The Migration Crises and the Church Response Part 3 – Why we must act now.

The Migration Crises and the Church Response Part 3 – Why we must act now.

In our first and second posts, we discussed the critical issues of the current migrations and what the response of the church ought to be. Make no mistake, the migration challenges before us mean that our ministry strategy has to change if we are to remain relevant in the next few years. We do not have many options before us than to use this opportunity and act now. Not only should we focus on the migrants, we should also target reaching our youths and the unreached within the home fronts.

If we fail to take this opportunity, the consequences will be enormous:

1.     The first thing to mention here is that our failure to reach these ones that God has brought to our door steps will be our undoing. We may never be able to live a ‘normal life’ any more in the near future. Remember what God told the Israelites about the Canaanites they could not conquer, “But if you do not drive out the inhabitants of the land, those you allow to remain will become barbs in your eyes and thorns in your sides. They will give you trouble in the land where you will live”. Num 33:55. In fact in Judges 2:3, God said that the people of Israel will no more be able to have dominion over them and at a point, “… their gods will be a snare to you." NIV. We are neither saying that where we dwell is land of Canaan nor that we should drive Muslims out of where we reside. No. We are only drawing analogy from here saying that when we fail to reach these ones that God has graciously brought to our door steps, in the next few years, we will all suffer for it because most likely they will turn into or cause something else we may not be able to control. There is a reason why God brought these Muslims to our door steps. We should all begin to think in the direction that God will work out something good with these insurgencies and subsequent migrations.

2.     Several Muslim groups are always the breeding ground for Islamists who spread their ideology of violence. Ideologies like the one propagated by Boko Haram (Western education is forbidden) can only thrive among uneducated Muslims. We need to reach these Muslims with the Gospel  in order to see whether some will be saved before they get trapped in the revival of violence-ridden-jihad ideologies being spread all over the world among some practicing Muslims. There are many peaceful cultural Muslims but immediately any one of them desires to become more spiritual and stays under the tutelage of Sheikhs that teach violent jihad, that person will suddenly become very dangerous.

3.     We will have clash of cultures that can turn violent in the years to come. This is because Islam does not allow its members to integrate into the culture of their host. One of the wonderful things about the people from south eastern Nigeria is that they have the wisdom and freedom to adapt and integrate into their host cultures and do their business anywhere they go. But not so with Islamic culture which tends to control every aspect of the life of the Muslim even to the extent of implementing its own body of political laws. Their culture is communal and exclusive and they are often protective and can be violent in the process.

4.     When they settle, because we failed to do our own missionary work among them, Islamic missionary work will start among our people and then we will only be reacting.

5.     Our children and children’s’ children will be the ones to experience the clash of cultures and the attempt to impose Islam on them in our door steps, and the clashes will escalate.

6.     We and our church members may be caught in the web of ethnic sentiments being fanned in several quarters today which will only end up consuming everybody if they turn violent and overwhelm our security forces.

7.     If we fail to teach our members and make efforts to reach these people, our congregations and church members will not be well positioned and equipped to represent Christ in the midst of the forthcoming inevitable crises. The church will be as confused as the state and will not be able to stand in the gap. The failure of any state that has experienced the presence of Christianity starts with the failure of the church to fulfill its purpose and mandate.

8.     Finally if we fail to take the opportunity, we will be made to account before God.

The purpose of this awareness drive once again is not to panic us but to stir us up to arise and respond to God’s call upon us to reach the Unreached He has brought to our door steps. Remember, what we have shared here is not just peculiar to Nigeria, it is a global trend. If the European church fails to respond adequately to this migration challenge, in the near future, the rise of rightists and nationalists who will want to protect their culture, economies and way of life will cause a conflict that will be very bloody. If the Kenyan, Ugandan and Ethiopian churches fail to take this opportunity, the only solution the political system understands is force and war. The political nations will end up shedding more blood in their attempts to enforce peace. If the Nigerian church refuses to act now, rightist, sectarian movements and even militants with different shades and colours will arise sooner or later and they will end up causing conflicts with the attendant bloodshed. The same thing goes for the American church and of course the whole world because of the Islamic revival we are experiencing today. Let us join hands together and pray for a move of God that will awaken His church. God bless you.

You can drop a comment on our website (www.evergreenword.com) or write us. Download the presentation on this discuss for your church, ministry or study group here: pdf or pps

The Migration Crises and the Church Response Part 2 – Maximizing the Opportunity

The Migration Crises and the Church Response Part 2 – Maximizing the Opportunity

Part 1 of this discuss was shared here.

The challenges of migration are enormous both to the migrants and to the host people. Some are economical, others are cultural, some are political, others are demographic, and some are spiritual and psychological while others are ethnic and tribal in nature. People will live in fear and suspicion of each other which may lead to policies aimed at subduing and pushing away on one side and resistance and arousal of survival instincts on the other. Now, our focus is not really on what the politicians are doing, our focus is on what the church can do to leverage on the situation and preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Over the years, we have been praying for missions, asking God to send people to some of these people groups, however now it has pleased Him to bring them down to our door steps. What should be the response of the Church to this amazing opportunity?

For the churches in southern Nigeria, the issues are critical. This is because there are different colours and shades attached to the whole matter of migration of northerners to the south that we ought to be very careful not to be dragged along by the sentimental and emotional pulls. There are all kinds of agitations here and there and because members of churches come from different regions where these agitations are canvassed, Christians are often tempted to start looking at issues with ethnic eyes instead of seeing people the way God sees them. This is a very serious matter every Christian leader in the southern Nigeria must pay attention to. We must take out time to read about the Rwandan Genocide and how the churches participated in the murder of Tutsis even inside church premises by Hutu rebels and militia men. Pastors and priests even betrayed one another just because they are not from the same ethnic group. If we fail to properly position our churches early with Christ’s response, we may end up fanning ethnic sentiments that will result in murders and massacres that will surprise and haunt us in the years to come. 

For example, most of the northerners we see in the south are nominal Christians who came down south in search of greener pastures and because of the crises in the north. If you as a pastor do not teach your congregation, they will lump everybody they see that is a northerner as Boko Haram and hate them. We have personally worked with many of them with the wrong notion that they were all Muslims until we began to interact with them. We discovered that many are from Plateau and Nasarawa States. Close to our office, there is a small settlement of northerners and by the time we investigated, we discovered that they are from Benue State (Tivs and Idomas). The Gateman where we live currently is a northerner and a Christian young boy who desires to further his education from Plateau State. The point is that if the church responds carnally which is what we sense around when we listen to prayer points that some pastors pray in their churches, we may end up teaching our members hate and igniting genocide like the Rwandan case. We are supposed to be the conscience of the society, modeling Christ no matter what we suffer. Every soul is important to God whether he is a Muslim or a nominal Christian or any other religion for that matter.

Now what should really be the church response to the migration we are experiencing in the south? The church should be strategic in its approach. Think outside the box. What will our churches look like in the next 10 to 20 years if we fail to evangelize these migrants? What will our environment and neighborhoods look like in a few years to come if we do not make a concerted effort to reach these ones that God has already brought to our door steps? Our aim is not to panic us but to encourage us to make ourselves available. 

Before we share what we believe are the dangers if we fail to wake up and take actions today (To be handled in Part 3), let us suggest what we believe our approach should be:

1. Decide to model Christ to your congregation as a Christian leader. Decide to disciple your members and encourage them to live as Christ’s followers in love, holiness and purity. Let them understand the Great Commission which is a mandate we have as a church from our Lord Christ.
2. Training: Pastors should submit themselves to training on how to reach the Muslims. We should organize pastors meetings and train ourselves on how we can reach out to Muslims within our door steps. Train our members on how to witness to Muslims about the Lord Jesus. CAPRO as a missions Agency has worked among the Unreached Muslims for over forty one years. They run a training called OASIS which has been proven to help prepare pastors and church members on how to reach out to Muslims. 
3. Liaise and partner with Missions Agencies that have experience in reaching the Muslims. Most Southern churches do not really know what to do. They have the desire and resources to do something but do not know where to start from. Churches can engage these missionaries who have been working among the Muslims, especially now some of them have left their bases because of the insurgency. They understand these people and can even tell you the difference between the Shuwa Arabs and Hausas for example. They are trained. They can start missionary churches for you.
4. Support and work with other churches that have the experience of working among Muslims over the years. Churches like ECWA, COCIN, NKST etc can be of great help.
5. Start special churches like Hausa-Speaking Churches with trained pastors from the north who understand both their disposition and culture. We will allow the churches to run independently and we will raise leaders from among them who will in turn be used by God to reach their own people. Of course, we should be ready not to place any financial burden on them as we do to our regular churches.
6. Invest in production of Multimedia evangelism tools like radios, tapes and videos etc in their own languages and use them for evangelism. Share them among these migrants and pray for God to use them to touch their lives.
7. Engage in targeted crusades and evangelism towards these settlements.  Invite preachers from their own stock who will speak to their hearts. Carry out medical outreaches.
8. Offer prayers to God for the souls of these migrants. Let our churches begin to pray for their salvation. As we pray, God will lead on the other things we may need to do in order to accomplish His purpose. Most of our prayer contents today show how unprepared we are and how we are not yet ready to reach out to these ones. This is because our prayers are full of ethnic and political sentiments and are not coming from real burden for souls.
9. Train church members who are in politics on doing justice and judgment and we stop seeing them as ‘money’ but as ministers God has called in the area of political leadership. Advise the lawmakers among them on the formulation of some bills that will solve social problems and allow good atmosphere for the growth of the gospel. Some migration challenges will require political solutions which if our members in the National and State Assemblies are ignorant of, they will be bereft of ideas. They will not know how to use the legal instruments in their hands to contribute their own quota in solving the problems and propagating the Gospel.
10. Finally be willing to sacrifice; be willing not to live for ourselves. These evangelism thrusts will create some social challenges and persecutions that will warrant that churches harbour and protect some that may end up being ostracized from among their communities. We may require sending some of them to school and paying their school fees or sending some to learn trades etc. We must be willing to leave our comfort zones and reach out to these migrants and also willing to spend and be spent for this mandate.

In the next and last post on this series, we will share the dangers that we will face if we continue to carry on in our ministries the way we are doing it today without adjusting, taking and maximizing the opportunity and positioning ourselves and our churches to reach the Muslim migrants God has brought to our door steps. May God richly bless you.

In the last post, we will provide a link to a downloadable presentation of this discuss which you can use in you church or modify to suit your need.

You can write us or drop a comment if you have any feedback.

The Migration Crises and the Church Response Part 1 - The Challenges

The Migration Crises and the Church Response Part 1 - The Challenges

Migration has been part of human history. It means the movement of animals or people, especially in large groups, from one part or region to another. In our context, our focus is the migration of humans in large numbers from one part of the globe to another. The nature of these movements can be cross-border where people go outside the boundaries of their country into another country. Sometimes the language of the host countries may be entirely different from the language of the migrants; also their cultures may not have anything in common. This movement can also happen within the boundaries of the political nation. 

There are many reasons why people move which include:

1. Economic reasons: This is where people move from supposed areas of lack; areas with little or no prospects to places where they feel they will have better and easier opportunities to fulfill their life dreams and meet their needs. Most of the young men that endanger their lives trying to cross the Sahara Desert and the Mediterranean Sea into Europe take the risk seeking for ‘greener pastures’. Also, the movement of nomads like the Fulani Herdsmen in search of pastures for their cattle and animals can be categorized as economical. Furthermore, most young northerners have migrated to southern Nigeria in search of better means of livelihood. 
2. Climatic conditions: When the climate of an area is no more supporting human existence in that area; there is drought and famine for example due to lack of rainfall in a place for a prolonged period, people tend to move away to areas with more favourable climatic conditions.
3. Insurgency and war: This is another cause of migration. When there is insurgency and war, the social fabrics of the society is destroyed; people who do not want to get involved are forced to move in order to avoid being killed. Insurgency and wars shrink the prospects within a region, hence, people tend to leave the areas of conflict both for the sake of their lives and also to be able to have better opportunities. Millions of people have been displaced in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan because of the insurgency and wars going on in those places. Scattered as refugees, many are in Lebanon, Jordan, Greece, Italy, France, and Germany and all over European countries. Kenya, Uganda and Ethiopia have a huge number of refugees who migrated from Somalia into their countries because of the insurgency that have gone on for many decades in that country. In Nigeria, the Boko Haram insurgency has driven people away from their regions to several parts of the country. Only recently most of the refugees that ran into Cameroun and Niger Republic came back to Nigeria because of the progress the army and security outfits are making in ridding those areas in the North East of the insurgency.
4. Islamic Missionary Strategy: This may come to many as a surprise but resettlement of people from one place to another has been a strategy used by the Islamists over the years in order to establish their presence and turn demography in a particular place of interest to their favour. We have had cases where some people are loaded in some big trucks from a different place and offloaded in some strategic places and they settle in that place as their new home.  As they move, they are accompanied by Islamic preachers and scholars. Islamists are strategists and they think on long-term basis.

We have witnessed an unprecedented high rate of migration of people in this dispensation, especially in the past few years. We have seen whole communities, villages and towns, even ethnic nations move completely away from where they have lived for centuries to either new locations or into IDP (Internally Displaced People) camps. Demography is changing dramatically whether we like it or not. Among those who are moving are Muslims, Christians, nominal people, pagans etc. lifestyles are changing and no matter what we do, this migration is here with us.

This migration is not without some unique challenges, some of which are:

• Different languages and cultures

• Fear of economic loss because of scarce resources.

• Suspicion and lack of trust.

• Ethnic tensions.

• For Islamic migrants, resistance to integration causing cultural and political tensions at the long run.

• Basic needs of food, clothing and housing which makes the migrants vulnerable.

The question is, how prepared is the church to take advantage of this migration to enlarge the Kingdom of God? Are we positioning our churches and ministries to be able to take this great opportunity that the current situation presents before us? No matter what we do as Christian leaders one thing is sure, it can never be business as usual anymore.