of an entire lost generation of young Syrians. He sits in a tent with his wife and children, writing mournful verses late into the night: “Why is my country draped in the black of night? And why are Syria’s hands hennaed with blood? … Your children are now crying and your women are wailing, your precious soil is awash with the blood of your men. I feel your heart is breaking like the valley of lament, I know that your wound is too deep to heal.”

Those words reminded me of the lament of another refugee poet: “By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down and wept, when we remembered Zion” (Psalm 137:1 NASB). Carried away into forced exile 26 centuries ago, the psalmist and his Israelite brothers and sisters could only remember their beloved land — and hope one day to return.

I’ve become acquainted with many refugees over the years, whether in dusty camps and border towns or after they resettled in other places — such as the city where I live. They include Vietnamese, Cambodians, Laotians, Cubans, Afghanis, Iraqis, Kurds, Palestinians, Burmese, Nepalis, Syrians. I’m proud to count some of them as dear friends. Before our own children came along, my wife and I were foster parents to two Vietnamese refugee kids for a time.

I don’t pretend to understand the refugee experience, however, or the trauma, despair, isolation and loss that come with it. It is impossible to fathom unless you have gone through it.

But God understands. He loves. And He gives hope. He commands again and again in His Word that we welcome and shelter the alien, the stranger and the outcast. Jesus Christ, who experienced rejection by His own that we can only imagine, calls us to befriend the wanderers of this world — and there are more of them than ever.

Millions of Syrians have been driven from their homes since the civil war began. If you want to help them, or any refugees, here are 10 practical ways to do so. And here are a few more: Listen to their stories. Cry with them. Be a friend. Offer the hope only God can give.

Love transcends all borders.

The rough edges of globalization

                                                     

Hannan* is hanging on, unsure what tomorrow will bring.

A doctoral student from the Middle East, she studies at a university in a major European city. Her potential is unlimited, but her resources are razor-thin. She and her husband, also a student, live off a tiny stipend they receive from their home country’s government. But political unrest has increased there, and no money has arrived for months. They’re using up what they managed to save last year; funds are almost gone.

Hannan’s husband is completing his degree, but has no immediate prospect of a job — either back home, where things are falling apart, or in Europe. How will they survive?

A local church has befriended the Muslim couple, making sure they have enough food during the lean months. Moved by the love of Christians, Hannan and her husband have begun comparing the teachings of Jesus with their own beliefs. Their church friends hope they will accept a New Testament to learn more about the gospel.

There are millions of Hannans out there. They live on the periphery of a better life, but it often lies just out of reach. They are students, immigrants and their children, refugees, migrant and contract workers. They’re looking for prosperity or at least basic economic security. They’re also looking for purpose and hope. But unlike Hannan, most of them have no one to tell them about Jesus, even if they currently live in free societies.  

To echo a common phrase among economic and sociopolitical analysts, they live on the “rough edges of globalization.”

More than 200 million people are part of this global migration, according to John Brady, IMB vice president for global strategy. Some of them quickly find opportunities in the places they come to.

But many “are being left behind,” says Brady. “When I look at the unevenness of the benefits of globalization, I see a lot of the rough edges. And sometimes those rough edges are in pockets that are just a few feet away from the very smooth edges. We’ve got to find ways to get into those pockets just outside the wealthy core of the industrial world and the information world.”

First, these migrating millions want decent jobs. “But particularly in the populations that have vast numbers of young people, we see not only underemployment but just the sheer inability to be employed, so there’s a wasting away of human potential,” Brady reports. “They don’t have jobs; they don’t have hope; they don’t have education. They feel useless.”

Left on the edge of prosperity looking in, some turn to crime. Others turn to extremism if they fall under the influence of militant ideologies. Most struggle quietly with hopelessness and despair. That’s true for people who live close to opportunity but can’t quite grasp it — and for the masses who still live far from it.

“Pressure is building in many places over the world where there’s just this booming number of young people, and we’ve got to find a way to get to them with the gospel,” Brady stresses. “It’s not easy, but it’s essential. Utopia is not going to just appear out of the economic progress of the world. It’s not going to be an economic solution, though economics is important. It’s not going to be a political solution, though politics is important. It is going to be a kingdom of God solution.”

The practical ways to apply God’s solution globally are countless. But they always involve people reaching across barriers and differences in the love of Christ to make disciples.

“I see the nations, and I see His love for them,” says Brady. “I see His desire for those people in the highways and the byways and the hedgerows, all those people who are hidden away — the neglected, the least of these, the ones who are the most unlikely folks. He wants us to be obedient in passing what we’ve got to someone else. When the blessing goes to that person and through that person to the next person, it becomes unstoppable.”

*name changed

New Americans

                                                    

 

The scene unfolded in the seventh-floor courtroom of the United States District Court, Eastern District of Virginia, imposing and a little intimidating in its dark-paneled solemnity.

But the mood was anything but solemn on a beautiful spring day as 72 immigrants crowded into the chamber to take the oath of U.S. citizenship, accompanied by throngs of family members, friends and assorted crying babies. “Cries of freedom,” the judge wryly observed later in the ceremony.

The citizens-to-be filled the jury box and one entire side of the courtroom. The rest of us packed every remaining seat. “Are you sufficiently uncomfortable?” asked the court official who heroically attempted to arrange us. Yes, ma’am.

I was there to cheer Helen, 20, a member of my church who emigrated from Nepal with her family nine years ago (her younger brother would become a citizen two days later). Now a rising junior in college, she’s majoring in social work and wants to serve God by serving the poor and needy. She’s already been doing that for years by helping her mother, who ministers to Nepali refugees resettling in our area.

This being a government function, paperwork and plenty of hurry-up-and-wait came first. This being Virginia — and one of the original court districts established by the Judiciary Act of 1789 — volunteers from the Daughters of the American Revolution assisted. But in the fullness of time, the moment arrived. All rose as Judge David J. Novak entered the court to welcome America’s newest citizens and administer the Oath of Allegiance to the United States. 

 “It’s a fine day to become an American. Whaddaya think?” said Novak, the grandson of Czech immigrants, as he strode to the bench.

“We’re a nation of immigrants,” he added, highlighting some of the great Americans who came from other places. New waves of immigration add vitality to our culture. What makes America different? You can go to other countries but never really become one of their own, Novak said, “but anyone can come here from any corner of the world, and you can be an American.” He outlined the rights and duties of citizenship, and then asked the group of 72 to stand and lift their right hands for the oath.

Following the 140-word pledge, Novak declared, “It is an honor to be the first to welcome you to the United States — my fellow citizens!” Applause. Smiles. Tears and hugs. Novak led the crowd in the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag and came down from the bench to shake hands with each new citizen as their names and countries of origin were read aloud. 

Despite the racial and linguistic diversity of the group, I had assumed they came from eight or 10 different countries. After all, Richmond isn’t New York, Washington or Los Angeles. I was wrong. These 72 new Americans, in this single ceremony, came from Italy, India, the Philippines, Egypt, Mexico, Iran, Ghana, Kenya, Sudan, Turkmenistan, Brazil, the Netherlands, Honduras, Ethiopia, Canada, El Salvador, Pakistan, Ecuador, China, Guyana, Bangladesh, Nigeria, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Belize, Japan, Trinidad and Tobago, Vietnam, New Zealand, Venezuela, Guatemala, Senegal, Bosnia, Croatia, South Korea, Nepal, Morocco and Jamaica.

That’s 38 countries. Count ‘em, 38. E pluribus unum, reads the Great Seal of the United States: “Out of many, one.”

The scene powerfully reminded me that the nations have come to us. Has any land ever been such a powerful magnet to people yearning for freedom and opportunity as America?

Some folks believe American society is being fragmented by the constant inflow of outsiders and that “out of many, one” is becoming “out of many, chaos.” But I’m with Judge Novak: I believe new Americans bring new energy, creativity and productivity to our culture, as they always have.

The more important question: What are God’s purposes in this historic movement of people from everywhere to a single nation?

“We are living in an unprecedented time in the history of our world,” writes IMB urban strategist Terry Sharp. “More people are living outside their country of birth than any other time; many of them are coming to America. In fact, more than 1 million immigrants come to America each year. That’s not counting more than 750,000 international students who will come to study, nor does it include the 75,000 refugees that are resettled in our country each year. Add the business travelers and tourists who are visiting. When you start adding up the numbers, it doesn’t take long to realize that God desires His people groups to hear the Gospel so much that He’s sending them to us.

“As we ponder the opportunities that God has brought to the shores of North America, it’s important to realize that the vast majority of immigrants, international students and refugees are coming from [areas unreached by the Gospel]. Wow! What an opportunity we have to share the Good News with the nations right here at home. That doesn’t mean we don’t go overseas, but it does mean we shouldn’t miss the wonderful opportunities the Father is giving His church. The nations are literally living next door.”

 What can you do?

 Start small. Smile at the woman at the grocery store who came from somewhere else. Help her find the items she needs from the bewildering array of choices. Invite that new family on your street or in your apartment complex over for a meal. Ask about their lives and experiences.

 Listen. Offer assistance with English practice. Help their kids with homework. Offer advice on starting a bank account, finding a doctor, getting a driver’s license.

 Be a friend. Many immigrants and refugees from community-oriented cultures struggle with the hyper-individualism and isolation of American culture. (Find many more ideas and resources here: http://www.ethnecity.com/.)

The newcomer you welcome might be a high-flying business executive, or a struggling refugee. Either way, they need a friend.

And chances are, they need Jesus. 

Invisible people

Here’s a handy back-to-school tip: Make friends with that pimple-faced kid sitting alone in the back of the classroom.

You know the one. Nobody wants to be around him because he’s weird. He doesn’t belong to a group, except for maybe the losers. He smells funny. All the cool people make fun of him. The jocks push him around. If you talk to him, he either freezes up or gives you an excruciatingly detailed description of his comic book collection.

Talk to him anyway. Not out of pity. Not because he might become the next Bill Gates. Do it because Jesus would.

The Lord left the flock to search for the lost sheep. He associated with the lowly and He touched lepers. He endured personal rejection and shame, even unto the cross. So if Jesus were in your classroom this year, where do you think He would sit? If He lived in your town, where would He hang out?

God loves the whole world, but He has special compassion for the rejected, the forgotten and the neglected. “He defends the cause of the fatherless and the widow, and loves the foreigner residing among you, giving them food and clothing” (Deuteronomy 10:18). He commanded Israel to establish “cities of refuge” for those fleeing for their lives from other lands.

Ten minutes outside an African city lies a place that’s easy to miss. Few people talk about it. It’s called the Outcast Camp. It is home to 90 women and children who have been accused of witchcraft.

“The majority of these women have been abandoned by their husbands, parents and friends. They are forced to farm the chief’s land in return for their safety. They are outcasts of society,” writes a missionary. “We go twice a month to share Bible stories. We facilitate volunteers and churches in America coming to help ensure these women are loved and cared for. When a woman is able to leave the camp and return to her village, we help her transition back. We are excited for this opportunity.

“Please pray for these women and children. Pray for their eyes to be opened to the truths of the Gospel. Pray they would know that though they are outcasts in society, in God’s eyes, they are worthy and someone for whom Christ died.”

Whole peoples and ethnic groups have been treated as outcasts through the ages. The Jews. The Roma (Gypsies) of Europe. Bedouin of the Middle East. The Kurds, caught between multiple nations. Untouchables in caste-ruled parts of India. Tribal peoples. Mountain peoples.

Mountain communities “were often isolated not only from the outside world but also from each other, even when they were not very far apart as the crow flies, but were separated by rugged mountain terrain,” says economist Thomas Sowell, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. “A pattern of poverty and backwardness could be found from the Appalachian Mountains in the United States to the Rif Mountains of Morocco, the Pindus Mountains of Greece and the mountains and uplands of Ceylon, Taiwan, Albania and Scotland.”

Even when they migrate to dominant cultural centers — willingly or after being driven from their traditional homes by war, persecution and other factors — forgotten people often remain invisible in plain sight.

The United States leads all nations of the world as a destination for migrants, the Pew Research Center reported last year. With 43 million foreign-born residents, America is home to one of every five migrants worldwide. According to mission research, nearly 600 unengaged, unreached people groups also can be found in North America. They have yet to hear the Gospel in ways they can understand it and respond to it. Up to eight of every 10 refugees resettled in the United States come from unreached areas of the world.

Yet 20 percent of all the non-Christians in North America don’t even “personally know” a Christian, according to new research from Gordon-Conwell’s Center for the Study of Global Christianity. The top reason: immigration. Newly arrived Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims or non-religious people move into ethnic enclaves — or right next door — and no Christian attempts to meet, greet or welcome them. True, churches and church folk are the main sponsors of incoming refugees and have been since at least the 1970s. But that doesn’t make up for the waves of immigrants who find no hospitality at all.

“Why does our compassion so often scab over in response to those closest, and most unlike us, even as our hearts burn with passion for ‘those in need’ who are far off?” asks Melody J. Wachsmuth in Mission Frontiers magazine. “Perhaps Jesus told His parable of the Good Samaritan in order to elicit a visceral reaction regarding the true challenge of loving our neighbor — a reaction we can experience today if we take out the word Samaritan and insert a neighbor with whom we share close physical proximity but try to avoid.”

It’s not as hard as you think. It’s like talking to that kid in the back of the classroom: A little kindness goes a long way.

Boston and Syria, through God’s eyes

                                                   

Amid the tsunami of sympathy expressed after the Boston Marathon attack, a photo making the rounds online caught my eye.

It showed a group of young men and boys standing in front of what appeared to be a bombed-out building in a town in Syria. They held a banner emblazoned with these words in bold black letters: “Boston bombings represent a sorrowful scene of what happens every day in Syria. Do accept our condolences.”

I don’t know whether the photo is authentic or not. But the truth about what is happening in that suffering land is unquestionable. In fact, a day when only a few innocents are killed in Syria’s bloodbath of a civil war would be welcomed. An average of 100 civilians die each day as the fighting there drags on. More than 70,000 have lost their lives since the war began.

The numbers numb the mind. Millions of Syrian civilians have been displaced inside the country. They wander the countryside in search of shelter and food, dodging the crossfire of war and fleeing deliberate terror attacks on them as government forces and rebel groups battle for territory. Rape and torture abound.

In the latest of many reports of civilian slaughter, opposition activists claimed April 21 that government forces had killed at least 80 people — and as many as 250 — in a strategic town south of Damascus. Soldiers and loyalist militias burned houses, seized field hospitals and killed the wounded, according to the activists. A British-based human rights group said the dead included men, women and children.

“They’re just scattered limbs and charred bodies that are completely unrecognizable,” a resident of the area told The New York Times. Video images posted online appeared to show a row of bodies wrapped in carpets or bags. Several had been shot in the face. The damaged town’s electricity and water reportedly have been cut off. The only bakery has been destroyed. Those who don’t flee face starvation.

That hideous pattern has been repeated in many other Syrian towns. And rebel bands — some led by Jihadist fighters from outside Syria — stand accused of similar massacres.

“After nearly two years of violence, over 4 million people are in need of assistance,” Jeff Palmer, executive director of Baptist Global Response, told Baptist Press in March. “The number of refugees from Syria [in neighboring Jordan, Turkey and Lebanon] is approaching 1 million, with 80 percent of those being women and children. IDPs [internally displaced persons] in Syria are now approaching 3 million.”

Palmer told of a field partner who traveled into affected areas and “witnessed heartbreaking scenes of human suffering and darkness. In one area, a package of seven pieces of pita bread, a staple food, was selling for US $4. In another area, one liter of fuel was going for $10 — the equivalent of about $40 per gallon.”

Most Southern Baptist relief work so far has focused on Syrian refugees in surrounding countries. But the massive suffering inside Syria cannot be ignored, despite the danger involved in delivering aid. “We have had four project sites, with three being outside the country and one inside,” Palmer said. “Now, because of the deepening crisis in the country, we feel compelled to mobilize more resources through trusted partners inside Syria, while still supporting work in the refugee areas in Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq.” The aid will include staple foods, medicine and hygiene supplies, shelter, heaters and oil, clothing, blankets, mattresses, carpets and survival-based business assistance.

We mourn the victims of the Boston attack because they are innocents and because they are our own. The death of an 8-year-old boy breaks our hearts. The tragedy hits close to home. The seemingly endless violence in Syria, meanwhile, seems far away, impersonal.

But I can’t forget the Syrian refugee family I met last fall in a Jordanian border town. The Muslim father and mother had crossed the Syria-Jordan border with their five children. They had watched in horror as their teenage son was shot in the head in an ambush. As he lay bleeding in his mother’s arms, she screamed for help. A soldier approached, gun pointed. Their 4-year-old son, who rarely speaks, stood and held up his arms. “I beg you, Uncle, don't hurt us anymore. Have mercy on us,” he appealed.

The child’s eloquent words must have moved the soldier, who took the wounded older brother to a hospital for treatment. The whole family later made it into Jordan, where they found comfort and aid from a Christian church that helps many refugees. The older boy has recovered, but walks haltingly and needs physical therapy.

The Syrian crisis isn’t far away for me, because I have looked into the eyes of mothers, fathers and children who are suffering its consequences. But you don’t have to go to the Syrian border to sense their suffering. If you follow Christ, you can look through His eyes, feel with His heart and touch with His hands. He is inside Syria right now, seeking and comforting the lost and the suffering — just as He was at the finish line in Boston.

“Seeing the people, He felt compassion for them, because they were distressed and dispirited like sheep without a shepherd. Then He said to His disciples, ‘The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few’” (Matthew 9:36-37, NASB).

When you think of Boston, remember Syria, too.
(Contributions to relief ministry among Syrian refugees can be made by visiting www.imb.org/syrianrefugees
and designating “Syria relief” in the comment line. For updates on how God is at work through the crisis in Syria and ways to pray and help, email love4syria@pobox.com)

Cross the street, reach the nations

Listen to an audio version of this post at http://media1.imbresources.org/files/147/14761/14761-81899.mp3

A missionary with years of experience in the Muslim world was visiting back home in the United States when he struck up a friendly conversation with an immigrant shop owner.

“I said, ‘Thanks for coming to America,’” the missionary recalls. The shop owner was moved almost to tears. “He put his arms around me and said, ‘You’re the first person who has ever welcomed me to this country.’”

During the same U.S. stay, the missionary spoke at a church in a Southern town. Before he arrived there, a member of the church surveyed the community’s 20 or so Muslim families. Some of them had lived in the area as long as 10 years. The church member asked them if anyone in town had ever visited to tell them about Christ. No, they answered. Had anyone ever mentioned the name of Jesus to them? No. What was their chief emotion about living in America?

“We’re so lonely,” they responded. “No one ever talks to us. No one wants to hear our story. No one wants to have a meal with us.”

The immigrants arriving in America these days include people who are very hard to reach with the Gospel in their home countries. Here, they can be reached by crossing the street.

But you have to cross the street.

“God is giving us a second chance. He is bringing the nations to us,” the missionary says. “But we’re running from the nations in our midst. Having Muslims in our homes is not brain surgery. But the thing that is driving the church is fear. Until we get over our fear, we will not welcome the lost in our midst. We’re afraid of Muslims and we’re afraid of foreigners. These people are so lonely and isolated. Get out of your church. Go to their homes. Invite them to your home. Shop where they shop.

“We’re in a free country, and yet we’re not exercising our freedom to witness to the nations in our midst.”

What are we afraid of? Lots of things. Fear or suspicion of the stranger, the foreigner, the “other” is part of human nature. The United States has alternately welcomed and shunned immigrants over the past century, opening and closing its borders depending upon events, political-economic forces and social attitudes. More recently, the flood of illegal immigration, the competition for jobs in a recession-ravaged economy and the ongoing reverberations of 9/11 have played into the mix. And racism, even in our supposedly enlightened era, still poisons minds and hearts.

Within the church, there’s another dynamic worse than fear or resentment: indifference. If we’re not sharing the Good News with neighbors we’ve known for years or a lifetime, we’re not going to share it with newcomers who don’t act and talk like we do.

We need God’s perspective. He told the children of Israel again and again to welcome the “stranger and the alien in your midst,” reminding them that they once were aliens and refugees in Egypt.

Throughout history, observed the late, great missiologist Ralph Winter, God has been “kicking people out of one culture into a new one” — from Abraham’s move to Canaan, to Christian slaves carried off by pagan conquerors, to the present day.

God often uses such migrations, forced or otherwise, to place believers in cultures that haven’t yet heard He is Lord. Alternately, He moves nonbelievers into cultures where they can hear the Good News, then sends them back to their own people groups to spread the Word.

The United States leads all nations of the world as a destination for migrants, according to new findings from the Pew Research Center. No surprise there. With 43 million foreign-born residents, our country counts more than three times as many migrants as Russia, the second-place destination. America is home to one of every five migrants worldwide.

“The United States has been the leading destination for many, though not all, religious groups,” Pew reports. “The U.S. also has been the top destination for Buddhist migrants … and for people with no particular religion (including many from China). The U.S. has been the world’s second-leading destination for Hindu migrants, after India, and for Jewish migrants, after Israel.” More than 2 million Muslim immigrants were living here in 2010.

According to mission research, nearly 600 unengaged, unreached people groups can be found in North America — many of them in urban areas. They haven’t heard the Gospel in ways they can understand it and respond to it, and no evangelical group currently has a viable plan to reach them. Up to eight of every 10 refugees resettled in the United States come from unreached areas of the world.

As participants in the recent “ethnéCITY: Reaching the Unreached in the Urban Center”* conferences have learned, many of those new arrivals are moving to medium-sized urban areas and suburbs, rather than the traditional ethnic enclaves of big cities. By 2010, slightly more than half of all immigrants could be found in suburbs.

According to The Brookings Institution, the number of foreign-born people in the United States topped 40 million in 2010, a 28 percent increase since 2000 and about 13 percent of the nation’s total population. More than a third of new immigrants during the decade came from Asia, while the fastest-growing group came from Africa.

The five cities with the largest foreign-born populations are New York, Los Angeles, Miami, Chicago and Houston. But the fastest growth is happening in smaller and midsize cities. Brookings reports: “A swath of metro areas from Scranton (Pa.) stretching southwest to Indianapolis and Little Rock and sweeping east to encompass most of the Southeast and lower mid-Atlantic … saw growth rates on the order of three times that of the 100 largest metro areas’ rate. These include Charlotte, Raleigh, Nashville and Indianapolis, all of which passed the 100,000 mark for total foreign-born population by 2010.” Similarly, the states with the fastest-growing foreign-born populations are North Carolina, Georgia, Arkansas, Nevada and Tennessee.

That’s essentially the Bible Belt, folks. How will we respond?

As a mission worker in a Muslim country used to tell me: “These people haven’t rejected the Gospel. They haven’t heard the Gospel.”

*(Co-sponsored by IMB and the North American Mission Board, ethnéCITY is the first tangible expression of a new partnership between the two mission entities, reflecting the reality that national borders no longer define the task of missions in a globalized world. The next ethnéCITY conference is scheduled for May 3-5 in Vancouver, one of Canada’s major urban centers. To find out more or register, visit www.ethnecity.com).