Relief Groups Launch “National Refugee Sunday”

Christian relief and development groups World Vision and World Relief are promoting a call for U.S. churches to be more involved in supporting and resettling refugees.

World Relief CEO Stephan Bauman and World Vision U.S. CEO Rich Stearns announced “National Refugee Sunday” in a November 24 conference call for church leaders hosted by Q Ideas founder Gabe Lyons. Participating congregations will screen a short video on December 13 that the groups will provide, along with making a special collection and praying specifically for those seeking refuge from conflict zones.

The two officials also pushed back at recent concerns about security and refugee resettlement in the aftermath of Paris attacks that left 130 dead and more than twice as many injured. One of the attackers had a forged Syrian passport and traveled to France through Greece along with refugees.

“We’re taking the victims and victimizing them in this situation,” assessed Bauman. “It is important that we move from fear to facts.”

“Why are the governors voting this way?” the World Relief CEO asked about the 31 governors who have moved to restrict the resettlement of Syrian refugees in their states. “They are getting calls. If we get ahold of the facts, ask what Jesus would do, ask ‘how do we act in love,’ and call our political leaders, we can turn this around.”

“I think we need to shift the conversation to the victims and ask who we want to be,” Bauman added. “Jesus was a refugee.”

Bauman responded to concerns about security in the refugee resettlement process, asserting that refugees have “the most stringently vetted entry into the United States.”

Stearns agreed, adding that risk from the existing visa waver program was “much greater than taking heavily vetted refugees.” The World Vision officials noted that no one was seriously proposing closing borders to French and Belgian citizens “but that is who the majority of Paris attackers were.”

Assessing that Christians have “slipped into a trap of pitting safety against compassion,” Stearns declared it was a false dichotomy. “The question is ‘how do we live like Jesus?’ Jesus called us to serve the stranger and the outcast. We have an opportunity to put the church on the hill and shine.”

Stearns emphasized that the vast majority of refugees were “in the region” and that aid efforts would first need to serve those in temporary camps, with only a small percentage ultimately seeking resettlement overseas.

Of Syria’s 23 million population, Stearns reported 12 million are displaced and fleeing from homes. Of those, 7-8 million fled within Syria and four million have fled the country. The largest number of refugees have gone to Turkey, with another large group in Lebanon, which has 1.2 million refugees, constituting 1 in 4 persons in that country.

“95 percent plus are still in the region,” Stearns reported. “The real humanitarian suffering right now is centered in the region, its where we need to help people now who are in really desperate straits.”

The World Vision chief shared that many of the refugees kept house keys because they are clinging to the hope to one day return to villages and homes.

Bauman expressed concern that children who had survived the conflict had “only known violence” and that issues of trauma would have to be addressed, or would become problematic later.

“If that cycle of violence isn’t stopped, would we have a whole generation that is going out into the world only knowing violence?” the World Relief official asked. Bauman also quoted two Syrian Christian pastors reporting that “there are so many Syrians reconsidering Jesus because of the crisis” and that assisting refugees is a way to share the Gospel.

“What happens to these kids may depend upon how the church treats them,” Stearns speculated, recounting the story of a rescued Vietnamese family in 1979 that was granted asylum and settled in Arkansas, the son eventually becoming a successful surgeon.

“If you are against refugees being settled in America, you can have that political conversation, but support the refugees where they are at,” Lyons concluded. “If you are supportive of refugee resettlement, great, call your political leaders.”