May 8, 2025

When I first started the Creating Sanctuaries network last January, I know some wondered why a conference staff whose focus was congregational development would help create a network designed to address immigration. Let me share why these topics are related.

As many have noted over the years, many of our mainline congregations do not reflect the demographics of their communities. Our church members tend to be older, whiter, and more privileged than those in their community. While much conversation has occurred around how to change that, few of the conversations deal with what I believe is the heart of the issue: the need to build relationships with our neighbors whose lives don’t mirror our own.

Nowhere has this been truer that in matters of immigration. Many congregations will discuss immigration and what government policies should entail. In spite of these well-intended conversations, however, shockingly few immigrants are active members of our churches. We end up talking about immigration rather than being in relationship with immigrants.

How do we change this situation?

Some of the answers will be explored in our June 11 Book Club conversation on the book Global Grace Café, by Elizabeth Colmant Estes. The book tells the story of how one congregation (the Reformed Church of Highland Park) transformed itself from an older, predominantly white congregation in the early 2000’s to a dynamic, multicultural community that doesn’t just “welcome” immigrants but has adapted its culture to better reflect their experiences as well.

As Rev. Wesley Granberg-Michaleson, former general secretary of the Reformed Church of America, wrote in the book’s forward: “When Rev. Seth Kaper-Dale and the Highland Park church reached out in simple solidarity to those in the Indonesian Chinese Christian community, discovered within the church’s environs, it was not part of a five-year strategic plan. It was not a project of a mission committee in the church. It was not a program devised by some consultant as part of a church growth plan. Rather, it was prompted by compassionate attention to the place and people where the church community was situated. And it was grounded by a commitment to participate in God’s missional presence in the world.” (p xi).

I hope you will join us in conversation on Wednesday, June 11, at 7:00 PM as we share our reflections not just on one book or one church, but on what it takes to transform our local churches so that their support for immigrants is rooted in deep personal relationships reflected throughout the church’s culture.

Grace & Peace,

Rev. Craig Peterson