Border Conference/Experience Inspires Participants

On February 10 - 13, pastors, activists, staff and young adults from the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and the United Church of Christ participated in a Border Conference in San Diego and Tijuana. The theme of the conference, hosted by Iglesia Cristiana Casa De Oracion, was "Turning Walls into Tables: A Border Experience."

The conference included visits across the border to Casa de los Pobres (where 5 Roman Catholic nuns manage a charity that distributes food and provides basic medical care for thousands in need), Las Memorias Center (a charity dedicated providing a place of welcome, lodging, education, and job training to persons infected by HIV/AIDS and/or alcohol or drug dependency), an extremely poor neighborhood named "City of Hope," and a nearby beach where the border extends out into the Pacific and is lined with thousands of crosses commemorating those who have died trying to cross the border. These visits were led by the Rev. Dr. Carlos J. Correa Bernier, Director of Centro Romero, a border ministry of Justice and Witness Ministries and the Southern California-Nevada Conference of the United Church of Christ.

Among the many speakers at the conference were the Rev. Dr. Daisy Machado (Dean of Academic Affairs and Professor of Church History at Union Theological Seminary), Ms. Fernando Morillon (Interim Executive Director of BorderLinks), Ms. Jen Smyers (Associate Director for Immigration and Refugee Policy with Church World Service), and Rev. Daniel Romero, Rev. Manuel Tovar (President of the Alliance of Evangelical Churches (Disciples of Christ) in Mexico).

Participants in the conference worked together to create a statement about immigration and the border which reads, in part, "As members of the Community of Faith we have come together as a diverse group interconnected by the fact that we are all created in the image of God. Yet we confess that we build walls where we should build bridges. We create barriers of division because of our perceived differences. We acknowledge that we have helped build this wall and many others that cut across God’s creation.

"We confess as the Body of Christ that we have failed to live out the words of Jesus, to love God and to love our neighbors as ourselves (Mark 12:31), and to offer hospitality to the Stranger as we would Christ (Matthew 25:35). We have not done enough to turn the walls of our world into tables of shared love and reconciliation."

To read the entire statement, PLEASE CLICK HERE.