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June 18, 2009

How a handshake can be a life saver

Our new opportunity to serve those new to America

by Jim Nedelka
Special to the Presbyterian News Service

The Rev. Gemechisa Guja, an Ethiopian pastor, stresses the importance of hospitality in reaching new immigrants for Christ in his presentation at the New Immigrants Convocation at Big Tent. Photo by Jim Nedelka.

ATLANTA — One simple, eleven-letter word is the key to any and all immigration policy and practices within the Presbyterian Church (USA):

Hospitality.

This was the message of the Rev. Gemechisa Guja, a native Ethiopian serving as a pastor in Lancaster, PA, to participants in the PC(USA)’s New Immigrant Ministries Convocation here at the first-ever Big Tent event, June 11-13.

“We face a completely different challenge regarding the new immigrant because so many are coming from so many different nationalities,” said Guja.

Guja then offered two examples.

His native Ethiopia was once a Communist nation. Churches were closed and torn down under the yoke of Soviet influence. But a simple, ”Hello,” from then-President Reagan to his USSR counterpart, Chairman Gorbachev, who returned with a “Hello” of his own helped release Ethiopia from the Iron Curtain shackles. His home Presbyterian synod saw 140 churches closed in the Communist era. Today, his it is more than 300 churches strong.

When he first came to Lancaster, PA, as a young man, he headed for Sunday services at local Presbyterian Church. He was “welcomed” with obvious indifference. “Nobody came up to meet me or greet me; after a month I gave up and left.”

The next week, Guja went to another Presbyterian Church a few blocks down the street. There, he said, the atmosphere could not have been any different. “As soon as the service ended, two congregants practically fell all over themselves to come over and shake my hand and wish me well.”

For Guja, God’s mission for the PC(USA) is one of love and compassion. “Hospitality reinforces the basis of community and lays down the foundation of peace.”

Guja maintains that, in a church whose basic purpose is mission, hospitality is the essence of Christian mission.

“Hospitality is not only giving, but it is also receiving.”

For Guja, the lack of hospitality has deeper consequences than the lost opportunity to shake a stranger’s hand. He recounted how the lack of hospitality by a particular California presbytery actually helped kill a particular Presbyterian Fellowship aimed at new immigrants that he had formed with another pastor.

One Sunday, the promised visit by presbytery representatives never materialized. A subsequent promise was also unfulfilled. Disheartened, the fellowship’s members left the PC(USA) as a group. Guja calls this “lost fellowship” a lost opportunity for the denomination.

While Guja admits that reaching out to new faces in the congregation, especially those faces with a different skin tone or from a different ethnic background, is a new experience for many congregations.

“So many things hold us back. We are too often tied to older ways of doing things. It is hard for us to change.”
 “God want us to change,” says Guja. “We have to show it with action. After hospitality, take action.”

Guja warns that if “we don’t show it by action,” then all the platitudes spoken from the pulpit or sung from pews are “useless, meaningless.”

“The Lord, Jesus Christ has already said ‘when you do for the least among us you do for me.’’

Jim Nedelka is a professional journalist living and working in New York City. He is an Elder at West-Park Presbyterian Church on Manhattan’s Upper West Side and a frequent contributor to Presbyterian News Service.