DALLAS (ABP) — Soon after Bruce Troy arrived at Gaston Oaks Baptist Church in Dallas, he challenged a group in the congregation to answer one question: “What would you do if God put 100 people on your doorstep?”
Three years later, Pastor Troy says that's exactly what God has done — “they just don't speak English.”
More specifically, Gaston Oaks has opened its doors to the growing numbers of Karen people living in several apartment complexes near the church.
In the last decade, many of the persecuted Karen (pronounced ka-REN)of Myanmar, or Burma as it is commonly known in the West, fled to Thailand. As refugee camps there closed in the last year, a significant number of Karen have relocated to northeast Dallas.
Gaston Oaks provides transportation to the church from the apartment complexes where the Karen have resettled, and volunteers lead English-as-a-second-language classes for them during the Sunday school hour.
The church also sees an opportunity to meet the needs of many Karen refugees through the Healing Hands Ministries, a medical clinic serving uninsured people in northeast Dallas. Janna Gardner, a member of Gaston Oaks, is the clinic's executive director, and Gaston Oaks is one of several churches involved in sponsoring the ministry.
Karen people aren't the only newcomers at Gaston Oaks. During Sunday morning worship services, Troy's sermons are translated into Spanish and Karen, and non-English-speaking worshippers listen to an interpreter on headsets. An Iranian congregation meets at the same time elsewhere on the church campus. And an African-American congregation — originally launched by a pastor displaced by Hurricane Katrina to meet the needs of storm evacuees — also shares the congregation's facility.
“We've been thrust into becoming a truly multicultural church family,” Troy said. But as the church has tried to respond to its rapidly changing community, the transition has not always been smooth, he acknowledged.
On any given week, Karen people make up half of the worshippers in the sanctuary. But the church's total number of people has decreased.
Even so, Troy said he believes God will use Gaston Oaks to make a difference in its community as long as the church seeks to follow God's mission.
“I don't particularly like the word ‘missional.' I can't find it in the Bible. But I guess that describes what we're trying to be,” he said. “We just want to become the church that God wants this church to be. Sometimes it's chaotic. We're in a survival mode. But we know he's going to take us through it.”
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