Let’s rescue the Gentiles together, Gentile to Gentile. Let’s assimilate them to the Kingdom, including them at the table as they repent and believe the Gospel. And then we can teach them English.

Years back, my heart got large for missions — especially urban missions to those on the ‘other side of the tracks.’ At about the same time, I became Reformed (a high octane, old school Presbyterian no less!), putting me in a a sub-subset of a subset. My life and ministry has ever since lived somewhat in the frontiers the unlikely and the implausible. A straightlaced, tall gringo Presbyterian goes out among immigrants, trying to evangelize in broken Spanish and recruit sinners to the “outward and ordinary means” in a humble, little Reformed church 15 minutes to the south. And to sing Psalms. Without musical accompaniment. In English.

I admit that there are all kinds of problems with this model, from a human perspective. But it is actually more plausible than one might think. Yet before I deal with the plausibles, let me first set forth some principles.

The first principle is principle! Principle precedes the practical. We must first determine whether something should be done before we decide whether or not we think it is practical. We ought to go out and bring the Gospel to all. None excluded. Politics quite aside, we may and must not discriminate based on sex, ethnicity, gender, or for that matter even sexual ‘preference.’ By the mandate of our King, we must go and tell them. Yes, as Calvinists, we know that not every “all” means “all.” But “every creature” does in fact mean “every creature.” Even if they don’t look like us, eat like us, or even use our language. It doesn’t matter whether they ‘have papers’ or not, vote Democrat or not. How they got here and whether they should by law be here, is a separate issue for a different discussion (and full disclosure: I lean quite “red” when it comes to immigration policy!). But that they are here means they are here for us to evangelize. And not just gripe about and avoid them as much as possible.

In this vein, we must evangelize our urban cities and their immigrant populations as we are Gospel debtors. Have we (or our ancestors) freely received? We must therefore freely give. All of us Gentile Christians owe it to Jewish fishermen, tax collectors, and especially one rock-ribbed “Hebrew of Hebrews,” that we are even at the Kingdom table, seated with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. My ancestors were Viking savages, raping and pillaging their way across the world. But someone left home, came, learned their language and brought them the Gospel. And now I believe, thanks to their heroism. Some of those who read this have Irish and Italian surnames, but now consider themselves generic, American evangelicals. Yet their great-grandparents lived and died under Romish superstition in their Italian- or Gaelic-speaking ghettos. I don’t know anything about Protestant urban missions to Federal Hill in Providence back in the 1920s. I hope my Swedish Lutheran ancestors did me proud and went into these “highways and hedges.” But it was their duty regardless. Or someone’s. Someone who had freely received and should have left their comfortable, upwardly mobile realization of the American dream to go to these “barbarian” huddled masses in need of the pure Gospel.

Further, the Visible Church is one. “There is one body, and one Spirit, even as ye are called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism” (Eph. 4:4-5). Not only is the Jew-Gentile barrier dissolved under the Gospel, but all lesser, non-essential distinctions as well. “For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus” (Gal. 3:27-28). All functional divisions of privilege and prejudice must die at the cross, that all people who confess Christ may be one. And that, even one under the same roof when God in providence places people in the same locality (James 2:1-13). Even self-sorting is not in the spirit of the ‘Reformed catholic.’

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