Welcoming the Stranger: Support for Refugees

​One of our spiritual disciplines in Central Plains Mennonite Conference is to "accept and offer hospitality, believing it creates the context for God’s kingdom to appear in our midst, particularly as we minister to the poor, the hungry, the prisoner and the stranger."

Today, 39 million people have been forced to flee their homes due to conflict or natural disaster. Ten million are refugees and 29 million are internally displaced persons (meaning they have not crossed an international border). (American Refugee Committee International)

Find ways for your congregation to become involved in refugee resettlement below.

About Refugees

A basic educational overview of the plight of refugees from the Minnesota Council of Churches (Also known as MCC)

​The Current Reality in America


​An Overview of the Current Refugee Situation in America​​​

What We can Do

Learn how you and your congregation can make a difference
​Mennonite Central Committee (MCC)

​For more information
Three Ways to Help (Mennonite Church USA)
Syria and Iraq crisis response (Mennonite Central Committee)
Take action to support Syrian and Iraqi refugees
Lutheran Refugee Resettlement (Nebraska)
​Catholic Charities of Iowa
Minnesota Council of Churches Refugee Resettlement
South Dakota Center for New Americans (Lutheran Social Services)
A call to prayer and action
signed by Mennonite Church USA Executive Director Ervin Stutzman

   As faith leaders, we seek to honor Scripture’s call to protect the refugee and the immigrant. As it is written in the Old Testament, “When a foreigner resides among you in your land, do not mistreat them. The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt.”
   We thus reject proposals by two-dozen United States governors to close their states’ doors to Syrian refugees fleeing the unspeakable cruelty of ISIS and the Assad regime. We also condemn in the strongest terms proposals to discriminate against refugees on the basis of religion. The Statue of Liberty is not etched with the message “Christians only.” [read more]