The picture at left is pretty much what it looked like at the coat and hat giveaway today on the west side of Columbus, Ohio.

We've been reaching out to the residents of a small low-income housing complex consistently every month for the past three years - mostly by giving away groceries - and during that time we've witnessed the incredible growth of one of the most explosive new populations in the city: Somalian refugees. The transformation during that time has been amazing.

Somalians now number over 45,000 in central Ohio alone, and more continue coming to America. 15% have become U.S. citizens, they have an average family size of 7-8 members, and 99.99% are muslim. They're friendly, yet quiet and suspicious. They're colorful and desperate, and during outreaches like today they tend to adopt an incredibly aggressive tactic of swelling forward in a mad frenzy to get whatever they can. It can be a bit overwhelming for people unaccustomed to it.

Today was especially crazy. We setup inside the leasing office (Thank you Ahmed!) and filtered people 5-10 at a time through the office and helped them pick through piles of coats organized on tables by size. Everything went very well, but only because I blockaded the front door and controlled the flow of the crowd. We served about 75-100 men, women, and children by my estimate.

We partnered with another church in town for the outreach - Hope Christian Fellowship - and this was their first experience with the Somali community. Afterward pastor Doug looked at me and said, "Wow, I'm really glad you guys were here...we had no idea."

Here's the thing that gets me every time: lots of people come to Wedgwood and get upset about the behavior of the Somalis in situations like this. Furthermore, there's tremendous tension between the Somalis and the American residents. The african-american residents seem to especially resent the Somali's for being there and "taking over." But the truth is, no matter how tough many Americans have had it they likely have no idea what kind of hardship and violence many of these Somalis have come through in their lives; they're in absolute survival mode.

Afterwards, I spoke at length with one of the Somali community leaders who expressed frustration with the situation. He sees that his people aren't integrating well into their new culture, and he sees the hardship that this is perpetuating for them. He longs for the resources to educate his people concerning the customs and expectations of America so they can peacefully integrate and prosper, but their very differences create distances in the community that act as roadblocks for the kind of help they really need to make such education on a large scale possible.

I told him I would help, but what I didn't tell him was that I'm not very optimistic about getting him the kind of help that could really make a difference, like finding a low cost (i.e. free) place to gather and conduct classes and meetings. Most of my connections would likely not be very receptive to assisting with muslim gatherings.

It makes me wonder, what role will Christian churches play in the latest wave of global migration? Globalism is here whether we like it or not. Will we be antagonists or peace-makers? I'm praying for the latter.