The Church's Response to the Immigration Crisis

The leading domestic issue confronting the nation concerns how to restrict the steady stream of undocumented immigrants pouring into the country and properly enforce existing immigration laws. As a redeemed community, the church has a key missional role in reaching out to these detached people groups who in the providence of God have arrived from various nations to its very doorstep.

The design of this dissertation is to develop a series of transferable strategies that churches across the country can utilize to reach the immigrant population in their respective communities. Far and away, the largest ethnic minority is Hispanic with 14 percent of the population. As a result, this research project will primarily focus on this predominant and growing segment of the U.S. population.

To accomplish this, a biblical theology of immigration will be developed followed by a brief survey of current laws and statutes. Then, successful strategies for preparing and launching an effective outreach will be explored.

Once an ethnic ministry is birthed, its viability will depend largely on the relationship with the sponsoring church; thus, an assortment of congregations, organizations, and denominations that currently sponsor ethnic ministries will be analyzed in an attempt to discover a workable model for integration. The final phase of this research project will distill all the data and extract a number of practical principles
from this reservoir of information.