DALLAS—Soon after Pastor 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, Troy observed: “That's exactly what he's done. They just don't speak English.”
Specifically, Gaston Oaks has opened its doors to the growing Karen people group living in several apartment complexes near the church.
In the last decade, many of the persecuted Karen people of Myanmar—or Burma as it is more commonly known in the West—fled to Thailand. As refugee camps there closed in the last year, a significant number of the Karen people have been 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 the Lake Highlands area of northeast Dallas. Janna Gardner, a member of Gaston Oaks, serves as the clinic's executive director, and Gaston Oaks is one of several churches that sponsors the ministry.
In the Sunday morning worship services, Troy's sermons are translated into Spanish and Karen, and non-English-speaking worshippers listen to an interpreter on headsets. Meanwhile, an Iranian congregation meets elsewhere on the church campus. And an African-American congregation —originally launched by a pastor displaced by Hurricane Katrina to meet the needs of other storm evacuees—also shares the congregation's facility.
“We've been thrust into becoming a truly multicultural church family,” Troy said. 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, the Karen people make up half of the worshippers in the sanctuary. But Troy readily acknowledges the total number in worship has decreased.
“We've lost some folks,” he said, noting a variety of factors contributed to the decline. Even so, Troy 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. … We're just want to become the church that God wants this church to be,” he said. “Sometimes it's chaotic. We're in a survival mode. But we know he's going to take us through it.”