A Christian Minister in Dearborn
Eleven Good Years
It’s been four years since we left Dearborn, but talking with friends and following the news, it seems that little has changed.
Fifteen years ago, I moved to Dearborn newly married, and just a year out of college. I only knew two things about the city: it’s the world headquarters for Ford, and as a city it contained the densest concentration of Arab Muslims outside of the Near East. That’s why I moved to the city. I wanted to meet Muslims and introduce them to the Jesus of the Bible. I wasn’t the only Christian with that idea. In my first year there, I met dozens of other believers who were living in Dearborn, faithfully loving, serving, and talking about Jesus.
The year before I moved to the city, four members of Acts 17 Apologetics were arrested at the Arab American International Festival for disturbing the peace. They were later acquitted and won a civil settlement against the city. The legal process continued as it should over the next three years, but for a small number of attention-seeking outsiders, the stage was set.
The following year, a different out-of-town group paraded through the Arab American International Festival with a pig’s head on a stake, telling people through a megaphone they were going to hell. When some teenage boys threw rocks and water bottles at them, they posted videos online claiming they had suffered for the name of Jesus. I was reminded of the Apostle Peter’s words here: “If you are insulted for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the Spirit of glory and of God rests upon you. But let none of you suffer as a murderer or a thief or an evildoer or as a meddler” (1 Pet. 4:14-15). It seemed to me that they suffered as meddlers, not for the name of Christ, and that was the last year of the Arab American International Festival.
That was the context in which my ministry started. The timing wasn’t ideal. Many civic and public doors were cautious, if not closed. Cross-cultural ministry is already tough. Culture, language, and faith are added barriers a minister needs to understand before they can hope to be scaled wisely. When loud voices are leading with anger, hatred, and fear, and then being amplified on social media, that cultural gap is expanded, not shut. When the supposedly Christian voice your Muslim neighbor knows is drenched in vitriol, that neighbor becomes incredulous when you speak about the love of Christ. Our mission as Christians is not to foment a clash of civilizations; it is to follow our King who came not to be served, but to serve and give his life as a ransom for many (Mark 10:45).
My timing in moving to Dearborn wasn’t ideal, but the neighbors and friends I met in parks and coffee shops, over tea and at soccer and English lessons were amazingly friendly. While many Americans shy away from discussing faith, I found my Arab American neighbors shockingly open to engagement. We could disagree passionately, argue with respect and grace, and then part as friends.
Over the next four years, I had thousands of conversations, twice I was invited to explain the Christian faith in a mosque, and never once was I assaulted or arrested. Dearborn was a safe, welcoming, and friendly place for my wife and me to talk about Jesus, but God’s Church there is small. In 2015, less than 3% of the city worshipped in an evangelical[1] church, so the large church I belonged to wanted to plant a campus in Dearborn to reach the city, and called me to pastor it.
We wanted our church to love and serve our city. Over the next seven years, we worshipped weekly in a public high school, interrupted only briefly for COVID lockdowns. The chaos of COVID was such a gift for ministry. We had been finding ways to bless the staff of our school for years before the world turned upside down. But then, when everything stopped, we were able to serve in new ways. We labored alongside cafeteria workers preparing meals for students who depended on school lunch for daily nutrition. Our church purchased truckloads of food, and our members began weekly deliveries to families who couldn’t afford groceries. When the school board met to discuss restoring permits to community organizations, they said yes, in part to ensure our church could continue meeting.
In the following years, we found opportunities to run a literacy program at a low-performing school, helped respond to tragic flooding in the city, and I was invited to open several City Council meetings with an invocation. As we sought to walk in the ways of Jesus, the city knew the goodness of Jesus through our church. When that season ended, it was not only our church that grieved, but community partners grieved with us.
It grieves me to see that Dearborn is in the news again for many of the same reasons it was fifteen years ago, and I do not believe the moment calls for fear or rage. For evangelical Christians, it is a moment for the steady witness of love, truth, and mercy. I saw God work through grace and truth during eleven good years in Dearborn, and because grace and truth is the way of our King (John 1:14, 17), I believe God will work through grace and truth again.
What Do We Believe About Jesus?
Recently, I’ve come across a good deal of fearful rhetoric about Muslims in Dearborn. I will say first, this rhetoric is untrue of my Dearborn experience. With that said, what if the worst you heard about Dearborn was true, and there was open, violent, regular persecution of Christians in a breakaway Sharia state? How should we respond in that hypothetical scenario?
We should turn our eyes to our King. How did King Jesus defeat the powers of Satan, sin, and death? He took on flesh and dwelt among us. He suffered insult and threat. He allowed himself to be killed on a cross. In so doing, he put the powers of this world to open shame, and freed his people from the shackles of death by triumphing over them in his glorious resurrection. Christian victory does not come by the sword. It does not come by angry shouting or indiscriminate violence. Christian victory comes by the cross. The resurrected and vindicated Jesus left his church to continue his work through truth, love, sacrifice, and service, just as he did.
Jesus won his victory, once for all time, on the cross. Now, he sits enthroned in heaven as King of Kings and Lord of Lords. History is unfolding as his divine fingers peel back the eternal scroll.
There is no fear in love, for perfect love drives out fear (1 John 4:18). Perfect Love is charting the course of history. Trust the Captain, and do not quake at the waves. God will call us to act within history, but never out of fear. We know who is in control, and he loves us.
Because we know Jesus is king, we can obey his command to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us (Matt. 5:44). The Christian response to finding yourself opposed is not fight, fly, or fear, but love and prayer. If you have been tempted to label your neighbor an enemy, consider finding a practical way to love them, and commit yourself to praying for them.
Living as Outsiders
Dearborn is not some post-apocalyptic hellscape. It is a town that has navigated a seismic demographic change in the past century. Change is not a cause for fear, but it does call us to reconsider how we think of ourselves and the world around us.
When the world we’ve known changes, it can feel scary. As Christians in the United States, we’ve enjoyed a relatively comfortable couple of centuries. Just last month I was talking with a friend who leads Christian humanitarian aid ventures around the world. We talked of one country where the church is struggling, and his comment was, “It’s not that hard a place to minister. The worst that happens to you as a Christian is you get kicked out of the country.” Never once have I worried I might be deported for proclaiming the name of Jesus. American Christians have enjoyed a position of relative security and power compared to our brothers and sisters around the world and throughout history. That’s not a bad thing. But, having lived through centuries of relative comfort means many of us are poorly equipped to live as outsiders.
Fortunately, God’s Word has wisdom for us. When we find ourselves on the outside of society, we find ourselves much closer to the sojourners and strangers who walked the path of faith before us. To the saints of old, Peter wrote, “This is the will of God, that by doing good you should put to silence the ignorance of foolish people. Live as people who are free, not using your freedom as a cover-up for evil, but living as servants of God. Honor everyone. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honor the emperor (1 Pet. 2:15-17).” Church history tells us that Peter would one day be killed by an emperor. Yet, as he was going to his death, I don’t think he would have changed his message.
Inspired by the Spirit, Peter pled with the elect exiles of the dispersion to use their freedom to become servants to their neighbors, because in so doing, we serve and honor God. People who are ignorant of God, and who might even hate his people, will never be silenced by angry words or passionate demonstrations. Our argument is Spirit-empowered good that mends a broken world.
Instead of asking, “How can we defend the world that might be disappearing?” let’s join Jesus in asking, “How can we entrust our soul to a faithful creator while doing good?”
[1] Evangelical in this sense is not a political term. It refers to Bebbington’s 4 characteristics that define a broad, decentralized movement: 1) The Bible is our ultimate source of authority, 2) The Cross of Christ is the central moment in human history, and the only means by which humans can be saved from their sins, 3) Every person must make a personal decision to follow Jesus, and 4) God calls us to be personally changed and positively impact our world after we’ve been saved.