When Keller pastor Scott Venable thinks about the church’s role in immigration, his mind goes to two congregants who loved their neighbor.
As federal funding paused for refugee resettlement agencies earlier this year, Northwood Church responded to Christian humanitarian organization World Relief’s call for congregations to help fill the gap. Since February, Northwood Church has been serving three refugee families who arrived in North Texas in December.
While the two church members come from different ends of the political aisle, they were the first to carry a couch up flights of stairs into a refugee family’s apartment, take them to the grocery store and help them get jobs, Venable said.
He shared this story with attendees at World Relief’s Christian State of Welcome speaker series at Doxology Bible Church’s southwest Fort Worth campus on July 22.
“Their political party is a tool in which they can love their neighbor, but it’s not their idol in their life,” Venable said to the crowd. “The gospel of the kingdom is that it becomes secondary, but what’s primary is loving your neighbor, and that’s how this can play a role.”
The Christian advocacy speaker series is set to visit five Texas cities over the span of two days where World Relief leadership and local pastors talk about the issue and share how they are leading their congregations in the current state of immigration policy. Fort Worth was the first stop.
Matthew Soerens, World Relief’s vice president of advocacy and policy, discussed with local church leaders how to navigate the issue with congregants. Instead of starting with immigration policy, look to Scripture first, Soerens advised.
“We have, as a country, thought of immigration only as a political issue,” he said. “And even within the church, which is a lot of the people in a place like Texas, we have not thought about it as a biblical issue.”
Soerens referenced Scriptures from Deuteronomy and Psalms in the Old Testament to illustrate how God “loves the foreigners” and “protects the immigrants.”
While various stories in the Bible guide believers on how to interact and treat the “stranger,” Christians sometimes wrestle with Scriptures like Romans 13, which describes respecting the authority of the government, he said.
Some church leaders may presume they are breaking the law by being kind to undocumented people or running a ministry that serves them, he continued.
“Should we love and welcome immigrants, or should we follow the law? Generally speaking, I would say yes. And there’s not this contradiction between those,” Soerens said. “We respect the government’s role, but it’s not the government’s role to tell the church you’re not allowed to minister to these people.”
Northwood Church’s efforts in helping refugee families has drawn both support and backlash from congregants, Venable said.
His Keller church is in a city whose council is expected to vote on a formal partnership with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, at an Aug. 5 meeting.
If the proposal goes into effect, individuals arrested and booked in the local jail will be subject to immigration status screening using additional federal resources, KERA reports.
The proposal “targets criminals — not law abiding individuals,” Keller Mayor Armin Mizani said in a July 17 letter. The partnership would strengthen the city’s abilities to “continue protecting Keller and our surrounding communities,” Mizani said.
The speakers stressed focusing on faith, not politics.
“We’ve lost our voice, in our culture, because we’re screaming about the wrong things instead of serving,” Venable said. “We should be really loud with our love, not with just our words.”
While places of worship have historically been a safe haven for immigrants in finding a support network, as of January, churches are among sensitive areas no longer off-limits for immigration enforcement.
“Criminals will no longer be able to hide in America’s schools and churches to avoid arrest,” Benjamine Huffman, acting Department of Homeland Security secretary, said in a Jan. 21 statement. “The Trump Administration will not tie the hands of our brave law enforcement, and instead trusts them to use common sense.”
This has made some families fear attending worship, Venable said. Northwood Church started to see a drop in attendance in its English-as-a-second-language ministry in the spring, he added.
Other Tarrant County churches saw similar dips. Rosita Silva and Anabel Aviles, attendees of World Relief’s event, described how congregants are afraid to attend Spanish-led services at their church in Burleson.
Aviles has lived in the area for 18 years and volunteers as a translator for Spanish-speaking immigrants working with World Relief and Catholic Charities, she said. Church communities need more informational resources on how to serve their immigrant population, she said.
“We are not going to break the law, but we are here to protect the people,” Aviles said. “Because all of us are immigrants.”
Multimedia fellow Mary Abby Goss contributed reporting to this article.
Marissa Greene is a Report for America corps member, covering faith for the Fort Worth Report. You can contact her at marissa.greene@fortworthreport.org.
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