Dear Beloved Community,
Over the past two weeks, many of you have reached out to the church as questions have arisen about the impact of recent changes in our country’s immigration policies. We have heard from a number of our mission partners who directly serve the vulnerable, and have felt their fear and immediate need. This note is to tell you what we’re doing so far to respond.
In response to an urgent request for funds from World Relief, whose federal funding for their work of refugee resettlement has completely ended, our Missions Committee and Finance Committee moved quickly to disburse the full year’s budgeted amount of $6000 for World Relief and are sending it in one lump sum now, rather than monthly as we’d planned. The Missions Committee is already exploring other funding options for further disbursements to World Relief as this need is not likely to go away.
Again among the Missions Committee, our church’s long-standing commitment to the Good Neighbor Team program of World Relief is in a new place of action following our meaningful years spent with the Sultani family as they resettled in Winston-Salem from Afghanistan. Earlier this month, we welcomed a new family from Honduras to Winston-Salem, and many opportunities to serve them as they settle in are available. Contact Pastor Kyle (kyle@firstonfifth.org) if you’d like to get connected.
The Missions Committee also continues to explore opportunities to connect us locally with more of our neighbors and learn about local advocacy efforts on behalf of the most vulnerable. Expect to hear more on this front as the year unfolds.
Denominationally, our partners – Cooperative Baptist Fellowship Global and Cooperative Baptist Fellowship of North Carolina – have sent out helpful words to the hundreds of churches whose congregations and ministries are touched by these changes. You can read a letter from CBF’s Executive Coordinator Paul Baxley here regarding CBF’s theological and biblical commitments to immigrants and refugees. You can read a similar letter from CBFNC’s Executive Coordinator Larry Hovis here.
In addition, CBF announced yesterday that it is joining a lawsuit in the U. S. District Court for the District of Maryland alongside a group of Quaker meetings that seeks to halt immigration authorities from enforcing in and near houses of worship and religious gatherings. Perhaps you know that for decades, churches have held “sensitive location status,” preventing federal agents from entering into spaces like churches, hospitals, and schools for enforcement purposes. In this action, CBF is clear and faithful in upholding our Baptist values around religious freedom, the biblical witness of hospitality to the stranger, and our Christian commitment to ministry with immigrants and refugees, all of which transcends the partisan differences present in every CBF church. Their statement which you can read in full here, ends with these words:
“In joining this effort, we do not represent that Cooperative Baptists share the same political views or affiliate with a particular political party. Our Fellowship is unique because we are politically, theologically, racially, ethnically and generationally diverse. We are bound together by a strong commitment to the Lordship of Jesus and the time-tested experience that the boldest faith, whether in the lives of individuals or congregations, must rise from freedom and not coercion.”
Our Deacons will spend time in conversation about this on Sunday, particularly as it relates to our congregation’s Sunday gatherings.
Finally, our pastoral staff has spent focused time talking about members of our congregation who are among those most directly impacted. We are extending pastoral care widely during this time, and considering how else our congregation can live into our commitment “to practice bold love of God and neighbor and boundless compassion for all people.” As you are aware of ways we can more fully live up to this vision, share it with your pastors, Deacons, and congregation!
May God be near to the vulnerable, stir in the hearts of the powerful, and call us all to remember the unyielding conviction at the epicenter of our Christian life: love your neighbor.
Together in God’s work of Love,
Pastor Emily