Ministry Mindset for Overwhelming Needs - Randall Graber

What is your approach to working with refugees and migrants? Like, this is super complicated. Okay, I mean, the current refugee crisis, I think it's tapered off now, but especially like 2015, you know, um, and those years because of the war in Syria and with ISIS and things like that, it was the largest refugee crisis since World War II or something to that effect. It's just the scale was incredible. And it is really complicated working with people who don't have a country necessarily. And like, what do you do? I mean, I guess to use really broad terminology, and what are common mistakes you see that people are like, "Oh, we want to go help refugees or something," whatever.

But yet it can be very ineffective if we do it wrong, right? And so talk to me about that. Yes, uh, that is, you know, I think something today where we ourselves and myself, I still have many questions. And, uh, I don't know the answers to them, um, but, you know, you find things over the years that work and don't work. Um, and often it takes also God's work in our own lives to, like, I know in my own life, uh, you know, I had many aspirations and ideals, you know, we're, you know, we, I have so much to offer and help, you know, coming from America or, you know, whatever our things may be in our mind, you know, we come from a very organized culture.

It's a very peaceful, generally, uh, situation there. And so we can feel like we have so much to offer to the situation. But then you get in the situations and, wow, like, sooner or later you come to the reality that you don't have the answers in many ways.

Um, so it really, in a lot of ways, I think, you know, we have more questions than answers. But what does really, you know, I think the biggest thing is to, first of all, allow God to work in my own life. And through that restoration, we become more loving, uh, people and able to stand on truth. And at the end of the day, it's relationships that form with these refugees and interaction that we're able to show true love. Um, I think sometimes in my own life, it can be very easy to show a what we feel like is love in our mind. We like, uh, convince ourself this is the the love that we should show.

But often it's in my own life, sometimes it wasn't from my heart. And eventually you run out of this strength. And I would say two common, let's say, problems I've observed both in my own life and common for people working with migrants is you can come into it with this mindset, kind of a bit of a savior mindset, maybe, where it feels like you're there to fix these people's problems. And then you realize your need or your inability to fix these problems. And it can make you just a very cynical person, maybe, because you, in a lot of ways, I've just, you've been crushed. You had these high expectations of what is helping.

Yeah. And, you know, over a period of time, and it often takes a period of one year, three years for some of these deep realities to start creeping in, like, wait a minute, what are we doing? How are we helping? And if you, uh, it can lead to cynicism. And I think this is something I've struggled with and I have to battle against sometimes.

The opposite, uh, ditch as well or problem that can happen is, especially for very caring people, compassionate people. And there's there's a need for compassion. It's compassion why we go in the first place. Um, but it can be very overwhelming, the needs. And so if we have a deep sensitivity or compassion, we can also become crushed by the hurts, the difficult situations we face, which can also lead to burnout and just discouragement and disillusionment. So yeah, that is kind of, I think, one common outcome that can happen. And the other is also to survive, we can build walls. We can become very calloused to the hurting, to the pain, to the struggles.

And it's, uh, it's really a daily, weekly, monthly, uh, tension, you know, in our lives to, like, try to keep a correct balance. And the only way in my own life that, uh, I can restore balance is by spending time at the well, spending time with God's word. Mm-hmm. And I I often am encouraged by Jesus's ministry, you know, how he ministered, uh, as well. He would, you know, full investment into the needs. He was present. He was caring deeply in any way that he could. But, you know, very soon after, he would suddenly disappear. And he would withdraw. And he was spending time with the Father. And so for me, over the years, this has become, uh, a deep, uh, I guess, uh, deeper understanding in my own life, my own need for this same realization of our own need and our own inabilities.

Mm-hmm. And that, you know, if I'm feeling these burnout or building walls that at the end of the day, I need to spend more time with the Father. Um, so I don't know, uh, if this is helpful or not, but to me, this has been helpful.