Five Reasons Crosspoint Welcomes Illegals

Five reasons Crosspoint/Encuentro welcomes and accepts people without legal status.

1. Aliens are people too. God created each one in His image. A person's status with any government does nothing to change God's view of them as His creation - worthy of dignity, respect and an opportunity to receive the gospel. Scripture is the higher law in these cases.

2. God's people are aliens.God commands us to not mistreat an alien and remember that we too were aliens in Egypt (Exodus 22:21 and 23:9). Our citizenship is first in heaven (Philippians 3:20).

3. Articles like this one in the US media tell only a glimpse of the fear, intimidation and terror that brings Mexicans here to the US without status. People in our church don't just come to 'steal American jobs' but rather they are refugees escaping fear, injustice and intimidation from many fronts.

4. We are missionaries of the gospel of God's grace through Christ alone. If our church members who do not have proper status get arrested (and many have) and deported (and some are), then we send them back as missionaries. The gospel of grace is foreign in the religious landscape south of the border.

5. It is not only a biblical value. As a serious student of American history, a descendant of immigrants from many nations including Native Americans, I recall these words are engraved on our Statue of Liberty.

"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

When Jesus saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, 'The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Beg the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field."