News from the Field

Wukari is a partially destroyed city. It is a city at war with itself.

Wukari is the capital of the Jukun kingdom in Nigeria’s Middle Belt region. Its residents are Christian, Muslim, and Traditionalist. The majority are Christian, members of the Christian Reformed Church of Nigeria because of over a hundred years of South African and CRC evangelism, education, and health care missions. The long-serving traditional ruler is also Christian.

Ali is the newest member of the Office of Social Justice team. She joins our team this week as the Policy Analyst and Advocacy Fellow. Ali comes to us from a background in social work at Spectrum Health after attending Calvin College and receiving a masters in social work from the University of Michigan.

We are thrilled to have Ali as part of the team!

Over the last weeks with the news of the deaths of two more black men and five police officers in Dallas, my news feed has been filled with cries to God—cries for justice, cries for reconciliation, cries for peace.

What do you, a Honduran citizen, think about US immigration? How does it impact your community? Your family? What would you want to tell people in the United States about immigration?

Writing on dialogue and respect for the "other side" has its challenges. As much as I’d like to think I’m adaptable, I bring biases to a task like this. Like any biases, mine are formed by experience – my professional interest and personal passion is to offer a Christian vision of hope and justice in the diverse and complex world of public policy and citizenship. Long experience and hard lessons in that game have formed these basic bents:
• we peer through a glass darkly;
• we are called to faithfulness and not necessarily success; and

I’m grateful to have been invited to contribute to this series on “How to stay in conversation with the ‘Other Side’.” As our congregations in the CRC become increasingly diverse, this is an essential question. Having been involved in dialogue, in many different contexts, at the intersection of faith and sexuality and the realities of our LGBTQI (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex) siblings in Christ for the last 14 years, I have been able to observe helpful and effective postures and values in the pursuit of mutual understanding and unity.

A great song by African-American composer V. Michael McKay called “Koinonia,” goes like this: 

How can I say that I love the Lord,

whom I’ve never ever seen before,

and forget to say that I love the one

whom I walk beside each and every day?

How can I look upon your face

and ignore God’s love—you I must embrace! 

You’re my brother, you’re my sister,

and I love you with the love of my Lord.

Budgets are moral documents. They reveal to us the priorities of our government, especially with respect to the needs of marginalized people. They call us as Christian citizens to respond, whether with praise or constructive criticism.

Our Lenten fast calls us to fight for freedom and “undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free” and to assist those coming out of bondage into freedom and all the new challenges that come with it.

My hope is that your congregations are not just buildings that just happen to be there, but churches that seek the flourishing of your neighborhoods and the neighbors that call it home.