Welcoming the Stranger: Signposts for Building Bridges and Making Peace

- Blurb -

Does your church or community group want to help refugees or migrants settle into your neighbourhood but you're not sure how to start? Nick Regnault shares the experiences of his community at South West Baptist Church in Christchurch who are doing just that: initially through a refugee sponsorship scheme, and then in response to the terror attacks that occurred on 15 March 2019. This hugely rewarding and sometimes challenging journey has been a discovery: about others and about themselves. Nick distils four essential threads weaving through all these experiences. When woven together, he says, we can create places of welcoming and belonging for others and for ourselves, for the newcomer and for the established. The four threads are:1. Being clear about our intentions and values in welcoming others. 2. Working with other people to together extend many hands of friendship.3. Thinking about the places that we live and move about in differently: as places of rich potential for making connections and creating belonging.4. Knowing about yourself and others.Nick and his community are very clear that this is not about converting people to Christianity. It is about ordinary people reaching out hands of friendship towards each other - to build bridges and to make peace.