Missions To, Through, and Beyond the Diasporas 4

The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life recently released an important report on the religious affiliations of international migrants.  I sent out a few tweets linking readers to Pew’s site and the fascinating interactive maps.  If you have not seen them, you need to check them out HERE and HERE.

214 million international migrants exist in the world today.  That is about 3% of the world’s population.

Report Highlights

• Nearly half of the world’s migrants are Christian (49%), and more than a quarter are Muslim (27%).
• Christians and Muslims are the two largest religious groups among migrants as well as the two largest religious groups in general. However, Christians comprise a much greater share of migrants (about one-in-two) than they do of the general population (nearly one-in-three). Muslims comprise only a slightly higher share of migrants (27%) than of the world’s population (23%).  Hindus comprise 5% of international migrants but 10-15% of the global population.
• In percentage terms, Jews have by far the highest level of migration. About one-quarter of Jews alive today (25%) have left the country in which they were born and now live somewhere else.   (Taken from: source)

The United States

• Of the 43 million foreign-born people living in the United States as of 2010, an estimated 32 million (74%) are Christian. The U.S. also has been the top destination for Buddhist migrants (including many from Vietnam) and for people with no particular religion (including many from China).
• The U.S. has been the world’s second-leading destination for Hindu migrants, after India, and for Jewish migrants, after Israel. Among Muslim migrants, however, the U.S. ranks just seventh as a destination – behind Saudi Arabia, Russia, Germany, France, Jordan and Pakistan. There were more than 2 million Muslim immigrants living in the U.S. as of 2010, representing about 5% of the U.S. immigrant population.
• The U.S. leads all other countries as a destination for international migrants overall. One of every five international migrants alive today resides in the United States.
• Mexico has been by far the largest country of origin for U.S. immigrants. In fact, the U.S. has received about as many migrants from Mexico alone (more than 12 million, including both legal immigrants and unauthorized ones) as any other nation has received from all sources combined. Among the other leading countries of origin for U.S. immigrants are the Philippines (1.8 million), India (1.7 million), China (1.4 million) and Germany (1.2 million).  (Taken from: source)

As we think missiologically about these realities, it is helpful to consider a challenge that was published in Scattered to Gather that missions should be done to the diasporas, through the diasporas, and beyond the diasporas.  I’ll end this post today with a brief excerpt from my forthcoming book Strangers Next Door: Immigration, Migration, and Mission.

Missions to the Diasporas

We must reach the unreached who have migrated into our neighborhoods.  Many of the word’s unreached peoples have migrated not only to the West but also to many countries of the Majority World, offering the Church there wonderful Great Commission opportunities to respond in love, service, and sharing the faith. Many of the strangers next door are the keys to unlocking doors into the lostness of people you and I will never be able to meet.

Missions through the Diasporas

Often migrants desire to return home. In the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, many refugees, displaced persons, and other migrants returned to their countries of origin. Ellen Oxfeld and Lynellyn D. Long wrote that of the 30 million people admitted to the United States between 1900-1980, 10 million (one-third) returned home. Referencing the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, they noted from the 1990s to 2004 there was a steady rise in the number of refugee returns as well.[1]

Such is not only the case for refugees. Writing on Brazilians in the United States, Maxine L. Margolis commented that the vast majority of them living in New York understand themselves to be “sojourners” and not “permanent residents.” She continued, “Most plan to stay in New York for anywhere from two to ten years and then return to Brazil. . . . Even those few Brazilians who have lived in New York for years invariably plan to retire to their homeland.”[2]

Missions through the diasporas refers to the diasporic believers returning to their countries to share the good news and plant churches among their peoples. According to the Lausanne Diaspora Leadership Team, “Christians living in the diaspora context represent the largest self-supporting contingency of missionary force which has been located within many of the so-called ‘unreached peoples’ and accessible to practically all people-groups of the world today.”[3]

Missions beyond the Diasporas

The concept of missions beyond the diasporas refers to the notion that diasporic believers are not only called to reach their own peoples but are also to be involved in cross-cultural missionary labors. Many Americans are not aware of the fact that there are a large number of followers of Jesus who are migrating to the West from Majority World countries, with some understanding themselves to be on mission in their new homelands. Claudia Währisch-Oblau noted that this lack of awareness is also present in Germany, with churches not recognizing that “more and more immigrants in Germany see themselves as missionaries who are to evangelize Germans.”[4]

We in the West must not fool ourselves into believing that we are the only missionaries in the world today. Jason Mandryk noted, “Nearly every country is a missionary-sending country. What used to happen ‘from the West to the rest’ is now an extensive and expanding global activity. Missionary vision is alive even in those countries where the Church is young, small or under persecution.”[5]