The most common question for churches when it comes to caring for refugees and asylum seekers in their communities is: where do we find them?

That’s according to Visier Sanyu, World Vision’s coordinator of Welcome to my Place a new joint initiative between World Vision and Welcome To Australia.

Welcome to my Place is designed to encourage Australian Christians to open up their homes and share a meal with a refugee or recent migrant during Refugee Week in June.

“It’s a very simple Christian gesture of hospitality to strangers,” says Visier. He believes that a meal together is the best place to start for a lasting friendship.

June may sound like a long time  away, but Visier is keen for churches and individuals to be trained before then.

“We’ll be looking at basic asylum seeker and refuge issues, like why Christians should welcome strangers, our responsibility, some theological reflections. And we’ll deal with the cross-cultural aspects and what that means for Christians.

“There will also be practical tips on inviting refugees to your home for dinner.”

And one of those tips: where to find refugees to invite around for dinner.

“We’ll train churches on how to get involved in the refugee communities around them. We’ll give them a list of organisations they can contact and ideas for getting involved. We want churches to be in those communities themselves.”

Visier points to his own community in Melbourne as an example.

“There are thousands of Sudanese people in Melbourne, many of them refugees and people who’ve just arrived. They’re not difficult to find. Go to Ringwood Station, you can’t not see a refugee.”

“The Migrant Resource Centre, Centrelink—everyday, refugees are there. There are so many organisations and agencies that work with them. So [for a church to ask] ‘where do I find refugees’, it’s a surprising question in many ways.”

Visier is also keen to equip churches with a better understanding of the refugee landscape in Australia.

“Many Christians are still confused about what a ‘queue jumper’ is, what’s an illegal immigrant, compared to a refugee or an asylum seeker. They don’t know the terminology. Some churches are extremely engaged, and others are just starting out. So we’ll start with the basics.”

One church taking up the Welcome to my place challenge will be Surrey Hills Uniting Church in Melbourne’s eastern suburbs. Minister Rob Gotch says Surrey Hills is a fairly affluent, middle-class suburb, without a significant refugee population. But his church has a strong focus on social justice and the program looks like a practical way to be more involved in an issue so highly publicized, and yet so difficult to know what to do to assist.

“We saw [Welcome to my Place] as an opportunity to engage in a practical way, so it’s not just about critiquing government policy—whatever that happens to be, and whatever Government is in power—but doing something real and concrete.

He’s hoping World Vision can assist the church to connect with refugees, and that it will be a learning experience for his church members, one that will stretch their ideas of hospitality and teach them to be more like Jesus. Surrey Hills Uniting Church is hoping at least 12 of their members will join the Welcome to my Place training, and open up their homes to a refugee family in June.

“It’s often through genuine encounters with people who are different to us that we can be transformed… it won’t be just something we talk about anymore. We’ll actually do something that proclaims what we believe and reflects the faith we have in one for whom hospitality and welcome was at the core.”

For more information on how to be involved in the Welcome to my Place initiative, go to http://welcometomyplace.org.au/

Read more about the church and refugee action in these other Eternity articles:

• Practical love for asylum seekers as churches work together
• Never met a refugee? It’s about time you did.
• Refugee advocate chides the church’s lack of action