Christians called to embody “hospitality not hostility” towards migrants in statement from mission leaders

Dr Harvey Kwiyani

Acts 11 Project leader

Andy Roberts MBE

Church Mission Society CEO

The new CEO of Church Mission Society (CMS) Andy Roberts MBE and  Dr Harvey Kwiyani, director for the Acts 11 Centre for Global Witness and Human Migration have issued a joint call for Christians to practise “hospitality not hostility” towards migrating people.

Andy Roberts said: “As a mission organisation, we are keenly aware that God has long worked through people on the move,” adding, “Instead of giving into hatred, we should be looking for the hand of God in this moment.”

Dr Harvey Kwiyani said, “We live in an age of migration. This is an opportunity to lead with faith, to counter fear with compassion and to demonstrate a gospel-shaped response that embraces hospitality above hostility.” 

The Call to Hospitality not Hostility statement

Humanity beyond the headlines

Migration is back in the headlines due to ongoing and impending protests. In turn, these protests are often galvanised by fearful or sensationalist headlines. Within the European Union and the United States of America, there is a rise in anti-migration rhetoric and sentiments. Social media feeds are full of anger and fear.

There are many valid causes for concern, exposing deeper systemic failures: unsafe housing, slow asylum processes, under-resourced communities and divisive political narratives. 

But amid the shouting and violence, one truth risks being lost: the humanity that we all share.

Considerations for Christians

For Christians, moments like these cause us to reconsider how we live faithfully at the intersection of national politics and our deeper calling to follow Christ as a pilgrim people, sojourners on the earth. 

How we respond to this moment will reveal whether we are echoing society’s anxieties or embodying the heart of Christ. 

Migration in memory

In the 1980s, Mozambique was torn apart by a brutal civil war. Violence forced hundreds of thousands of Mozambicans across the border into Malawi. They arrived traumatised, hungry and desperate for safety.

Originally from Malawi, Dr Kwiyani remembers how  communities responded. Families shared food, however scarce. Schools made space for displaced children. Churches offered shelter, prayer and encouragement. 

This spirit of hospitality was not rooted in wealth or comfort. Most Malawian families live close to poverty. Instead, it was grounded in the spirit of umunthu – that profound African conviction that “I am because we are.” Often known as ubuntu, it insists that our humanity is shared, that to deny dignity to another is to diminish our own. 

In welcoming Mozambican refugees, Malawians were not just showing kindness; they were affirming their own humanity, living out the truth that the well-being of one is tied to the well-being of all.

Understanding ubuntu

This is a lesson our world urgently needs today. In countries like the UK, migrants’ humanity is overshadowed by arguments about borders, costs and control. Yet the reality is this: the vast majority of the world’s displaced people are not in wealthy nations but in poorer countries. Uganda hosts more than 1.5 million refugees; Pakistan and Iran have sheltered millions from Afghanistan; Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey carry the enormous weight of welcoming those fleeing Syria. 

This reality should give Christians in wealthier nations pause. If those with the least are able to carry the greatest weight, how much more should those with greater resources embrace the call to hospitality? 

The gospel reminds us that our identity is not secured by defending ourselves against others but by recognising Christ in the face of the stranger. Abraham welcomed strangers at his tent. Israel was commanded to remember its own history as migrants and to care for the foreigner. Jesus himself began life fleeing violence in search of safety in Egypt. 

Christians are called to embody a spirit of hospitality – not out of surplus, but out of faithfulness. When we welcome the stranger, we strengthen the bonds that make us human. When we turn people away, we wound not only them but ourselves.

But ubuntu challenges us to go deeper than welcome. It calls us to ask why people are displaced. We must be honest: many Western governments continue to profit from the global arms trade and economic exploitation of other parts of the world. It is not enough to welcome refugees at our borders if our economies simultaneously profit from the conditions that drive them out of their homes. Christian witness demands that we not only open our doors but also raise our voices against policies and practices that perpetuate any form of violence, military or economic. 

The choice for Christians

Rather than being trapped in the false choice between “helping locals” or “helping migrants,” followers of Jesus can model a bigger imagination. We can show through word and deed that God’s kingdom is not a zero-sum game. Extending hospitality to the stranger does not mean neglecting those already here. True hospitality seeks the flourishing of all – the asylum seeker, the long-term resident, the neighbour who feels overlooked. 

This is an opportunity to lead with faith, to counter fear with compassion and to demonstrate a gospel-shaped response that embraces hospitality above hostility. Above all, it is a chance to point to Jesus himself – the child who fled to Egypt, the teacher who welcomed outsiders, the Saviour who broke down dividing walls to create one new humanity (Ephesians 2:14–16).

We pray for peace this week.

How Christians can embody hospitality not hostility

A free resource for you to share

Download PDF

Dr Kwiyani’s new book, Decolonising Mission, is out now from SCM Press.

Related posts

Get our email newsletter:

SIGN UP

The post A call to hospitality not hostility appeared first on Church Mission Society (CMS).

Dr Harvey Kwiyani, leader of the Acts 11 Centre for Global Witness and Human Migration at Church Mission Society, reflects on the opportunities of migration and why mission and migration have become his life passion

Since Acts 11 is central to the work we’re doing at CMS around mission and migration, let’s look at the context. In Acts 10, Peter had been in Cornelius’s house, present for the dramatic arrival of the Holy Spirit. He then has to explain to people why he was in a Gentile house, eating with Gentiles. After he shares his account the leaders say, “Now we see that God has given the grace of salvation to the Gentiles.” It’s a conversion from seeing Gentiles as unclean to seeing God at work among them.

Straight after, Luke takes us to Antioch. Due to persecution of early believers in Jesus in Jerusalem, many had to leave. They found refuge in other cities around the Mediterranean – some in Cyprus, others in Antioch, the third largest city in the Roman empire. Antioch was on a trade route between East and West, a hub that connected the world. It was a multicultural, multi-religious city. If you worshipped the emperor, you had your own religious community. If you had come from Jerusalem, you had your synagogue. If you’d come from Egypt, you’d have Egyptian temples.

In this place the believers from Jerusalem began to preach to Gentiles. As Gentiles converted, it didn’t work to join Jews in the synagogue, but they couldn’t keep on going to their old temples. So, they began meeting together as a diverse group to worship this Jewish Messiah. The name “Christians” emerges because of this unique gathering. All other groups worshipped with people from the same background – Christianity brings together people from different parts of the world, different cultures, different races, different languages.

And that’s the story behind Acts 11: a faith shared through migration.

Carrying Christianity

Christian migrants moved from Jerusalem, not necessarily because they wanted to. As they moved, they shared the gospel wherever they were. Likewise, the new CMS centre is about Christians on the move, sharing the good news with people they meet along the way.

Why is this important? Because a great deal of what we call mission today really depends on migration. And in many ways, it always has.

Historically, the era of mission agencies is quite short: about 500 years. The church has been around for 2,000 years; in the first 1,500 years Christianity expanded through Christians migrating from one place to another who took the gospel with them. My hope is that today, when we think about mission, we will think about Christians on the move.

Migration in Scripture

To really understand the story of the New Testament, we must understand that key events happen in the context of the Jewish diaspora. When Jesus appears, many Jews had been living out of Palestine for a while. Some had remained in Babylon, some had been scattered to Rome, and at the time of Pentecost there were more Jews living in Alexandria than Jerusalem. The day of Pentecost happens in a context of people on the move. That day, the displaced Jewish diaspora comes back to Jerusalem; Luke describes the presence of devout Jews from every nation on earth.

Pentecost is about these displaced peoples coming together when the Spirit is given, and I believe that these really are the first missionaries. Many key figures – Paul, Barnabas and John Mark – are children of the diaspora. Together they cross boundaries to evangelise Gentiles.

Migration really shapes the Old Testament as well, with the call of Abraham, the Exodus and Babylonian captivity. The Bible is a story of migration: it’s about God being with God’s people as God’s people move from one place to another.

Migration past and present

In the 1800s, 60-80 million people left Europe and moved elsewhere. Of those, a few thousand were missionaries, but a lot of them were just European Christians, carrying their faith with them. European mission agencies played a role, but we often don’t realise that the global Christianity we see today is to a great extent a result of European Christian migration. Thanks to migration, we can rejoice that Christianity is present in every country in the world.

Today migration patterns have shifted. Now we see the rest of the world moving in all directions. It is critical for us to know that 47 per cent of migrants in the world today are Christians, much higher than any other faith. And that’s just people who have crossed international borders and first-generation migrants, not counting subsequent generations. We should also consider people who are moving from one part of a country to another.

As in centuries past, Christians are again moving from place to place, taking their faith with them.

With the Acts 11 centre, we aim to give sustained attention to this issue of Christians migrating and bringing their faith. Christians can be involved in mission wherever God sends them. This is a significant shift from how we normally think about mission: as a movement mostly of Westerners to the rest of the world.

Looking at Africa, the missionary movement there is being driven not by mission agencies but by churches. Churches are responding to their members who find themselves in a city elsewhere in the world, then realise, “There are quite a few of us. We can start a church and our headquarters in Nigeria will send us a pastor.”

We need to pay attention to that, and to create resources that help receiving countries to begin to think differently how to engage with Christian migrants. There’s a lot of potential for research and learning, for mission agencies, for the Church, for everybody to have a sense of what God is doing.

The Acts 11 centre is the start of a very important conversation, which will probably change the way we talk and think about mission. And I’m delighted that we can do that here at CMS.

Acts 11 newsletter

Subscribe to get regular updates from the Acts 11 Project with latest news, events, and reflections on witness and migration.

Sign up

Related posts

Get our email updates:

SIGN UP

The post Christians on the move appeared first on Church Mission Society (CMS).

At a time when the UK is still reeling after violent protests against immigration in cities and towns across the country, Church Mission Society (CMS) is urging Christians to take a different approach and reach out to migrant communities with love and faith.

Dr Harvey Kwiyani, Diaspora Centre leader for CMS, said; “CMS recognises that the world is experiencing an ‘Age of Migration’ where globally one in every 30 of the earth’s population are migrants. However, until now migration has not been an integral part of mission and Christian communities are not equipped to reach out and share their faith with strangers in a world where migration and tensions are on the rise.”

In response to this uncertainty over how to engage with migrants, a new centre for mission that will help educate and equip Christian communities reach out to migrants is to be launched by CMS, as part of its long-term vision to reach people at “the edges” with the Good News of Jesus.

Central to this vision is this first-of-a-kind education centre, tasked with helping Christian communities to imagine and embrace hospitable mission in a world where migration is on the rise. The centre will also focus on preparing Christian migrants for effective witness wherever they migrate.

The new centre will be named The Acts 11 Centre, reflecting the biblical account of the first believers migrating from Judea.

Dr Harvey Kwiyani, the inspiration behind the new centre, said; “The explosion of migration globally over the last 25 years has prompted a reassessment of how we prepare Christians to engage with migrant communities, as well as how we equip and enable migrant Christians to share their faith.”

Initially, the centre will offer theological and missiological resources, practical seminars, courses and conferences on global witness and human migration. In addition, the centre will help create and curate resources for Christian communities, mission agencies, and academic institutions interested in reaching migrants around the world, and research opportunities and challenges that emerge for followers of Christ in the current context of global migration.

To launch this new initiative CMS is running a ground-breaking conference to examine the missiological and theological issues around migration.

Titled Acts 11: Convergence 1, the conference takes place from 26 to 27 September 2024 at CMS’s offices in Oxford. Professor of World Christianity, Dr Jehu J Hanciles, from Emory University in Atlanta will deliver the keynote address.

Dr Kwiyani explained: “Our vision is to gather people and share resources to equip and empower the Body of Christ to effectively bear witness for his name in the age of migration.

“We are committed to helping Christian communities share the Good News with the migrants who come to their neighbourhoods and to empowering Christian migrants to engage in disciple-making in their new host societies.

“Migrants are often at the edges of society, but we believe they come bearing God with them.”

More information is available at churchmissionsociety.org/acts11

Related posts

Get our email newsletter:

SIGN UP

The post New centre for mission and migration at crucial time appeared first on Church Mission Society (CMS).