The barrage of devastating news out of Syria can leave viewers and responders with a dizzying sense of compassion fatigue.

(Photo courtesy of Adrian Swancar/Unsplash)

Compassion fatigue can be defined as “the feeling that you have no more empathy left to give.”

Samuel with Redemptive Stories says, “It’s a coping mechanism that we have in the West. We’d like to be able to disconnect from some of those things, and that’s a natural human response, because we can only take in so much pain. So to be able to engage with this, it requires effort. It requires intentionality. It requires engagement.”

An antidote to compassion fatigue is meaningful engagement in the story with eyes to see how God is moving.

There is some good news coming out of Syria as Samuel describes how God has used Syrian believers as His ambassadors to quake survivors.

“The Church responded with compassion. They responded with togetherness across denominational walls, and an ecumenical spirit that really showed what the Church is supposed to be in times of crisis,” says Samuel.

“They gave of their own resources before they even had resources from the outside, which, again, if anyone who knows the understanding of the realities of Syria, not many people have much right now.”

Praise God for activating His Church in Syria! It’s already producing a harvest of righteousness.

Samuel says, “There’s continuing to be an openness, particularly among Muslims and people of different faiths, as they see the church respond.”

(Photo courtesy of Horizons International)

We’ll end on a good story Samuel shares from Syria:

“There was a young lady, she’s 17-years-old and she was in the earthquake and her parents were in the other room. She got down on her knees as soon as everything started shaking because she knew she couldn’t get out. As she got down on her knees, she began to pray.

“The whole building collapsed. Her parents were able to get out with her younger brother because they were in the front and they got down the stairs, but the top roof collapsed onto her room.

“As she says in the story, there was this man dressed in white that actually caught the beam and placed it on the ground. She was actually able to be protected under this building’s space. As she was sitting there praying, she saw this man standing there.

“She’s a believer and she understood Who this was that had protected her. But she wanted to make sure everyone else knew, and so she was beginning to tell this story to all of her friends — Muslim and Christian — about this man all dressed in white who protected her and saved her. I’m sure that God is going to do some amazing things in that young lady’s life.”

Header photo courtesy of Ahmed Akacha/Pexels.

Samuel* with Redemptive Stories encourages readers to step into Syrians’ shoes. If the barrage of post-earthquake updates is fostering compassion fatigue, it’s not hard to imagine what Syrians must feel.

“You’ve heard about the big two earthquakes that happened on the same day on February 6, but there was another earthquake that occurred two weeks later on February 20 that had a significant effect,” Samuel says. “Everyone who was finally starting to get back to their homes once again had to run fleeing through the streets.

(Photo courtesy of Horizons International)

“Excessive fear is continually part of their lives. There’s been over 60,000 aftershocks that have occurred…. So the level of fear that people are living under, particularly children, is staggering.”

For Syrians, fatigue runs deep with fear. It’s been 12 years since the civil war began, followed by an economic crisis, COVID, food shortages, displacement, sanctions, and the list goes on.

It’s a problem too big for one person or even one ministry to solve. But nothing is too big for the Lord.

Your compassion and prayers are making a difference.

Pray the peace of Christ over all of Syria as people seek healing and hope.

Samuel asks, “Pray against the spirit of fear that exists currently through Syria, through Turkey, and through Lebanon. I’ve even heard today someone say that it’s a spirit [or] principality that is across the Middle East.

(Photo courtesy of Ahmed Akacha/Pexels)

“Secondly, the deepest prayer is that God would continue to provide for the needs of suffering people — 85-90% of the people that live in Syria continue to subsist on the relief aid packages because of the sanctions [and] the economic crisis.

“[Pray] that there would be healthy churches, healthy communities of believers that would continue to share as they are caring, and that they would respond well.”

Redemptive Stories supports Christian ministry efforts among Syrians. Amidst the rubble and devastation of war, they are seeing miraculous Gospel fruits.

“God is already moving,” says Samuel. “He’s going to keep moving and He’s going to keep changing people’s hearts and bringing them to Himself.”

Check back tomorrow as we talk about another antidote to compassion fatigue for Syria. Find your place in the story!

*Psuedonym

Header photo of boy sitting in a broken car in Syria, courtesy of Ahmed akacha/Pexels.

“We are equally affected by all the mess and political turmoil that our country goes through,” Heart for Lebanon’s Camille Melki says.

“We want to stay focused on what’s important, and that is to share the Gospel. So we do a minimum of three, sometimes four, spiritual retreats every year, where we are caring for ourselves and caring for one another, trying to spend time in prayer.”

(Photo courtesy of Heart for Lebanon)

The next retreat is just around the corner, and its theme is “Victory in Jesus.” “We’re facing a physical, emotional, but more importantly, a spiritual battle,” Melki says.

“We’re not going to be victorious by our own strength; we can only be victorious in Christ.”

Pray for Melki and other leaders as they monitor compassion fatigue in their staff.

“We do a lot of member care and very important checks and balances [to look for] compassion fatigue among our staff. When we do that, we have to circle back and see how we can love on each other, encourage one another,” Melki says.

Pray for effective communication between Heart for Lebanon workers and leaders. “It’s very important those two things happen: the leadership is aware and diligent, but also that the staff has the courage and the ability to ask when help is needed,” Melki says.

Header image depicts a worship service in Lebanon. (Photo courtesy of Heart for Lebanon)

“And if the local people don’t care, how is Reuters going to find out about it?”

Houssney says people are waiting in line for hours to get gas, and some even leave their cars in place overnight. People flock to businesses just to get a few minutes of air conditioning. Houssney says, “I just saw a video of hundreds and hundreds of guys on motor scooters waiting in a huge crowd to try to fill up gas in a gas station.”

Photo courtesy of Horizons International.

Help for the refugees

Houssney says a cooking accident most likely caused the fire. “When your kitchen is made out of a tarp that’s held together by some scraps of wood or two by fours, there’s a lot of fire opportunities. When a fire happens, there’s no fire protection, so the whole camp is quickly engulfed in flames. People run out of their tents, without going back to get any of their limited possessions.”

Horizons sent food and tarps after the fire and will help the refugees rebuild to some extent. Get involved with this work by donating here.

And pray God’s love would be evident in the work of His Lebanese Church. Houssney says, “Anything that you can be doing to support the church in the Middle East, particularly in Lebanon is going to be a wonderful help.”

Header photo courtesy of Horizons International. 

Horizons is particularly concerned with refugees, who suffer from these problems more than most.

“In the context of this compassion fatigue that happens when media is covering a certain crisis, there is sometimes a distraction,” Houssney explains. “Sometimes the refugee crisis is distracting from other things that are happening that are similar but very different.”

Refugee Urgency

One example is the difference between refugees fleeing from religious persecution and refugees fleeing from violence or economic problems.

“It’s like a mini refugee crisis for them amid a sea of [other] refugees that are going other places,” Houssney says. “When refugee-receiving countries in Europe or the US are flooded with all these cases of refugees that [have been displaced] because of major world events, it’s clouding their vision to be able to see the genuine cases of religious persecution that are happening.”

In other words, with so many issues weighing on aid groups that want to help refugees, it’s hard to determine urgency. Refugees from Syria, Jordan, or Egypt who are “in dire need of getting out of their house and out of their country because they could be killed for their faith” are getting lost among millions of other refugee applications.

Photo courtesy of Horizons International

When applications don’t get processed, refugees get trapped in “transition countries.” That leaves aid groups like Horizons or local indigenous churches in the difficult position of acting as a last-resort safety net that finds and cares for them.

Creating an Aid Network

Horizons hopes they can help. Their 14 branches throughout Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Turkey, and Egypt are working with local churches to provide shelter and opportunities for refugees in transition.

In other words, they’re creating a network for ministry and aid.

“You’ve got a local church here, you’ve got a local organization that has a broader network, and then you’ve got supporting partners from the outside,” Houssney says. “Some of this is just finding creative solutions for each case… We’re just trying to find creative places where these people can stay, creative ways where we can find them employment, and then also ways that we can help with their legal status so that we can be getting them where they need to go.”

Reaching Refugees At Home

Some of our readers might not live in the Middle East, but there are still many ways to get involved. In fact, many Muslim refugees are already in the United States, but Houssney laments that “the Church is just kind of blind to them.”

That’s why Horizons has training programs to teach believers how to reach out to Muslims in their own areas.

“We find that when churches gain a heart for that and have a few people within the church that are engaged in loving Muslim people in the community and sharing Christ’s love with them, then that church is ready to accept refugees and really be able to care for them, maybe even help them establish ministries among refugees in the United States or Europe.”

The first step towards ministering to displaced and hurting individuals is paying attention.

“Find other people in your community that are interested in reaching Muslims, whether in your church or other churches,” Houssney says. “In most cases, there are Muslims in your community, and if you start forming relationships with them, then things will start to happen. You’ll start to find other Christians that are that are caring for them.”

Photo courtesy of Horizons International

Not sure how to start a conversation? Horizons can help.

“We have a website called engagingislam.org that is completely dedicated to training events and training materials for helping people engage with Muslims in their community,” Houssney says.

Pray that God opens your eyes to the people who might be waiting for you to extend a friendly hand and a listening ear.

“Most Muslims are already feeling strange when they’re in the West,” Houssney explains. “They’re already feeling like they’re rejected. They assume that Christians don’t really want to deal with them. And a lot of the time, they’re right. You’d be the exception to that rule.

“Be a representative of Christ to that person in your community.”

Header photo courtesy of Horizons International.

However, Tasos Ioannidis with AMG International says headlines like these can be misleading and create unnecessary fear.

“Most of the arrests that have taken place are because people don’t have proper documentation because they are refugees, or because they rode the bus without paying the fare, it is stuff like that for the vast majority of what is reported as 900 arrests.”

The temptation to resort to emotional
clickbait may exist in part because people are tending to grow weary with the flood of refugee stories and reports. Such compassion fatigue can also wear on support for refugee ministries as the crisis drags on.

Ioannidis reminds us of the reality for refugees: “The reason they are there is because they fear for their safety. They fled war zones. We have talked to a number of families and we have heard really tragic stories of kids that lost parents, mothers, fathers, relatives; families that fled because their children got shot by snipers and they were lucky to escape with their lives.”

AMG International works with refugees in Greece, the gateway country where 90 percent of asylum seekers enter into Europe. And especially now with the recent coup and unrest in Turkey, there has been a spike in the number of refugees entering through Greece. Ioannidis says most of the refugees are women and children.

“Our coworkers in Greece are meeting with hundreds of refugees each week, and as they help them with basic stuff, they are able to engage with them in conversation. We are also able to provide basic medical care, to start language classes, to provide education for the children, [and] to help the families with the services that we take for granted. They don’t usually have access to those, so helping them with those is allowing us to build the relationships, and that’s where we are seeing wonderful results.”

The most at-risk group of refugees, by far, is unaccompanied minors. Last year 90,000 unescorted children entered the European Union with refugee status. According to EU law enforcement, 10,000 of those kids have now disappeared, speculated to have fallen into the hands of human traffickers.

(Photo courtesy of AMG International)

Ioannidis says, therefore, it is especially critical to reach refugee children with aid and education.

“Without help, [refugee children] face an uncertain future, especially for the ones who lost parents. They have the opportunity to become well-adjusted functioning adults, or they basically live in poverty.”

Ioannidis says these kids could also turn to extremism “because nobody has reached to them and they don’t know what to do and they just get angry with the whole system and the whole situation.”

Christians are in a unique position. Anyone can give aid and physical assistance, or support agencies that are doing so. But in addition to humanitarian efforts, Christians can bring spiritual encouragement and faith conversations to the table.

Refugees are looking for hope and answers. And Christians have a chance to start conversations about Jesus Christ and the unconditional love and grace He offers to those who call on their Heavenly Father.

“From a biblical perspective, we have to help the strangers among us. We have to show the love of Christ. It is an opportunity to share the love of Christ, because these are the nations that the Lord is bringing to us. And as we do that, we do see incredible things happen.”

(Photo: UNICEF/NYHQ2012-0218/Alessio Romenzi)

You don’t have to go to Greece to impact refugees there. Ioannidis asks for prayer and support from the Body of Christ.

“I would like for people to pray for our coworkers as they deal with people who are now coming into Greece, that God would give wisdom to our coworkers as they seek to share Christ’s love and to do so in a way that opens the door for further conversation, to help people not only with the physical needs, but their spiritual needs as well. [Pray] that through this outreach, many will come to a saving knowledge of Him and that lives would be transformed,” says Ioannidis.

“Also, I would like to ask for prayer for the resources that are needed. The financial need is great for this ministry; it’s ongoing, and it’s going to be ongoing for many months to come at least. So we need the financial support of God’s people to continue to minister to the refugees, to show Christ’s love.”

Check out AMG International on Facebook and keep up to date on their ministry efforts with refugees and others.

“People that we have managed to get under shelter… [are now] in knee-deep water,” says Steve Gumaer of Partners Relief and Development.

Their situation has reached a new level of desperation, he adds.

“On one hand, there’s the monsoon season rains and the fact that those fields are low and naturally flood,” Gumaer explains. “On the other hand, they don’t have anywhere to go.”

Nearly a year ago, Burma’s government chased the Rohingya from their homes into this low-lying region along the coastline to die.

“The fields flood naturally every year, and the authorities know this. This is part of why they were put on that land,” says Gumear.

As the Rohingya struggle to survive, Partners is helping in every way they can.

“Because the situation has evolved and changed, we’ve responded in different ways since last July when the attacks first happened,” Gumaer says.

Until recently, Partners had been focusing most of their efforts among the Rohingya on medical care.

“There’s still a desperate need for medical help, but what we observed when we were there two weeks ago is there’s a much greater need right now for shelter, and for food,” Gumaer states.

“Shelter and food continue to be a critical need, and that’s where we are aiming our efforts for the foreseeable future.”

You can come alongside their efforts here.

The United Nations (UN) refers to the Rohingya as the most friendless people group in the world. In addition, their citizenship was revoked in 1982, so not only are they friendless, the Rohingya are officially a stateless people.

Add to all of that an unimaginable economic situation and a government which stops them from accessing help.

“Because the state authorities control the registration process, the UN and the World Food Program are only giving rice to those that the state authorities say are real refugees,” explains Gumaer.

“That is approximately 5% of 200,000 people.”

With all of the above in mind, where do you even start to pray for the Rohingya?

“My prayer has been that the leverage and machinery of justice, moved by the people of God that are out there praying, would indeed turn,” says Gumaer.

“And that somehow we could see [a change], through the efforts of a lot of people and through the field efforts of those that are [in Burma], so that these people have a home.”

Partners’ consistent presence along is helping change Muslim hearts. Islam is inherently tied to the Rohingya’s identity as a people group, but they’re not standing in opposition to Christ-followers.

“These people refer to us as the ‘Christians who care’, and we run into no resistance because of our faith,” says Gumaer. “We have rather run into a feeling of brotherhood.”

Pray this goodwill continues. Please pray also that more of the Rohingya will come to Christ as they experience His love.

You can find updates on the Rohingya at the Partners Relief and Development blog.

"People that we have managed to get under shelter… [are now] in knee-deep water," says Steve Gumaer of Partners Relief and Development.

Their situation has reached a new level of desperation, he adds.

"On one hand, there's the monsoon season rains and the fact that those fields are low and naturally flood," Gumaer explains. "On the other hand, they don't have anywhere to go."

Nearly a year ago, Burma's government chased the Rohingya from their homes into this low-lying region along the coastline to die.

"The fields flood naturally every year, and the authorities know this. This is part of why they were put on that land," says Gumear.

As the Rohingya struggle to survive, Partners is helping in every way they can.

"Because the situation has evolved and changed, we've responded in different ways since last July when the attacks first happened," Gumaer says.

Until recently, Partners had been focusing most of their efforts among the Rohingya on medical care.

"There's still a desperate need for medical help, but what we observed when we were there two weeks ago is there's a much greater need right now for shelter, and for food," Gumaer states.

"Shelter and food continue to be a critical need, and that's where we are aiming our efforts for the foreseeable future."

You can come alongside their efforts here.

The United Nations (UN) refers to the Rohingya as the most friendless people group in the world. In addition, their citizenship was revoked in 1982, so not only are they friendless, the Rohingya are officially a stateless people.

Add to all of that an unimaginable economic situation and a government which stops them from accessing help.

"Because the state authorities control the registration process, the UN and the World Food Program are only giving rice to those that the state authorities say are real refugees," explains Gumaer.

"That is approximately 5% of 200,000 people."

Considering all of this, where do you even start to pray for the Rohingya?

"My prayer has been that the leverage and machinery of justice, moved by the people of God that are out there praying, would indeed turn," says Gumaer.

His prayer is also that "somehow we could see [a change] through the efforts of a lot of people and through the field efforts of those that are [in Burma], so that these people have a home."

Partners' consistent presence is helping change Muslim hearts. Islam is inherently tied to the Rohingya's identity as a people group, but they're not standing in opposition to Christ-followers.

"These people refer to us as the 'Christians who care,' and we run into no resistance because of our faith," says Gumaer. "We have, rather, run into a feeling of brotherhood."

Pray that this goodwill continues. Please pray also that more of the Rohingya will come to Christ as they experience His love through His people.

You can find updates on the Rohingya at the Partners Relief and Development blog.

Jeff Palmer of Baptist Global Response (BGR) says people in the Sahel region respond like this: "They started dancing and sang a song of thankfulness that they just made up on the spot, saying, 'You know who's cared for us? Who's cared for us? These followers of Jesus cared for us.'"

About 12 million people are facing widespread famine in the Sahel region. BGR recently brought food and supplies to Christian communities that had absolutely nothing.

"These were groups of believers that have fled their areas, and they had no other agencies that were helping them," states Palmer. Teams were able to meet needs in two ways.

"It's a great door-opener for not only ministering physically, but for our folks on-ground to share the Truth," Palmer says. "It's a message of hope, of saying, 'Somebody cares.'"

Palmer says BGR focuses on helping people who "fall through the cracks" of the governmental system. The recent delivery allowed one family to eat for the first time in a week.

"You have a lot of people caught in this very complex situation," Palmer explains. "Crops have failed because of famine; [they] can't grow the food because they can't stay in one area."

The Sahel is a 3,400-mile stretch that spans from coast-to-coast of Africa. It covers portions of Senegal, Mauritania, Burkina Faso, Algeria, Niger, Chad, Cameroon, and Eritrea, as well as volatile nations like Mali, Nigeria, Sudan, and South Sudan.

Droughts are nothing new to those living in the Sahel region, as the crisis recurs every 7 to 10 years. However, throw in flooding, insurgencies, and higher food prices, and the issue complicates. Top it all off with so-called compassion fatigue among donors, and aid groups face a significant challenge.

BGR is taking a three-prong approach to staving off widespread famine and helping people in need. Palmer says their project involves not only the distribution of food packets, but health and hygiene kits, as well as temporary shelters.

"Those food packets basically help them transition and sustain when they don't have anything," explains Palmer.

Temporary shelters help shield people from the elements. Health and hygiene kits consist of "things like soap, basic shampoo, detergent, things like that."

Can you help? Click here to support BGR's Famine Relief Fund.

"We would love to take what you can give and put it 100% toward helping folks in need," Palmer states.

Ask God to give people in the Sahel region hope for tomorrow. Praythat BGR teams will show Jesus through their actions.