What happens to the Church when a local people group no longer shares the same place? Part 2 of our series on displacement addresses this question, and how relocating – often across national boundaries – impacts the Church in its life and witness.
What happens to the Church when its members no longer share the same place?
In Part One of this series, we explored how Scripture presents movement, exile and displacement not only as experiences of loss, but also as contexts in which God continues to form his people and advance his purposes.
From Abraham’s journey (Genesis 12:1-4) to Israel’s exile and the scattering of the early Church, the Biblical narrative reminds us that God’s people have never been defined entirely by geography. This raises a further question: what happens to the Church when a local people group no longer shares the same place?
For Christians across the Middle East and North Africa, this is not a theoretical question. Churches once situated in particular villages, neighbourhoods and historic buildings are increasingly connected to communities dispersed across countries and continents. Families whose roots are in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt or Sudan may now be raising their children in Europe, North America or Australia.
Migration, therefore, does more than move Christians from one place to another. It reshapes the geography of Christian community itself. The Church is no longer simply a particular people group in a place; increasingly, it is people groups between places.
When the Church crosses borders
A woman from Iraq once described her experience of church in a way that unsettled the assumption that one’s Christian identity is anchored in a particular community in one place. She worshipped in Germany, spoke Arabic with her family, remained connected to relatives in Iraq, and continued to support a congregation and ministry in the country she had left. Her children were growing up in a different cultural environment, yet the stories, prayers and traditions of their Christian heritage remained part of their family life. When asked where her church was, the answer could not be reduced to a single location.
Read more: Escaping ISIS – A Christian mother and daughter’s journey from Iraq
Her experience reflects a reality increasingly familiar among Middle Eastern Christians. For many, migration does not mean leaving one Christian community and simply joining another. Instead, it creates a life of continuing relationships across borders.
This is not completely new to the Church’s story – we find similar movement in the New Testament – but in today’s world of migration there are some unique components to consider. A person may attend a local congregation in a new country while remaining emotionally, spiritually and materially connected to a church of origin. Worship may take place in English, prayer may continue in Arabic, and family responsibilities may stretch across several countries. Christian belonging is experienced not only within a particular place, but also through the relationships that connect places. Driven largely by emigration, Middle Eastern Christianity has seen significant growth beyond its traditional heartland. It is now estimated that 7.7 million Middle Eastern Christians reside outside the region. [1]
Iraqi Christians, displaced by Islamist terrorism. What happens to the Church when its people no longer share the same geographical location?
Such experiences raise an important ecclesiological question: what happens to the Church when a particular people group no longer shares the same geographical location? And how might Christian community be understood when belonging is carried through memory, relationships, worship and mutual care across borders?
The early Church provides an important theological starting point. Following the persecution that arose after Stephen’s death, believers were scattered from Jerusalem. What appeared to be a devastating disruption became, unexpectedly, a means through which the Gospel travelled: “those who had been scattered preached the word wherever they went” (Acts 8:4). The believers carried more than a message. They carried prayer, worship, fellowship, mutual care and witness to different contexts. From its earliest days, by God’s design, the Church developed as a community capable of crossing geographical, cultural and linguistic boundaries.
Antioch illustrates this particularly well. It became a place where believers from different backgrounds encountered one another and where a distinctive Christian community emerged. It was there that the disciples were first called Christians (Acts 11:26). The Church did not simply reproduce Jerusalem elsewhere; it took root within a new cultural setting.
From inherited faith to living faith
For displaced Christians, the challenge is that belonging is often carried through memory. A church building may no longer be accessible; a village may have been destroyed; a family home may have been lost. Yet people remember where they were baptised, the church leaders who served their families, the hymns they sang and the festivals they celebrated. Such memories form part of the theological vision through which displaced Christians understand who they are.
This is not entirely misplaced. Scripture repeatedly calls God’s people to remember: “Remember the days of old” (Deuteronomy 32:7). The Psalms similarly preserve Israel’s memory as a means of sustaining faithfulness. For displaced communities, memory can resist the erasure of people, places and traditions and allow stories to be passed from one generation to another.
Yet memory also presents a challenge. How can the Church remember faithfully without becoming imprisoned by the past?
Christian refugees from Syria. How can the Church remember faithfully without becoming imprisoned by the past?
Diaspora communities understandably seek to preserve what has been lost, but Christian identity cannot be sustained by nostalgia alone. Younger generations need more than stories about places their parents left behind. They need a living faith that speaks meaningfully within the cultures and societies where they now live.
The task, therefore, is not simply to preserve Christian identity but to translate it faithfully. The question is not only, “How can we keep everything as it was?” but also, “What must we carry forward, and how can it take root again?” This question becomes particularly significant across generations. The first generation often carries direct memories of the places they left. Their children may know those places primarily through family stories, while their grandchildren may encounter them through photographs, traditions and occasional visits.
“The task is not simply to preserve Christian identity but to translate it faithfully.”
The Church consequently faces a theological question: how is Christian identity transmitted when geographical experience is no longer shared? The answer cannot depend entirely upon cultural memory. The Church’s calling is not simply to preserve heritage, important though heritage may be, but to make disciples of Jesus Christ (Matthew 28:19–20) and to serve faithfully where God has placed them.
Peter instructs scattered believers: “as each one has received a special gift, employ it as serving one another as good stewards …” (1 Peter 4:10). Faith must therefore become lived and embodied within new contexts. As Amira from Sudan shared, “Displacement has taught me that even when familiar places are left behind, our identity in Christ remains, and God continues to open new paths for witness, teaching and discipleship.”
When the stranger becomes a neighbour
Scripture repeatedly commands God’s people to welcome the stranger: “You shall love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt” (Deuteronomy 10:19, NRSVA). Hebrews similarly exhorts believers, “Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers” (Hebrews13:2, ESV).
For displaced Christians, this command has depth. They know what it means to arrive somewhere unfamiliar, navigate another language and culture, and wonder whether they will truly belong.
Yet displaced Christians are not only recipients of hospitality. They can also become hosts. Refugees and migrants are often viewed primarily through vulnerability and need. Their vulnerability is real, and the Church must respond with compassion and practical care. But displaced Christians are also bearers of gifts, wisdom, theological insight and missionary vocation. They can plant churches, disciple others, teach, evangelise, serve local congregations and welcome other strangers. They become gifts to their new contexts.
Migration invites the Church to recover the theological significance of hospitality
The person who has experienced displacement may possess a particular capacity to recognise the loneliness of others. Displacement can therefore become, without romanticising its pain, a context from which new forms of Christian service emerge. Therefore, the question is not only, “How can the Church help displaced Christians?” It is also, “What might God be doing through displaced Christians?”
A table that crosses borders
Perhaps nowhere is this transformation more clearly expressed than around the table. Food carries memory. For displaced communities, meals can preserve relationships and traditions when much else has changed as well as bless those in their new context with this precious experiences. Recipes passed from one generation to another can sustain connections to home, while hospitality can become a means of rebuilding community.
The Christian table, however, carries a deeper significance. Jesus repeatedly gathered people around meals, eating with those who were excluded and challenging boundaries that separated people from one another. The New Testament presents the Church as one body gathered in Christ rather than defined by nationality or geography. “There is one body and one Spirit” (Ephesians 4:4), and those who were once “strangers and aliens” become “members of the household of God” (Ephesians 2:19, ESV).
“The New Testament presents the Church as one body gathered in Christ rather than defined by nationality or geography.”
Christian unity does not require cultural uniformity. In fact, the New Testament clearly indicates the opposite: God’s wisdom is on display through Jew and Gentile united in one body (Ephesians 3:4-6). Arab, African, European and Asian Christians retain particular histories, languages and traditions – yet these differences can become gifts within the wider communion of Christ’s body.
For a Church gradually shaped by migration, this offers an important theological vision: difference need not become division, and displacement need not result in the loss of belonging.
Migration also challenges conventional assumptions about what constitutes a Christian community. A congregation is not necessarily limited to those who gather every Sunday in the same building. Although not a replacement for local church integration, families may remain connected across borders; church leaders may continue caring for members who have moved thousands of miles away; churches may sustain relationships through prayer, financial support, online fellowship and shared ministry.
The Christian community in diaspora
In this discussion, researcher Fiona McCallum Guiney helps us understand what it means to be a Christian community in diaspora.
As a result of migration, Middle Eastern Christian communities have established a global presence, particularly in many Western countries, where they actively contribute to economic and social life. Host churches have responded to the effects of the displacement of some of their incoming members by offering a range of spiritual, practical and cultural services, enabling them to maintain their central role in preserving community identity, faith and heritage. Lay-led organisations have also played a vital role in supporting newcomers and sustaining cultural continuity.
Although these efforts are often limited by community size, geographic dispersion, and resource constraints, diaspora networks serve as valuable channels for resource-sharing and reinforcing collective identity.[2]
A new ecclesial geography is therefore emerging: Christian communities can be simultaneously local and transnational, rooted in places while connected to the wider Body of Christ
Digital technology has intensified this reality. Whilst WhatsApp groups, livestreamed services, online prayer meetings and theological education can sustain relationships that might otherwise disappear, technology cannot replace embodied Christian community. Christianity is an incarnational faith, and believers are called to gather, worship, eat and serve together. Yet digital spaces can provide important bridges for communities whose geographical circumstances have been fractured by migration.
Middle Eastern Christian migration is often narrated primarily as a story of decline: churches are emptying, communities are shrinking and historic Christian populations are diminishing. There is genuine tragedy in this, and it should not be minimised. People need homes, communities need stability, and the loss of historic Christian presence matters.
Yet decline is not the whole story, nor is it the end of it. Christians are also carrying their faith into new places, establishing congregations, raising children in faith, serving neighbours and building relationships across cultures. Their experience of living between worlds can become a theological and missional resource. They know the pain of exclusion and the significance of welcome. They understand the vulnerability of the stranger and the importance of belonging. These experiences can equip them to become bridgebuilders in societies increasingly marked by migration and fragmentation. Indeed, it is God’s wisdom on display (Ephesians 3:10).
A Church between places
The future of Middle Eastern Christianity may require moving beyond a simple distinction between homeland and diaspora. The Church is not merely “here” or “there”; it can inhabit the space between. These journeys do not erase the places people have left, nor are Christians defined solely by the places in which they arrive. They belong to Christ.
Paul reminds believers that they are members of God’s household, a household larger than any nation, denomination or geographical boundary.
The Church between places can become a Church that crosses borders, welcomes strangers, inhabits multiple cultures and forms communities of belonging wherever God’s people are found. Christians arriving in new countries should not be regarded merely as people to be integrated into existing structures. They are fellow members of Christ’s body, carrying gifts, experiences and theological insights that can enrich the wider Church.
Read more: Soriah’s story: Displaced but not forgotten
Christian hospitality therefore asks more than, “How can we accommodate them?” It asks, “What might the Church become because they are here?” Migration challenges the Church to recover a deeper understanding of itself: not as a collection of buildings or communities permanently fixed within national borders, but as a people rooted in Christ and called to embody his presence wherever they are found.
This vision is reflected in the work of Barnabas Aid as we walk alongside displaced Christians by responding to practical needs, enabling them to continue living, worshipping and contributing as members of Christ’s global body. This work can also create opportunities for connection, learning and participation in contexts where displacement has disrupted established communities. In this way, practical support can extend beyond immediate material needs, helping displaced and marginalised Christians to develop skills, remain connected and continue contributing to the life of their communities and the wider Church.
Read more: Migration theology and Christian identity in the Middle East: Part One
In Part Three, we will explore the missional implications of this emerging “Church between places”: how displacement is reshaping Christian witness, leadership and mission, and what it might mean for Christians to participate in God’s mission not merely despite their displacement, but through it.
[1] Andreas Schmoller, “Middle Eastern Minorities in Diaspora,” in Paul S. Rowe, ed., Routledge Handbook of Minorities in the Middle East (London: Routledge, 2018), p.354.
[2] Fiona McCallum Guiney, “Middle Eastern Christianity outside the Middle East,” in Mitri Raheb and Mark A. Lamport, eds, The Rowman & Littlefield Handbook of Christianity in the Middle East (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2020), p.568.