Supporting refugees through the local church
Poppy works for an MP as a constituency support officer. Tommy worked in consulting and has recently joined the National Grid. Alongside their day-jobs, Poppy and Tommy help to lead a ministry supporting refugees through their local church. They care deeply about expanding our view of justice to those beyond our borders, doing justice with and through the local church, and integrating justice into everyday life so that it sticks for the long term.
I recently sat down for dinner with P. He grew up in the circus in Ethiopia and is a wonderful musician. He’s been part of two bands pretty much since the day he got to England, one a refugee band, and another a blues band.
P is relentlessly joyful and optimistic, whatever his circumstance. I remember when he got a letter telling him to go to the Bibby Stockholm, and we were all taken aback that his first response was to tell KXC (our church) how grateful he was for all that we had done for him. All that we had done was to open up a space and play games, but that simple gesture carried weight. He rarely mentioned how sad he was to be going to that horrible place, and when he did it was only to say he had started gathering papers to try and fight to stay. Fortunately, it worked, and he never had to go.
P has only once spoken to me about why he left home. He was in an orchestra at the time, no doubt finding joy in the life he had been given. He said “one day, the government changed. My friends, including a priest from a local church, started walking the streets with guns looking for people like me. I left”.
I believe the church has a unique obligation to carry out justice in the world, and that obligation is for people on the streets of London; for people in Calais; for people in refugee camps in Bangladesh, Uganda, Kenya, and Turkey; for people who haven’t been able to leave dark places, and for people like P. It’s an obligation to show mercy, and it’s an obligation to fight with everything we have to see unjust structures undone. I often find that my view of God’s justice and renewal has grown far too small, constrained by my pride around things I could imagine changing by my own effort, and therefore this obligation withers.
Not only is it our obligation, I’ve also been struck through the work we do at KXC at how well placed the church is to do this. We currently run a ministry with 5 strands: An international cafe with board games and coffee, ESOL classes, football, craft evenings, and housing and employment casework. We’re starting to explore advocacy opportunities with groups like CitizensUK. We have a full time caseworker, funded by a local investment firm.
And yet, when we started we had almost no idea what we were doing. Some persistent congregants thought God was telling us to step out in this space, and the Church moved in response. We opened up our space and started showing up at local hotels inviting people to spend time with us. As things grew, we partnered with some other churches in the area who had more experience than us. That was our simple offering, God did the rest.
This work has been incredibly life-giving for the Church, but I also wanted to highlight the impact it has had on me and Poppy. Our role is to lead the international cafe on a monthly basis, support the ministry with prayer and discernment, and to build strong individual relationships with people like P. We have started trying to invite some of our new friends to our house, something that is always a stronger practice in their culture than in ours.
All of this has led us to become strong advocates for integrating justice into our daily lives. Like we pray, read scripture, and go to Church, justice is an integral part of our walk with Jesus and it is a pattern that structures our life. Continuously returning to the well of time spent with the vulnerable has been a potent force in making us, and many others at KXC, more interruptible and self-forgetful. It has allowed us to battle against the consumerism and individualism that can creep into church life, and put us in powerless positions of service. Often all we have to offer is prayer, friendship and our voices, and that has been a transformational place for us to be.
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