Creating a Culture of Welcome in Sheffield
An interview with Blessan Babu
Beth Craggs
When Blessan Babu was fifteen, he attended a secret gathering of Christians in his Keralan village. What happened there completely changed his life. Now settled in Sheffield with his wife and two sons, Blessan works for City of Sanctuary, and is a local hub group leader at City Church. I caught up with Blessan to learn more about how his faith influences his work with refugees and asylum seekers.
A blessing to the nations
“One of the big pivotal moments in my life was when I was filled with the Holy Spirit. I was fifteen, and the main church in my village didn’t believe in the work of the Holy Spirit, so I was expelled from the congregation. I had heard of a small gathering of Charismatic Christians nearby, so even though I was forbidden from joining them, I decided that I would visit them in secret. At the very first gathering, one guy was sharing the word, and he pointed at me and said, ‘Young man, you will be a blessing to the nations’. And I was just trying to hide myself because if word got out that I was at this meeting I’d be in big trouble. But ever since then, I have felt God’s calling to the nations.
“After that meeting, wherever I went - in my village, at school, even in the local shops - people would say, ‘Something’s changed about you. What’s happened?’ Even though at the time I didn’t think anything had changed, looking back I can see that that was a really significant point in my life. Recognising that calling doesn’t mean that everything was smooth and easy from then on: far from it. But it was the start of something new.”
The power of that encounter at the Charismatic gathering led Blessan to start an organisation in India called ‘Blessing the Nations International’, and he began to travel to areas such as Africa and the Middle East to train and empower Christian leaders.
In 2008, Blessan met and married Katherine, and together they moved to Cambodia, where they worked together in a New Frontiers church plant. As they prayed about where to move next, Blessan and Katherine felt drawn to Sheffield.
“Katherine had completed her Masters degree in Sheffield, so we decided to move to the UK. Unfortunately, even though Katherine is British, and we were married, I had a little bit of difficulty with immigration. Initially, my application was refused, which was really tough for us. This was my first experience of the hostility of the Home Office to people from other countries. But looking back at it, I can see that our God was using that time to help us understand the hostility of the immigration system and how much people can suffer while being caught in the system.
“When I finally arrived in Sheffield, I was exploring how I could continue to travel and train leaders in other countries, when God suddenly opened my eyes. I felt Him say to me, ‘Look around you - you don’t have to travel to other countries to bless nations: they are here, on your doorstep. So I started to look across the city to see where I could serve people from other nations, and I came across an opportunity to volunteer at City of Sanctuary.”
City of Sanctuary Sheffield
“Now, City of Sanctuary (CoSS) is not a ‘Christian’ organisation, but its values are wonderful. For people seeking sanctuary (refugees, asylum seekers and refused asylum seekers), CoSS has a Wednesday drop-in at Victoria Hall. Rather than sending vulnerable people in all different directions to the various agencies that can help them, CoSS created a platform. They are able to tell people, ‘You don’t need to go to twenty different places: you come here, and we will bring everyone here.’ Citizens Advice Sheffield, the Red Cross, solicitors, MPs, ASSIST: they bring everyone together to start serving, doing everything they can to make sure that people are looked after and served well.” Within CoSS, Blessan now works at SPRING (Sheffield Project for INtegration and Growth). This initiative focuses on supporting people who have recently been granted refugee status.
I asked Blessan how his faith influences his work with refugees and asylum seekers, and he responded, “One of the things I’ve noticed is that churches in the West seem to be quite influenced by what’s in the news, or social media, but we need to have a firmer foundation. We should be looking to act according to God’s heart, not just what’s on trend. And God is love, He is just, He is kind. God is so often thought of as the Lord of Lords and King of Kings, but we see in verses like Psalm 146:9, or Zechariah 7:10 that He’s also associated with the marginalised, including the poor and the needy, widows and foreigners.
Reaching out to the fringes
“We have so many examples of Jesus connecting with people on the fringe. It was controversial then, and it’s controversial now, but that is the beginning of where God’s heart is. Jesus himself spent time with tax collectors and prostitutes, but if you look at the church, it’s a bit different: going to the fringes of society often becomes ‘someone else’s ministry’ rather than being a core practice for all believers.
“If people on the fringe come into our church buildings, the survival rate can be really, really minimal: they often feel suffocated. That is why for me I think it’s really important how Jesus said, ‘God has anointed me to preach the Good News to the poor, and to bind up the broken hearted.’ This morning I was reading the story about Jesus clearing the temple, and he says, ‘My house should be called the house of prayer for the nations,’ and after he’s cleared everyone out, many lame and sick people came to him to receive healing. Before, they couldn’t get in because of everything in the way. Reflecting more deeply on the story, in order to worship at the temple people had to convert their coins from Roman currency to the temple currency. In our context, maybe we ask people to change their language style, their worship style, their interests, so if people on the fringe come in, they may actually find our ‘nice’ church a really hostile place to be. When we essentially say, ‘you need to buy this temple currency before you can be part of us,’ people from different ethnic backgrounds or different classes might think they have to change their culture to be accepted.
“Sometimes when everyone is responsible for being welcoming, it means that nobody’s responsible: everyone thinks, ‘someone else will do that’. And so the same person, or family, continues to be left out. We really need to change that. At the heart of all of this is creating a culture of welcome. It’s really important. So, this is why I do what I do - God’s association with the poor and needy, Jesus’ life and ministry, and even moving into the picture of the early church in the Book of Acts: you can see the pattern. It’s not just a good idea: it’s God’s heart.”
When I ask Blessan to share some highlights from his work with refugees and asylum seekers, he tells me, “I’ve really felt the power of God’s favour as I’ve worked at City of Sanctuary. I’m grateful to God for the amazing staff team and volunteers, 40% of whom have lived experience of seeking sanctuary in the UK. Working with the Home Office, or with housing providers, cases that would normally take a long time to resolve are being addressed more quickly. Recently we were trying to secure shelter for a refugee family who had been living in a car boot for three months. According to one of the mental health case workers, a mental health team raised this issue to the council but they were getting nowhere. Then an email about it dropped into my inbox, and as I began to explore it with the help of some proactive volunteers and my colleagues, things started to fall into place. I’m so insignificant in the system, but for some reason God allowed me to help bring a real breakthrough to that case. That’s God’s heart spilling out into the city, the council, into the places of authority, God’s Kingdom coming in a new way.
One step at a time
“And day-to-day, I just look to serve the people who come through the door at City of Sanctuary. I just try to fix the next problem, then the next one. Slowly, bit by bit, people will find shelter, have food to eat, be able to access heating, and then it’s amazing to see their smiles. It can be hard sometimes knowing that people suffer because of the - frequently hostile - system, while I have a comfortable home. But at the same time I see the vulnerability of the families I’m working with, see that they’re created in God’s image and likeness, and I have to come to terms with the fact that I can’t always fix the whole system. But every day I ask for the grace to deal with the issues in front of me. That’s the everyday obedience of trusting in God.”
I ask how many people City of Sanctuary have worked with this year, and Blessan replies, “Around 1,000 individuals; nearly 200 families. Through SPRING, we work in partnership with the council on housing, with Citizens Advice Sheffield for support with benefits, with New Beginnings for help with education, employment and empowerment, and SAVTE (Sheffield Association for the Voluntary Teaching of English) teaches English. Then we have an open hub on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays where people can come in and sit in the warm and have a cup of tea and a meal and just be together. On Wednesdays, we host a drop-in with a clothes bank. We do everything we can to make Sheffield a place of welcome.”
What does Blessan wish that more people understood about supporting refugees and asylum seekers? “I think, first of all, we need to connect with God’s heart for all people. Instead of doing ‘handouts’ we need to work hand-in-hand with the vulnerable in our city to give them a ‘hands-up’. Working in partnership with other organisations is also really important here: look around to see what charities already exist and support them instead of reinventing the wheel.
“Something I’m really passionate about is empowering leaders to set a culture of welcome in their churches. In Ben Lindsay’s book We Need to Talk About Race, he describes how leaders set the culture in their churches. And part of creating that culture of welcome is also about intentionally raising up leaders from different socio-economic and racial backgrounds. A great example of this is in Acts 6: when the Hellenistic Jews were being neglected, the church appointed people from that cultural background to deal with that situation. So in a multicultural society like ours, rather than asking another middle-class, university-educated, guitar-stringing person to take the next leadership position, empower people from other ethnic or class backgrounds to lead. Not only will that help with developing a culture of welcome in your church, that person may well also be much better at reaching out to their community.”
When I ask what’s been bringing Blessan closer to Jesus recently, he answers, “Scripture, of course, and the teaching in my church, but also my wife. I’m so grateful for her: she keeps me on the right track, reminding me not to be driven by my own passion, but by the heart of God. I’m also really grateful to God for a bunch of friends from church and outside. They have a listening ear, and a heart for encouragement.”
What would Blessan like the Arise community to pray for? “Please pray for our leaders and authorities: the City Council, the UK Government, that the decisions they make will be decisions that protect the vulnerable. Please pray that each of us will do what we can to make our city, our churches, and our homes a place of welcome for all the nations.”
