Evangelizing WITH New Americans

According to the Pew Research Center, “Christians remain by far the largest religious group among legal U.S. immigrants, though their estimated share has decreased from 68% in 1992 to 61% in 2012.

http://www.pewforum.org/2013/05/17/the-religious-affiliation-of-us-immigrants/

Now, I don’t know how many U.S. immigrant are evangelicals, but I do know that there is a good number of us who have immigrated here as individuals and families having already put our trust in Christ alone as our personal Savior.

As immigrants and New Americans, many of us come from community-based cultures and part of our culture shock experience is getting adjusted to the high individualism found in the U.S. With this in mind, it’s important to realize that immigrants long to have a “community” in which they may belong. Most often, we find these communities among the ethnic groups with which we relate.

But, what about finding a local community of Christ-followers who live out love and grow together as his witnesses in this world?

One of my favorite passages in scripture is John 17:22-23: “The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me.” Over the years, this has given me a growing passion to see the Body of Christ come together in evangelism so that the world would know why God sent his one and only Son. So, as we see more of the world coming to the U.S., what a wonderful opportunity our Lord has afforded us to be united in sharing the gospel!

As I’m sitting here at the coffee shop, typing away, I overhear a conversation between a couple business guys where one says, “Lead, follow, or get out of the way!”  But, how about if we were to turn this saying around a little bit and say, “Go in God's way and serve!”

In other words, one of the lessons God must continually teach and re-teach me is to humbly serve others and see the beauty in the international Body of Christ when I include my ideas with others’, but in a mode of continuously learning from each other.

What if, when given the burden to reach out to a particular people group, we were to find out first if there is an ethnic church or group of believers related to those people with whom we may serve? 

Let us evangelize together with a mind to learn and a heart to serve. Let’s become proactive in learning together and serving alongside the growing number of international believers around us. Let us evangelize together “so that the world may know.”

[This article was originally posted for Evangel-Vision: http://www.evangel-vision.com/2013/09/evangelizing-with-new-americans.html]