What does it mean for faith communities to respond to the crisis of forced displacement?
This was the key question addressed by a gathering of Council for World Mission representatives in Mae Sot, Thailand, in May. The visit was coordinated by the Revd Anji Barker (pictured below), Pioneer Cluster Leader for the URC鈥檚 West Midlands Synod. Lodge Road URC and Seedbeds, both based in the synod, have partnered with local projects in Mae Sot, a border town in northern Thailand, to where hundreds of thousands of Burmese refugees have fled, and continue to flee to each day.
鈥淢ae Sot is situated on the Myanmar border. It is a place where displacement is not theoretical but lived,鈥� Anji said 鈥� 鈥渨here migrant communities build fragile new lives, and local organisations work daily to provide education, skills, and hope.鈥�
The CWM programme invited participants to reflect on their own experiences of refuge and displacement, and to ask: 鈥淲here do I find my refuge? When has that been threatened?鈥� These were not abstract questions, Anji said: 鈥淭hey asked each of us to find the place where our own vulnerability meets the suffering of others 鈥� and from that place, to see with renewed compassion.鈥�
She said that many of the delegates came with their own personal experience of the refugee journey, as well as experience of being in places where refugees are fleeing to, including Trinidad and Tobago and Guyana, where Venezuelan and Haitian refugees seek safety. 鈥淲e explored the biblical narrative of the migrant God and the refugee Christ 鈥� a God who is perpetually on the move, who appears in the stranger, the hungry and the imprisoned. The words of Matthew 25 echoed through every session: 鈥業 was a stranger and you welcomed me.鈥� We asked ourselves what inviting in the stranger truly looks like, and what stops us 鈥� fear, prejudice, the sheer overwhelm of the scale of need.鈥�
Delegates visited projects initiated and run by refugees, and which serve displaced communities: skills centres, community schools, social enterprises making T-shirts, food, and handicrafts, and grassroots organisations advocating for employment justice and labour rights. In this way, 鈥渨e were encountering the faces and stories behind the statistics. Behind every migration statistic is a person carrying the weight of loss, trauma and suffering, and the stubborn spark of hope.鈥�
Delegates reflected on how to turn their encounters into local and regional engagement, and longer-term advocacy for justice at national and international levels, committing to return to their local church contexts and respond both personally and organisationally to the needs of displaced people in their local areas.
鈥淭he question that stays with me,鈥� Anji concluded, 鈥渋s not whether the Church should be a place of refuge 鈥� Scripture leaves no room for doubt on that. The question is whether we will have the courage, the imagination, and the commitment to make it so.鈥�