By Rajmund Dabrowski

“You shall love the stranger first of all because you know what it is to be a stranger yourself. Second of all, you shall love the stranger because the stranger shows you God.”

—Barbara Brown Taylor

Memories. One stands out from my days in England. But first things first. My church pedigree dates back to the early 1960s when I was baptized in a rather conservative faith community. My home upbringing was also “do this, don’t do that”—and my grandmother prayed daily that we be guarded from unwanted and bad people.

My early confusion with navigating on God’s earth was laced with a seeming dichotomy when I started attending public schools, surrounded by friends whom I was warned about in church and home.

I hoped that my liberation to authenticity would come when I went to England. I went to learn English, and then to study for a degree. Arriving from Eastern Europe, I soon learned what it means to be a stranger in the West. It was at the introductory evening that I was asked by Pierre, a Frenchman, whether we had TV in Poland. But Pierre and I became good friends. That question started a meaningful conversation. I liked a straight shooter, and discovered that for some people my [former] communist country was . . . strange as an unknown land.

The next moment I felt like a stranger within my faith family came a few years later when I went to worship at the New Gallery Center on Regent Street near Piccadilly Circus. I sat in a pew and noted a movement among fellow believers. They were moving to other pews. I guess they considered it strange that I had long hair and colorful 1968 attire. I guess colorful clothes created fear in those who preferred gray suits or muted dresses.

As I am writing these words, I cannot but note that fear of “the other one” is endemic and seemingly permanent. Yet, “stranger is a slippery word—you think you know what it means until you try to account for yourself. . . . Who we think is a stranger is an individual thing. It’s defined by culture and history,” writes researcher Kio Stark in When Strangers Meet, a companion book to her TED Talk.

Stark is correct in her challenge that people you don’t know can transform you.

A recent conversation in the church about making it more attractive and oozing with welcome, compassion, and kindness has created a bit of a tension among the participants. One of them said, “Actually the church is not for everybody. It’s about standards.” “Really?” I asked. “If that’s the case, we now know the answer to why members of Generation Z are not attracted to an unexplained terrain of capital R Rules!”

The prophet Isaiah (56:7) conveyed God’s view of who is welcome [and who is not, I guess] in His church: “My house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples.”

I wonder from time to time, why our pulpit has a sound- ing challenge: We welcome all, yet when a stranger comes in and wants to join the community, he is welcome, if . . . and when . . . On a daily morning walk with our dog Prince Orek in our neighborhood, we saw a lawn sign. It was in three languages—Spanish, English and Arabic—and three colors. Its message was appropriate for today: “No matter, where you are from, we’re glad you’re our neighbor.”

Among many others, All Souls Episcopalian Church in Washington, D.C., has adopted a more detailed message: “Love your neighbor who doesn’t look like you, think like you, love like you, speak like you, pray like you, vote like you. Love your neighbor.”

To initiate a personal change, one that can make a difference in your church, start talking to strangers. It can wake you up, opening your world wider. Start hugging them, like these two students offering Free Hugs in Cracow, Poland. Start loving them like Jesus did when meeting a woman at the well.

Find new love for and in the church. Bring the strangers in. Know no stranger.

–Rajmund Dabrowski is RMC communication director and editor of Mountain Views. Email him at: [email protected].