Immigration. Urbanization. Diversity. Refugees. These are the issues and reality of our times. A few years ago, Syria flooded our screens, last year Afghanistan, and today Ukraine. The movements of people all around the world is undeniable and the refugee situation continues to unfold before our eyes.  

A couple weeks ago, I sat with a Bhutanese family and heard their story. They had been exiled from their home in Bhutan to refugee camps in Nepal for over 20 years before landing in the Atlanta area. We found that we had mutual connections in Nepal, including one of my closest Bhutanese friends from church, as well as connections in Minneapolis and Pittsburgh. Now they and their people are scattered to urban centers in a handful of countries around the world.

This scattering, coined The Refugee Highway, is more than just a map of figurative on-ramps, weigh stations, and off-ramps for refugees. It is a scar – a scar of loss, brokenness, and uprootedness, a scar of sin on our globe. We can choose to look at this from the perspective of loss, where sin rears its head as we hang our heads in defeat. We can choose to look at it politically and enter into the heated debates of our day. Alternatively, we can look at it theologically: perhaps God in His providence, despite the scar of sin, can use uprootedness for His glory and honor. Could the Lord be ordaining the times and places where people should live?

“From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us,” (Acts 17:26-27).

In addition to refugee uprootedness, there are many reasons for this scattering including opportunities for education, economic advancement, job relocation, and a whole spectrum of nuanced circumstances. A general term for this dispersal of people outside their home country is diaspora, and in the mission world today, cross-cultural ministry in all of these contexts can be considered Diaspora Missions or Diaspora Missiology.

When we think of the mission enterprise in the 21 ^st century, there still seems to be a notion amongst many Christians that it exclusively takes the gospel to places geographically distant. Though we know that urbanization and immigration is the narrative of our day, somehow we can miss the memo that this too influences Christian mission. As our cities become more and more diverse with the diaspora from all over the world, we can choose to turn to skepticism and fear or turn to opportunity and hope.

There are so many wonderful ways to get to know and serve the diaspora. Missionaries move to foreign lands all the time, often returning within a few years before they know much about language or culture. Just when they start to get to know how a country works, they come home. By contrast, you know your country. You may have lived here your whole life. You sit in a unique place to guide internationals along when they are new to the country, and a beautiful dance of give and take between cultures can occur. Diaspora mission is not just for professional missionaries. You can engage right where you are. Pray. Walk up and down the street. Say hello. Learn a few new phrases in another language. Do it often. Watch God do only what He can do!

Written by: John Trotter