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The Gift of ‘YES’

By worldrelief | December 28, 2018

God’s ‘Yes’

In the beginning God said, ‘Yes.’

Lest we forget, before creation “the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep” (Genesis 1:2). The world was marked by darkness and chaos—and God always challenges darkness and chaos.

So he overtook it. Transformed it. And he did so with light and creative splendor beyond our understanding. The unspeakable beauty of light, color, fragrance, taste, sound and order filled the new creation. Every part of creation, mountains and seas, insects, birds and mammals—and especially the crown of creation, woman and man—celebrated the radical grace of God’s gift of ‘Yes’.

And yet after receiving this gift, women and men despoiled the beauty of creation and ruptured their relationships with violence, injustice and greed. So God, once again, overcame the power of darkness and chaos, offering his great ‘Yes’ to humankind in the form of his son, Jesus. Darkness was rolled back, and chaos surrendered to order wherever Jesus went.

This Christmas, as with every Christmas, we celebrate this gift. That God has promised us he will always offer his ‘Yes,’ and that even amidst the darkness and chaos, God remains, steadfast and unchanging, ready to intercede for us.

Our Response

God’s ‘Yes’ to humankind brings incredible peace, humility and encouragement. Yet, it also brings with it a great responsibility.

You see, it is precisely because we were created in the image of God that there is also a ‘Yes’ planted deep within our souls, waiting to find its expression. But finding our ‘Yes’ can feel daunting. The world is so broken that the weight of it often easily overwhelms our finite minds, suffocates our weary souls and steals our courage. But rest assured, God does not ask you to meet every need. Far from it, in fact. Jesus tells us “whatsoever you do for one of the least of these, you have done for me.” (Matthew 25:40). God in his love and sovereignty takes responsibility for the world. His invitation is for us to add our Yes to his, not to replace it.

Over the past few weeks, we have sought to help you discover your ‘Yes’ by listening for God’s voice (click here if you missed it). Our hope is that by taking this journey, you’ve found that it is in connection to God that your life finds power and purpose. We hope you’ve also discovered that God wants us to find our ‘Yes’ not as a way of getting something from us but as a way of giving something to us.

You see, ‘Yes’ opens the door to an entirely new way of life. Fear gives way to courage, self-love bows to a new Master, the tentacles of greed are severed and the vine of radical generosity flowers in our lives. We discover that darkness and chaos, the ever-present enemies of our world, can in fact be defeated—as we become not just bearers of the light, but the light itself. This is why Jesus declared to those who follow him, “You are the light of the world.”  

At World Relief, we have been saying ‘Yes’ to the marginalized and forgotten of the world who for much of their lives have heard ‘No.’ It is our gift of ‘Yes’ back to God and outward to others. It is expressed in meeting critical needs for the homeless and hungry enduring natural disasters at home or around the world. It rises up to offer a warm welcome to the displaced and refugee fleeing persecution and war in the Middle East, Africa or, most recently, Myanmar. In partnership with local churches, we are seeing our ‘Yes ’bring transformation to entire communities. Whether in agriculture, savings programs, health and nutrition, trauma counseling or through battling the ravages of gender-based violence, we are seeing our ‘Yes’ impact the lives of millions of others.  

The gift of ‘Yes’ is a life changing force. It moves powerfully from one heart to another. It gathers strength and dispels hopelessness and fear wherever it takes root. God, once again, confronts darkness and chaos with peace and love—and we are the grateful agents of his lavish grace.

Are you ready to find your ‘YES’?

Whether you feel called to add your ‘Yes’ to ours at World Relief or express it in some other fashion, we celebrate your journey towards the heart of God.

Scott Arbeiter’s proven marketplace skills, pastoral experience, passion for mission and history with World Relief uniquely equip him for his role as President of World Relief. Scott was a partner at Arthur Andersen serving in a variety of functions over his seventeen-year marketplace career. In 2001, Scott resigned from the partnership to serve at Elmbrook Church in Milwaukee, where he became Lead Pastor. Scott has also served on World Relief’s Board of Directors for nearly a decade, including three years as Chairman. After finishing his term on the board in 2015, Scott became a consultant and advisor to World Relief Leadership. Scott has been married to Jewel for thirty-three years and together they have raised three daughters, Kelsey, Jacquelyn and Karis—all of whom have grown to love and serve Christ in their own remarkable ways.

Posted in Staff Reflections

The Baby in the Manger and at the Border: What Paula White Gets Wrong

By worldrelief | July 16, 2018

My pre-school-aged daughter made a compelling observation as she played with our nativity set a few years ago, rehearsing the Christmas story as it appears in her children’s storybook Bible. “Dad,” she observed, her eyes fixed on the collection of wooden shepherds, animals, “wise men,” and the holy family of Mary, Joseph and Baby Jesus, “We’re missing a figurine. We don’t have the ‘mean king.’”

Few people–even those who, like our family, try to keep Jesus at the center of our Christmas celebrations–spend much time reflecting on the most troubling part of the biblical narrative of Christ’s birth. I’ve not yet encountered a crùche that included a King Herod figurine. We tend to conclude our Christmas pageants with the three Magi bowing down before Jesus. The curtain comes down, and we all go home to open gifts and enjoy a meal.

But that’s not the end of the story. According to the Gospel of Matthew, as soon as the Magi leave to return to their country, Joseph is warned in a dream that the tyrannical King Herod would shortly begin a genocide of little boys in Bethlehem. Joseph got up in the middle of the night and escaped to Egypt with Mary and the newborn Jesus, out of Herod’s reach.

While mystical stars, shepherds and angels have little to do with our day-to-day lives, this part of the story is painfully pertinent to our headlines today. Jesus was a child refugee, part of a family that fled a credible fear of persecution by seeking asylum in a foreign land. As children and their parents have arrived at the U.S.-Mexico border in recent months with similar stories, many fleeing gang violence in Central America, how could followers of Jesus not respond with compassion?

According to Paula White, our response should be to double down on tough immigration policies. Why? Because, according to her, Jesus’ situation was fundamentally different than families arriving at the border today.

“He did live in Egypt
 but it was not illegal,” said White to CBN.

And then, much to the chagrin of many theologians, she went further: “If he had broke the law then he would have been sinful and he would not have been our Messiah.”

It’s a tidy argument–but it just doesn’t work with the rest of the biblical witness. Various biblical examples of civil disobedience quickly make any such claim untenable. The Hebrew midwives are praised for defying the murderous decree of Pharaoh, who like Herod, ordered that Israelite infants be slaughtered. Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego refuse to worship an idol. The Apostle Paul, whose instruction to “be subject to the governing authorities” is sometimes cited as a basis for total obedience to civil laws, spent time in jail, having violated unjust laws. The Apostle Peter, when charged to stop preaching the gospel, insisted that “we must obey God rather than human beings”–an attitude that led to his incarceration and martyrdom.

Most importantly, though, Jesus himself was repeatedly criticized for lawlessness. On one occasion, he healed a man born with a shriveled hand, infuriating the Jewish religious leaders who saw this as defying the Ten Commandments by breaking the Sabbath. It is one of few incidents in the gospels when Jesus is described as becoming angry, distressed by these leaders’ hardheartedness, putting their interpretation of the law ahead of compassion for the human suffering in front of them.

When Jesus later acknowledged that he was king (albeit, of a kingdom “not of this world”), he was challenging Roman law, which acknowledged no ultimate authority but Caesar. Christ was condemned by the state as a criminal and executed—but this act of love and compassion was certainly not a sin. It was the sacrifice that Christians believe saved us from our sins and what compels us to extend grace to others.

For those who follow Jesus today, we can insist that our government respond to the plight of vulnerable people in ways that both extend compassion and honor the law. And as a matter of fact, a U.S.-ratified treaty does allow those with a credible fear of persecution to request asylum at the border, even if they “enter or are present
 without authorization, provided they present themselves without delay to the authorities and show good cause for their illegal entry or presence.”

Of course, not all will qualify. Some, even those with heartbreaking stories, may not meet the precise definition of a refugee under U.S. law. But we can still treat all with dignity, not separating families, nor—except in the rare case that there is a compelling reason to believe they could pose a public safety risk—detaining them. Churches, non-profit organizations and the extended families of these asylum-seekers are eager to help support them while they wait for their day in court. What’s more, such alternatives have been proven effective—not to mention significantly more affordable—in ensuring people show up for their hearings as required.

I don’t know whether Jesus’ flight to Egypt was lawful or not. But I know that if my daughter’s life was at risk—whether from a “mean king” or MS-13—I’d flee. Her life is far more precious than my respect for man-made laws. And I’d pray, when I reached the other side of the border, to be met by compassion.

Matthew Soerens serves as the U.S. Director of Church Mobilization for World Relief and is the coauthor of Welcoming the Stranger: Justice, Compassion and Truth in the Immigration Debate (InterVarsity Press, 2018). Follow Matthew on Twitter.

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How Will the Lens of History Judge Us?

By worldrelief | June 18, 2018

This Wednesday is World Refugee Day. For many, if not most of us, it will pass by largely unnoticed, especially in the midst of such turbulent times. We are in the middle of a global refugee crisis of unparalleled scale, yet often, it seems we have become accustomed to the pictures and stories of suffering and immune to the pain. Perhaps this is understandable. Many might call it self-preservation. But when we look back on today, how will the lens of history judge us?

Tipping points in history are hard to see when there is no single decisive event that marks the change. And it is easy to be blinded by busyness, by one’s own troubles or by the love of our own comforts. But as the people of God we are called to see reality as God sees it.

Jesus called us in the Great Commandment in Matthew 22 to “love our neighbor as ourselves,” and the example of His life made it clear that this does not simply mean the person around the corner, but the orphan and the widow, the vulnerable, the oppressed and the dispossessed.

So what are we to do in the face of a refugee crisis of unprecedented scale with 25 million refugee and asylum-seekers fleeing violence and unspeakable atrocities in places like Myanmar, Syria, El Salvador, Iraq and South Sudan? What are we to do when the United States appears to be fleeing from the values and leadership that once set it apart from the world?

David Miliband, president and CEO of the International Rescue Committee, recently wrote in a Washington Post editorial that ”if current trends continue, the U.S. government will have no refugee resettlement program at the end of this administration.”

This may appear an exaggeration, yet the facts speak for themselves. Miliband, building on IRC information, reports from Reuters and data from the State Department’s Refugee Processing Center, revealed the grim realities of our  current refugee policy.

In 2017, the U.S. received 6,996 Iraqi refugees. In the first half of this fiscal year, only 107 arrived. Iran’s numbers were comparable: 2,577 came to the U.S. in 2017 and only 31 in the first half of 2018. And only 44 Syrians had been given asylum within our borders, in contrast to the 6,557 last year. That’s fewer than were killed in the alleged chemical weapons attack in Syria on April 7th.

This dramatic decline also impacts Afghans and Iraqis who have served the United States overseas and are targeted back home because of it. The number of “Special Immigrant Visas” (SIV), and “P2 Direct Access”(P2) visas, through which these brave immigrants enter the country, has lowered significantly. A mere 36 Iraqi P2 refugees have arrived in 2018 – a striking contrast with last year’s 3,051. Since March of 2018, SIV arrivals have plummeted by an average of 500 a month.

Persecuted Christian refugee admissions have also dropped by historic proportions. In the year prior to the current administration, the number of Christian refugees admitted to the US. was over 42,000. If the current pace of admissions continues through December, this number will drop to less than a third of that level, with most coming from the Soviet Union and other Eastern European countries.

Martin Luther King Jr. once said “our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”

Of course, we understand the security and economic concerns many have over the influx of foreign-born people coming to the United States.  We sympathize with those who feel left out, marginalized or simply not heard in today’s fast-changing world. But turning a blind eye to the incredible suffering of refugees and asylees worldwide is not the answer to the challenges we face as a society. Indifference to pain and suffering on this scale cannot be the answer.

Our concern needs to be for the poor everywhere, not in one place at the expense of another. Last year the wealth of the USA (as measured by GDP) grew by $766 billion. Surely it is not too much to ask to that we not turn our backs on these most vulnerable people when as a nation we enjoy such bounty?

Our God lives above all history, seeing everything in the ever present “now.” Let us pray that He will grant us a new lens to see the untold suffering of our day and enter into it with compassion and courage. In this, we will rise above the fog of our everyday cares and join Him in changing the course of our time. And perhaps those who follow us may take courage by our example.

Tim Breene served on the World Relief Board from 2010 to 2015 before assuming the role of CEO in 2016. Tim’s business career has spanned nearly 40 years with organizations like McKinsey, and Accenture where he was the Corporate Development Officer and Founder and Chief Executive of Accenture Interactive. Tim is the co-author of Jumping the S-Curve, published by Harvard Publishing. Tim and his wife Michele, a longtime supporter of World Relief, have a wealth of experience working with Christian leaders in the United States and around the world.

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He is Still Good

By worldrelief | April 12, 2018

 

It’s been over a full year since the first Executive Order that began a time of chaos and reductions in the refugee program – and kicked off a wave of anti-immigrant rhetoric and policies.  We have talked a lot over this last year about the struggles, and we know they continue. But I don’t want to just focus on loss, because as we’ve been taught, that is not the whole story.

Like many of you, I have prayed intensely in this last year for God to use His power in changing our circumstances, and I continue in those prayers.  Some of the things for which I’ve cried to God have not been granted yet, and sometimes my heart hurts because of it. In those times I have reminded myself of a simple phrase: And if not, he is still good.

He is good.  And I am learning to go to Him in true gratitude for His goodness.  But while things don’t always go as I wish, He has provided every staff member of World Relief, and through all of you, ample evidence that He is still good and that He is blessing and affirming the work he has called us to do:

  • 3 new office directors joined World Relief last January – Chitra in Seattle, Mark in Spokane and Kerry in Upstate SC – showing amazing faith in spite of circumstances.
  • God allowed us to welcome 7,565 refugees and SIVs, who have fled some of the most violent conflicts in our world, to a place of safety and opportunity
  • We were able to serve 7,955 participants in other refugee programs
  • 10,723 immigrants got quality, low-cost legal services and were able to receive the rights of law
  • 4,948 other immigrants, beyond our work with refugees, were served throughout offices to find stability and to be helped on the journey toward integration
  • We were instrumental in filing 2,565 citizenship applications that will give a permanent belonging to immigrants, many of whom have no other home
  • We educated 731 people about human trafficking and how they can help stop slavery
  • 23 former slaves were directly served in our programs to enter a new life free of their oppression
  • We processed some 6,500 new volunteer applications, a record number, and prepared this army of volunteers to love our immigrant neighbors
  • We provided education or training in 523 churches, calling God’s people to welcome the stranger
  • 314 church teams were formed and launched to deeply love and care for immigrant families
  • As we invest in the future, we had 189 individuals attended 40-hour immigration training to prepare to represent immigrants and advocate for their rights
  • In addition to our network of U.S. offices, we supported 52 church-based ILS programs as we empower the church to serve more deeply

In preparing these numbers for our upcoming annual report, we can say that despite all of the negative we have seen this year, God has worked through World Relief’s U.S. Ministries in the lives of:

  • 31,900 Direct Beneficiaries
  • 48,900 Indirect Beneficiaries (family members, congregants, community members, etc.)

Numbers are impressive, but we should not see these as numbers but lives – people with hopes and dreams, people made in the image of God and people God loved enough to leave the glories of heaven and come to this broken world to show how much He loves them.

And, His love is such that as the Good Shepherd, He reminds us that He would do it all for just one of us.  

He is still good!

Prior to becoming the SVP of U.S. Ministries, Emily Gray served for six years as the Executive Director of World Relief’s offices in DuPage County and Aurora, Illinois. She is a former full-time missionary to Central America and is a founding member of Mission Lazarus, also serving on Mission Lazarus’ board for 15 years. Emily is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker, earning a Bachelor of Social Work degree from Abilene Christian University, a Master of Social Work from Boston University, and has completed doctoral hours at the University of Texas at Arlington. She has been married for 30 years to Cary, a Computer Scientist, teacher and scholar of Christian hymns.

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Will America Stand Again With the World’s Refugees?

By worldrelief | January 29, 2018

 

January 27, 2018 marked the one year anniversary of the refugee travel ban. Hashim, Mariam and their children (pictured) arrived before the ban took effect. But in the past year, families like theirs all over the world have been stranded. Now, World Relief’s Matthew Soerens asks in a New York Times editorial piece, “Will America Stand Again With the World’s Refugees?”

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When Statistics Lie

By worldrelief | January 25, 2018

 

Earlier this week, the U.S. Departments of Justice and Homeland Security jointly released a new report focused on “Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry Into the United States.”

I think we can all agree that protecting the nation from terrorism is an appropriate and important responsibility of government. As a Christian, I believe that God establishes and authorizes governments for particular purposes (Rom. 13:1-4), among them restricting and, as necessary, punishing those who would do evil. And there are few more evil actions than the intentional taking of innocent human life, as terrorist seek to do.

This particular report, though, has a lot of problems. It’s something of a case study in the misuse of statistics to serve a particular agenda. The report was tweeted by the president with the summary that “nearly 3 in 4 individuals convicted of terrorism-related charges are foreign-born,” cited as evidence of the need to dramatically restrict lawful migration to the United States. Various media reports cited the report as well, so by now many Americans have absorbed the “facts”—and might understandably respond by being a bit more suspicious than they otherwise were of immigrants.

Here’s the problem: while the language of the report itself may be technically correct, the statement that “nearly 3 in 4 individuals convicted of terrorism-related charges are foreign born” is not—nor is it supported by the report. That’s because the report, which covers the period from September 11, 2001 to December 31, 2016, only covers instances of international terrorism. The report ignores completely—perhaps intentionally—any mention of terrorist attacks that have taken American lives on American soil, precisely the sort of terrorist attacks that most Americans most fear could affect them personally.

In fact, as the LawFare blog notes, about one hundred of the terrorists in question were extradited to the U.S. for trial, meaning they are foreign-born individuals who were brought to the U.S. to stand trial because of a crime perpetrated abroad—these are not immigrants; they were not even tourists.

When you look at terrorist attacks in the U.S., the results are quite different—and do not lend much evidence to the idea that we should bar immigrants in the interest of national security. As analyzed by the Cato Institute, 155 people have been killed on U.S. soil in terrorist attacks since 2002. About 80 percent of those were killed by native-born U.S. citizens. The odds of being killed by a foreign-born terrorist in the U.S. since 2002 are only about one in 145 million annually. For comparison, the odds for the average American of being killed by drowning in a swimming pool are about one in 455,000 annually. The average American is more than 300 times more likely to die in a swimming pool than in a terrorist attack perpetrated by anyone born outside of the U.S.—but we don’t hear a lot of support for banning swimming pools.

Statistics can be useful—but they can also be manipulated, as seems unfortunately to be the case here. In an era of “alternative facts,” it is more important than ever that Christians, who believe in objective truth, subject everything we hear and read to careful, unbiased analysis, particularly at a time when so much rhetoric—sadly, even from our own government—seems designed to instill fear of the very people whom, from the perspective of Scripture, we are called to love.

The Bible never promises that all strangers are safe (though the data suggests that, at least in the U.S., there is no rational reason to fear). But the Bible does command us to “practice hospitality” (Rom. 12:13), which literally translated means to “practice loving strangers.” When we do so, the writer of the Hebrews suggests that we might just be welcoming angels without realizing it (Heb. 13:2). I can’t verify how many of them have been angels, but God has blessed the United States richly through the arrival of refugees and other immigrants from various lands. If we allow a one in 145 million chance of harm to keep us from receiving that blessing, perhaps we do not deserve it.

Matthew Soerens serves as the U.S. Director of Church Mobilization for World Relief. He previously served as the Field Director for the Evangelical Immigration Table, a coalition of evangelical organizations of which World Relief is a founding member. He is the co-author of Seeking Refuge: On the Shores of the Global Refugee Crisis (Moody Publishers, 2016) and Welcoming the Stranger: Justice, Compassion & Truth in the Immigration Debate (InterVarsity Press, 2009).  Matthew is a graduate of Wheaton College (IL) and DePaul University. He lives in Aurora, Illinois with his wife Diana and their two children. (Follow Matthew on Twitter)

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Enough is Enough

By worldrelief | January 12, 2018

 

Writing in 1921 after the first World War, English poet WB Yeats wrote a poem entitled “The Second Coming,“ in which he wrote:

Things fall apart, the center cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.
The blood dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Yeats expresses a sense of the social crisis of that time and as I reflected on my thoughts and emotions on our own divisions in America today, on the immigration debates and the ease with which we descend into ugly stereotyping of whole groups of people, I could not but feel a sense of things falling apart in this nation, so richly blessed, to which I brought my own family in 2001. I could not but reflect with sadness on the ugly racist undertones in the discussion over immigration and refugees—especially on the weekend when we celebrate Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s life and the progress I used to believe we had made towards racial reconciliation.

As leader of a Christian organization serving the most vulnerable in Haiti and Africa, as well as supporting refugees and immigrants seeking refuge from violence, disaster and oppression, how should I react to the demeaning of whole groups of people? How do I stay true to the convictions of my faith and the call to love one another in a debate that at times seems devoid of hope and nobility, a debate that seems to embrace a dystopian view of the world we live in, a debate that seems to simply divide the world into winners and losers, into my people and ‘other’ people?

As a Christian, I believe that all humans are made in the image of God. And that we are all called to care for the vulnerable and to welcome the stranger. The bible is replete with such stories as was the teaching and example of Jesus.

I have been fortunate to come alongside communities and families in some of the hardest places in the world, to talk with men, women and children who desire the same things we desire, to talk with parents and grandparents who, despite grinding poverty and lack of opportunity, often demonstrate compassion and care for one another that puts me to shame. I have walked the dusty roads of towns and villages in the nations we too easily look down upon from our perch of privilege. I have sat in the homes of people and have heard their stories of suffering, seen their resilience and seen how they can find joy and be thankful to God even in the most challenging circumstances. They have taught me what it is to love, what it is to have faith and what it is to have hope in things as yet unseen. They have taught me humility and blessed me with their friendship.  

To have these people, and in fact their entire nations reduced to a coarse and derogatory narrative grieves and offends me.

Both Old and New Testament Scripture is clear. Our God desires peace and joy for all his people, irrespective of nation, race or tribe. The vision in Revelation 7, the last book of the Bible, is unambiguous: “After that I looked and behold, a great multitude that no one could number from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and tongues standing before the throne and before the Lamb clothed in white robes with palm branches in hand crying out with a loud voice, “‘Salvation belongs to to our God who sits on the throne and to the Lamb.’”

Unfortunately our politics today appear to promote partisan divisions rather than promoting civility, understanding and reconciliation amongst people.

At World Relief, we respect that many of the issues where we have expert knowledge are complex and that it is possible for people of good conscience to disagree and so we have always sought to elevate not coarsen the debate—to be grounded in both conviction and civility. We have been careful not to further division in our response to policies we believe are contrary to the teaching of Jesus or simply ill–informed.

But when is enough enough? When do we reach a tipping point that requires a different response?

The teaching of Jesus is clear. Each one of us must consider this as a question of personal conscience rather than from the perspective of tribal loyalty or group identity.

And as we do so, we would do well to remember the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., whose life we commemorate on Monday.

“All that is required for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing.”

— Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Tim Breene served on the World Relief Board from 2010 to 2015 before assuming the role of CEO in 2016. Tim’s business career has spanned nearly 40 years with organizations like McKinsey, and Accenture where he was the Corporate Development Officer and Founder and Chief Executive of Accenture Interactive. Tim is the co-author of Jumping the S-Curve, published by Harvard Publishing. Tim and his wife Michele, a longtime supporter of World Relief, have a wealth of experience working with Christian leaders in the United States and around the world.

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Love Never Fails

By worldrelief | December 28, 2017

Sometimes it feels as though the world is on fire.

Each day of 2017 brought a new story that reminded us that we live in a world seemingly settled on top of tinder, full of angry people running around with match in hand. We see the flames of war, terrorism, sexual violence, racism and continued violence against the refugee and immigrant raging around us and growing in intensity.

It could be easy to lose heart, to curl into a fetal position, to pull the covers over our heads and opt out of the whole mess.

Except for this promise: “Love never fails.”

We believe this promise is true because love is the very nature of God and God is eternal. We believe it is true because Jesus lived it and died expressing it. We believe it is true because the resurrection vindicated love and releases it with power in the lives of those who know him. And we believe it because we see it every day in virtually every corner of the world. It is His promise that motivates us to charge into the world with hope, courage and even a fierce determination to fight against the flames.

For nearly seventy-five years and in over 110 Countries we have seen love conquer hatred, evil and indifference. We see this work first in our own lives as God changes our hearts. And then, with your help, we extend this love to literally millions of people around the world.

We see love conquer and endure:

  • In the faces of those from U.S. Churches and communities who step out of their comfort zones to welcome a newly arrived refugee family who have known only trauma, displacement and the deep pain of being unwanted.

  • Expressed through the work of churches throughout the world who bring flourishing where there was despair, and peace where violence ruled.

  • In the heroic work of our staff in the Middle East seeking to meet the needs of the refugee family who will likely never return home, whose children have no school and whose parent(s) have no work, no peace and no hope.

  • In the aftermath of natural and manmade disasters where a blanket, hygiene kit and basic food and water mean survival—and hope.

  • In places like the Democratic Republic of Congo and South Sudan, where love breaks through the pain and isolation caused by sexual and gender based violence, where rape is commonplace and the dignity of women and female children is denied.

Love never fails because it is rooted in the nature of God, it is empowered by the Spirit of God and it is alive in the people of God. People like you who have heard the call to run towards the flames engulfing our world when most, understandably, want to run away.

Love brings courage, resolve and lavish generosity of spirit. This year, we have been humbled once again to be an extension of your love and generosity to the world. Together, we have kept the promise alive: Love Never Fails!

Will you join us once again in 2018 as we extend your love to places and people longing for a tangible expression of the love of God?

donate now

Through the end of the year, we’ll be featuring stories of individuals and communities putting Love in Action—bringing hope to the hurting and shining light in the darkest hours.

Learn more and put your Love in Action today.

Scott Arbeiter’s proven marketplace skills, pastoral experience, passion for mission and history with World Relief uniquely equip him for his role as President of World Relief. Scott was a partner at Arthur Andersen serving in a variety of functions over his seventeen-year marketplace career. In 2001, Scott resigned from the partnership to serve at Elmbrook Church in Milwaukee, where he became Lead Pastor. Scott has also served on World Relief’s Board of Directors for nearly a decade, including three years as Chairman. After finishing his term on the board in 2015 Scott became a consultant and advisor to World Relief Leadership. Scott has been married to Jewel for thirty-three years and together they have raised three daughters, Kelsey, Jacquelyn, and Karis, all of whom have grown to love and serve Christ in their own remarkable ways.

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Love Endures All Things

By worldrelief | December 22, 2017

 

“You have to keep holding on to HOPE to keep holding on.
You having to keep finding your HOPE when you’ve lost it, or you lose your way.
You have to breathe HOPE to keep your lungs and your dreams from collapsing.
You have to let HOPE always carry you or fears will carry you away.
And these days? The world needs less fear mongers and more HOPE Mongers.
Fear says our only choices are either fight, flight, or freeze, but HOPE says we always have the choice of optimism, options, and optimizing all things for good.
HOPE mongers knows there will always be obstacles in the way, but there is always still a way.
HOPE mongers believe The Way forward is always greater than any obstacles in the way.
HOPE mongers know there is always a way to get from here to there.”

Ann Voskamp

Love in 2017

As I read these words by Ann Voskamp over the weekend, I couldn’t help but think about the unprecedented year we’ve had at World Relief, and the love, hope and tenacity of our staff. I reflected on what we had been through together as an organization—as colleagues and as friends, often in the midst of hardship and uncertainty. I reflected on this love that has endured all things. And I was reminded of the deep pride and gratitude I have for our staff and volunteers around the world.

Love that “endures all things” is love that hopes in the face of circumstances that often seem dark. In the last year in particular we have faced a world which in many ways seems to have lost its bearings, but we have placed our faith in the Lord and we continue the work in the face of adversity, overwhelming challenges, and even hatred and physical danger.

“Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”

— Hebrews 11:1

A Defiant ‘Nevertheless’

We do this following the example of the Apostle Paul.  When Paul writes his letter to the church at Philippi encouraging them to “Rejoice in the Lord always” (Phil. 4:4), he is writing from a dark cold prison cell, where painful chains, cramped quarters and the sickening stench from poor sanitation made sleeping impossible and waking hours miserable. And yet his focus is not this misery but his joy in seeing the gospel flourish. In fact, the words “joy” or “rejoice” are used 16 times in Philippians as Paul calls us, his brothers and sisters, to serve selflessly.

Of course the very same Person who inspired Paul to write those words and to overflow with love and joy in the midst of hell on earth is the risen Jesus. And if you believe in Him and are one of His own, He is with you to give you the very same supernatural, invincible, unconquerable and undefeatable joy and strength that Paul had.

Few of us will likely be called to such sacrifice. Nevertheless, this year across the globe our staff have endured imprisonment, been separated from their families and confronted famine, disease and suffering on a scale we have not seen in many years. At times they have even risked their own lives to serve the most vulnerable. Here in the U.S. in the wake of cutbacks in refugee resettlement, our staff have seen their friends laid off due to office closures, received hate mail and endured threats to their families and homes. As an organization, we have been the target of a constant barrage of vitriol from those who believe that security and compassion cannot co-exist, and that our security is more important than loving our neighbor or welcoming the stranger.  

And yet, we endure all things, in love. And we claim joy as our “defiant nevertheless.”

Hope Mongers

We live in hope. We live on the shoulders of the saints. We live confident in Jesus’s victory over the world as we know it. And so we hope, and we endure.

We choose to be “hope mongers” and people who “let our footsteps be our preaching.”  We choose optimism and the belief that there is always a way. We choose the path forward, the path of enduring love. Because to us, there is no other path worth choosing.

Whether in the midst of conflict in places like Yemen, South Sudan or Congo where our staff encounter genuine threats to life and limb, or in drought-stricken regions like Turkana, Kenya, where staff spend months at a time separated from families and loved ones to bring hope to communities in crisis, or even here in the U.S., where staff selflessly give of themselves in an environment  that—after years of bipartisan consensus on our obligations to refugees—has in many places turned hostile to our ministry of helping foreign born vulnerable people, we choose enduring love.

Our staff chose to be defiant in the face of adversity and to be bold in faith. To, in spite of their circumstances, choose His joy. They dare to believe in our God, saying, as Swiss Theologian Karl Barth wrote in 1934:

“I will NOT let this beat me. I will make the choice to praise Him all day, every day. Yes, Jesus has allowed this into my life but I will trust Him. What the enemy means for evil, He intends for good. I will not deny that I am in a rough season. I will face it head on in the strength and power of His Name. For as long as I need to walk this difficult path, my spirit will be marked with a blazing NEVERTHELESS for all of earth and heaven to see. Jesus has never known defeat and I will not either as long as I am clinging to Him. He always leads me in triumph!”

Love Endures

All over the world our staff and volunteers choose to get up each day, to come alongside the most vulnerable, to touch people with compassion, to love, and yes, to hope as they serve them, resisting the currents of our time, believing in the goodness of our God and Jesus’ call to “love our neighbor as ourselves,” choosing the narrow path, choosing hardship in the face of skepticism, hostility and even danger.

And so I want to say thank you. Thank you for your choice. Thank you for your brave and defiant nevertheless. Thank you for your enduring love. The world is a better place because of it.

Through the end of the year, we’ll be featuring stories of individuals and communities putting Love in Action—bringing hope to the hurting and shining light in the darkest hours.

Learn more and put your Love in Action today.

Tim Breene served on the World Relief Board from 2010 to 2015 before assuming the role of CEO in 2016. Tim’s business career has spanned nearly 40 years with organizations like McKinsey, and Accenture where he was the Corporate Development Officer and Founder and Chief Executive of Accenture Interactive. Tim is the co-author of Jumping the S-Curve, published by Harvard Publishing. Tim and his wife Michele, a longtime supporter of World Relief, have a wealth of experience working with Christian leaders in the United States and around the world.

Posted in Staff Reflections and tagged , ,

5 Words That Can Change a Nation

By worldrelief | November 8, 2017

Photo by Marianne Bach, Thomas Busch

In 2008 my wife and I were in her childhood home of Kenya when violence after the country’s election broke out—resulting in the death of over 1,100 people and the displacement of thousands more. As we witnessed the devastation in the lives of our friends and the Kenyan people, we felt called to act. And in 2013, ahead of the next elections, we returned to Kenya to participate in peace and reconciliation workshops and a peace march with local pastors. In the Kibera slum of Nairobi, and in Molo, in the White Mountains—two places where some of the worst inter-tribal violence took place—we saw communities embrace forgiveness for acts committed against one another. We saw tears shed and commitments made to be followers of Jesus first, Kenyans second and tribal community leaders a distant third. The subsequent elections were largely peaceful and celebrated as an important step forward. And so it was with great sadness that we learned this year’s elections in July had once again been disputed—largely along tribal lines. Following the Kenyan Supreme Court ruling that the elections needed to be re-run, the country was plunged into an economic crisis as investors and others fled the resulting uncertainty.

Coincidentally, this weekend found us back in Nairobi just days after the re-run election, only to find the country more deeply divided and polarized than ever and facing an uneasy peace. The root causes of the turmoil are being hotly disputed amongst factions and there is little desire for compromise amongst the political elite. Meanwhile, the working poor—those living barely above the poverty line—are seeing their already fragile lives caught in the political cross fire,  escalating rhetoric and disappearing livelihoods. Tales of violence and killing abound, though much of this will never surface in the mainstream media because what happens in and around the slums of Nairobi and the most rural parts of the country is only partially recorded.

A Challenging Question

So what, you might ask, has this to do with America?

On Sunday my wife and I listened to a Nairobi pastor preaching into the crisis, explaining the ways in which we as individuals can either calm or inflame a crisis. He laid out five characteristics that he believes make this current Kenyan crisis perhaps more profound and harder to resolve than previous ones. After all, Kenyans stared into the abyss in 2008. They are naturally peace-loving and optimistic people. Surely it could not descend into serious open conflict again?

As is often the case here in Africa the Pastor used a colorful metaphor to catch his congregation’s attention – and ours. He identified five characteristics that polarize and inflame crises, characteristics that each one of us can too easily embrace. And he called us to examine our own hearts, challenging us with this question:

“Are we promoting unity, as we are called to do by Christ and the apostle Paul, or are we so entrenched in our own beliefs and self righteousness that we are actually promoting division and fueling crisis?”

The 5 Characteristics

  1. An attacking mouth — Insensitivity to the reasons others might hold a different view, and worse, an incapacity to understand how our positions and words might make them feel. By our words we don’t just express disagreement, we attack, discredit, inflame, and in so doing—polarize.

  2. Blind eyes — Ignorance. An almost wilful blindness to the complexity of issues that often underlie people’s different views; a willingness to accept the narrative that corresponds to our own preference without examining facts that would be uncomfortable.

  3. Cold shoulders — Indifference to the plight of others, so long as “I am all right”. The opposite of love, this Pastor suggested, is not hate—it is indifference. His argument? At least if you hate someone your emotions are engaged. It is worse to be relegated to the status of non-person, someone whose concerns and views are simply irrelevant to you and your view of the world.

  4. Dead ears — Inflexibilty. An unwillingness to re-examine one’s own views, a preference for certainty, even when it is misplaced, over inquiry and uncertainty.

  5. Empty Hands — Irresponsibility. Denial that one might have contributed in any way to the crisis, instead searching to always put the blame elsewhere, and to always find scapegoats.

Does the Shoe Fit?

In the most sophisticated nation in the world we might assume that none of this applies. But I must ask, can we truly open the newspaper each day, watch the news, or scroll through twitter, facebook or other social media and not recognize that perhaps “the shoe does fit us too?”

Disagreements in human relationships are inevitable, yet just as marriage disagreements do not have to lead to breakdown, neither do they have to in civil society.

But genuine reconciliation requires a heart that is open and a willingness to forgive and reconcile. Indeed, the ability to reconcile is one key sign of a maturing Christian faith.

And so I challenge us as we look to the deepening divisions in our own society. Do we have something to learn from this courageous Kenyan Pastor, challenging his followers to recognize their own part in the crisis and examine their own hearts, attitudes and behaviors?

“Little children let us not love in word or talk, but in deed and in truth.”
John 3:18   

(ABOVE PHOTO: Marianne Bach, Thomas Busch)

Tim Breene served on the World Relief Board from 2010 to 2015 before assuming the role of CEO in 2016. Tim’s business career has spanned nearly 40 years with organizations like McKinsey, and Accenture where he was the Corporate Development Officer and Founder and Chief Executive of Accenture Interactive. Tim is the co-author of Jumping the S-Curve, published by Harvard Publishing. Tim and his wife Michele, a longtime supporter of World Relief, have a wealth of experience working with Christian leaders in the United States and around the world.

Posted in Staff Reflections and tagged ,

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