As today\u2019s church continues to evolve, the faith communities that Luther Seminary alumni serve include a number of immigrant populations that have come to the U.S. to flee war, civil strife and other problems, both economic and social.<\/p>\n
Ministering to these individuals and finding ways to serve their needs requires both cultural sensitivity and an understanding of the unique challenges groups new to the region share as they begin to forge lives in a new land.<\/p>\n
Ebenezer Community Church, Brooklyn Park, Minn. For Francis Tabla, founding pastor of Ebenezer Community Church in Brooklyn Park, Minn., his work includes ministering to a congregation of more than 400 immigrants, primarily from his home country of Liberia, West Africa.<\/p>\n
Tabla says ministering to this group involves understanding the unique and multiple pressures these immigrants face.<\/p>\n
First, Liberia endured 15 years of civil war. During this conflict, about 300,000 Liberians were killed and thousands of families were displaced.<\/p>\n
Second, immigrants who fled the unrest to settle in the U.S. now face a second challenge as they face possible deportation back to Liberia by the U.S. government. The U.S.-based Liberian community fears deportation both because Liberia\u2019s infrastructure has largely been destroyed, and because the refugees have now forged strong ties to their adopted homeland.<\/p>\n
Third, in the past two years, Liberia was one of the West African countries to be most heavily affected by the virulent Ebola outbreak, which claimed almost 5,000 lives and sickened more than 10,000 in that country alone. Many of the U.S. Liberians still have family in their home country, and the epidemic became a tremendous strain as they watched it unfold from afar.<\/p>\n
Against this backdrop, Tabla says ministering to his fellow Liberians has been rewarding, yet difficult, as he struggles to help his congregation address their troubled history.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn 2000, when I first came to Minnesota to do a survey about the possibility of planting a church, my survey results at the time showed that there were 20,000 Liberian immigrants here in Minnesota,\u201d Tabla says. \u201cToday we are being told that there are about 30,000. Brooklyn Park is seen as the capital city of Liberia in Minnesota. The first group of Liberians to come settled here, and in our community, the word spread. Minnesota also has the largest contingent of Liberians in the United States.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tabla, who received his Doctor of Ministry in biblical preaching with an emphasis in stewardship from Luther Seminary in 2008, initially moved to Minnesota in 2000 specifically to\u00a0form a church as a mission outreach for his fellow Liberians.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was pastoring at Ebenezer at the same time I was doing my work [at Luther Seminary],\u201d Tabla says. \u201cIt was very demanding, but also very rewarding as I look back now. We started with about eight people [in 2000], a Bible study group, and we met in the evenings in St. Paul at the Pilgrim Baptist Church. From those first eight people, we have now grown to 432 members.\u201d<\/p>\n
As for the recent past, Tabla says serving his congregation during the Ebola crisis was a deeply challenging experience.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Ebola crisis was one of the most difficult times in the life of our church,\u201d Table says. \u201cOn a daily basis, I would receive phone calls from members of the church whose relatives had died. It came to a point where I dreaded my phone ringing because it would be another church member sobbing because a family member had died\u2014parents, siblings, loved ones. When that happens, you stand before the congregation as a pastor and you see such uncertainty on their faces. We fell back on prayer, fellowship and the support of the congregation. All of that helped to bring hope and healing. Three of our churches also collaborated to be able to send supplies to Liberia. In the midst of their pain, they sought out an opportunity to be of help.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s just like with the immigration issue, as well,\u201d Tabla continues. \u201cSome [Liberian immigrants] have become U.S. citizens, some are green card holders, and of course, all of the kids who were born here are citizens. However, many are on a status called Deferred Enforced Departure, (DED) which is a temporary protected status. When the Civil War subsided, that status was terminated and Liberians were expecting to be forced to leave. But [Liberia] is not ready for all of these people to come back. The infrastructure was destroyed and the country was devastated, so how do you bring all of these people back? The U.S. came up with the DED, and sometimes that status goes for one year, sometimes for two. It affects our community whenever it\u2019s about to expire and there is fear and apprehension in our community.\u201d<\/p>\n
As part of Tabla\u2019s ministry for his congregants, he has also become involved in the political realm, working to convince the government to extend the immigrants\u2019 stay in the U.S. \u201cAs a pastor, you see that fear,\u201d he says. \u201cI\u2019ve been in Minnesota for 15 years now and I\u2019ve done so many rallies to get Congress people to give their support to immigration bills to help our people. It\u2019s been a long struggle.\u201d Amid this uncertainty and challenge, however, Ebenezer has also experienced both growth and joy. The church recently broke ground for its first dedicated church home in Brooklyn Park.<\/p>\n
\u201cOver the years, our congregation has been on the cutting edge in terms of stewardship,\u201d Tabla says, noting that this is particularly humbling given all the other financial demands Liberians face, particularly in supporting family members who remain in their homeland. \u201cWe were able to purchase 4.3 acres of land a couple of years ago, and we paid it off in 2013. By the grace of God, we\u2019ve just been able to secure a loan that will enable us to construct our first portion of our church, estimated at $2.8 million. We\u2019re going to be the first immigrant congregation from Africa that I\u2019m aware of that will buy land and build a project of this magnitude. By the time the project is ultimately finished, it will be a little bit over $5 million.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trinity Lutheran Congregation, Minneapolis; University of Minnesota Medical Center, Fairview<\/p>\n
Luther Seminary alum Alem Asmelash is another graduate who works intimately with a number of different immigrant communities, both as an associate pastor at the 140-year-old Trinity Lutheran Congregation in Minneapolis and as a chaplain at the University of Minnesota Medical Center, Fairview.<\/p>\n
Asmelash, who is originally from Ethiopia and was raised in Sweden, speaks six languages, including Amharic (the native language of Ethiopia), Tigrinya (the native language of neighboring Eritrea) and Swedish. He graduated from Luther Seminary twice, in 2002 with a Master\u2019s in Theology, and in 2004 with a Doctor of Ministry.<\/p>\n
Asmelash began work as a chaplain at Fairview in 2003, and was called to Trinity as a half-time pastor in 2004 specifically to strengthen the church\u2019s outreach to immigrant and refugee families.<\/p>\n
The church, which is located in an area that is home to numerous immigrant groups, now meets in Augsburg College\u2019s Foss Center, after losing its previous building to a road construction project in the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are currently the only church in Cedar-Riverside, and the church has this vision not to be guarded within its own culture, but to go out like Jesus, outside of our comfort zone,\u201d Asmelash says. \u201cThe church wanted someone like me who knows the culture and a little bit of the language. If you are respecting of the culture, they respect you back. [The immigrants] see me as one of them, so it becomes easier to reach out.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trinity and Asmelash have both worked to make new immigrants welcome in a number of ways. Today, for instance, Trinity holds services in both Amharic and English, a reflection of the fact that the area remains a concentrated immigrant neighborhood for East Africans.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe majority of our immigrants are Muslims from Somalia. (We have) Ethiopian Muslims also,\u201d Asmelash says. \u201cWhat I do is act as a pastor for outreach ministry. I just hang around [in the neighborhood,] meet people, counsel people and I invite them to come to the church to worship with us. Many of them have come, even if they have the Orthodox religious background.<\/p>\n
Trinity and Asmelash have worked to come alongside their community, in part by offering needed help and support to the children in the area.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have Monday through Friday homework help, and I bring the kids in for that, and our church also works to tutor the kids,\u201d Asmelash says. \u201cA number of University of Minnesota and Augsburg College students have been tutoring the kids and helping them with their homework. The kids often want to come [to the church], but the parents don\u2019t push them to unless they see something good [that we can offer.]\u201d<\/p>\n
Another of the ways that Trinity and Asmelash practice their outreach is by providing a space for a dialogue between the Muslim and Christian communities.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the Muslim community here, they had a mosque in Cedar-Riverside that burned down,\u201d Asmelash says. \u201cThe leader of the mosque no longer had an office, so we offered the use of our basement here at Trinity. I think that was very welcoming and respecting of their religion. When they finished [rebuilding] their mosque, in order to say thank you, they invited the community to visit and Trinity was there, too. Another of the things we did as a church, with Fairview Hospital, is to select 10 imams and we taught them how to visit patients in a hospital setting, about grief, about counseling, about coping with change and loss. We helped teach these very well respected imams those things, and [by extension], worked to reach the community through them. With Fairview, Augsburg College and Trinity, we are always working together to reach out to the community in Cedar-Riverside.\u201d<\/p>\n
Our Saviour\u2019s continues decadeslong work with multiple immigrant communities<\/p>\n
Laurie Eaton, \u201903, currently serves as pastor at Our Saviour\u2019s Lutheran Church in the Phillips neighborhood of Minneapolis. The congregation has a long, rich history of being of service to immigrants who arrive in Minnesota with challenges such as not speaking the language, and sometimes, with no formal schooling at all.<\/p>\n
Nearly 40 years ago, Eaton says Our Saviour\u2019s members first recognized that a then-new wave of Vietnamese, Hmong and Laotian immigrants was settling in the neighborhood near 24th and Chicago where the church was located.<\/p>\n
That group of immigrants was fleeing the longlasting aftermath of the Vietnam War, and had begun to relocate to Minnesota in an effort to start a new life. However, as with many new immigrant populations, both poverty and language issues were proving difficult for the new arrivals to surmount.<\/p>\n
In response, Our Saviour\u2019s organized English as a second language (ESL) classes at the church in 1981, with parishioners volunteering their time to teach both English and other day-to-day life skills to the new arrivals. Classes were held in various areas within the church, including the basement.<\/p>\n
The mission statement from the Our Saviour\u2019s website reads, in part, \u201c\u2026 we are \u2018called, nurtured, and sent\u2014to celebrate, serve, and do justice.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is the \u2018being sent\u2019 aspect of our mission that we understand as outreach,\u201d Eaton says. \u201cWhile there are many ways that we serve beyond the walls of this church, we also believe that faith formation\u2014that is, growing in our understanding and living out of our Christian identity\u2014is intimately connected to the relationships and experiences that develop as we seek justice and find ways to serve our neighbors.\u201d<\/p>\n
Over the past four decades, both the needs and the groups that Our Saviour\u2019s serves have changed, but its commitment to that service has not.<\/p>\n
As that first wave of Vietnamese, Hmong and Laotian immigrants became proficient in English, found jobs and assimilated more fully into American culture, they began to move out of the area, only to be replaced by new immigrants with similar challenges, including Liberian refugees, followed by Somalis and others, many of whom were fleeing war-torn countries.<\/p>\n
As a result, the various outreach efforts Our Saviour\u2019s pursues have evolved in step with their neighborhood. Services such as an emergency shelter for homeless individuals was added to the church\u2019s efforts, as were a wider variety of ESL programs and skill-building classes, including ones on math and computers.<\/p>\n
After a devastating church fire in 1995, which forced a temporary relocation of many of the church services, a new building was dedicated in 2000, complete with an extensive classroom system in the lower level to accommodate this ongoing teaching program.<\/p>\n
As the services the church provided to its immigrant neighbors continued to expand, in 2002 it voted to create a separate 501c3 nonprofit to continue the work, in part to gain access to additional grants and funding opportunities to expand the work.<\/p>\n
Today, the program has evolved from its modest early start, and is now known as Our Saviour\u2019s Community Services. Ties to the church remain strong, although the administrative and legal formation of the group is now separate. Classes continue to take place in the church\u2019s lower level.<\/p>\n
In fact, in August 2015 alone, more than 150 students, most of whom are from immigrant communities, participated in almost 3,000 hours of classroom instruction at the church.<\/p>\n
\u201c[This work] is a great deal part of the identity of Our Saviour\u2019s,\u201d Eaton says. \u201cIt\u2019s part of the ethos of this place.\u201d<\/p>\n
In fact, Eaton says, although Our Saviour\u2019s remains a destination church for many of its parishioners, the average age of attendees has been skewing lower in recent years, a fact Eaton attributes to the strong social justice activities in place through the church. She believes those activities make the church an attractive worship site for many younger members.<\/p>\n
\u201cThose [younger members] want to be part of something like this,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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