Leading while waiting: A pastor’s call amid immigration uncertainty
By Gary Noonan
There are seasons in ministry when the pulpit feels like a stable platform. You know your people. You’ve earned their trust. You can preach a word of challenge and grace with confidence. But then there are seasons when it feels like you’re preaching from the edge, steadying yourself in the wind, doing your best to speak truth while your own foundation feels shaky.
I serve as senior pastor of First Presbyterian Church of Kirkwood, Missouri. I’m also a Scottish citizen living in the U.S. under a religious worker temporary visa since February 2024. In 2023, a quiet administrative change in immigration policy disrupted the path to permanent residency for clergy like me. The change has left thousands of pastors across the country, who have already been approved for green cards through the EB-4 visa program, stuck in limbo, unable to extend their R-1 temporary visas while they wait. It’s a policy few people have heard of, but for those of us affected, the impact is immediate and deeply personal.
And yet, ministry doesn’t pause.
Even as I advocate with senators and government leaders, I’m still preaching. Still baptizing babies. Still walking with grieving families. Still leading stewardship campaigns. Still showing up. All while I wait.
What does it mean to lead while waiting?
It means you learn to hold tension, not just in the pulpit, but in your body. It means you discover that trust in God is less about certainty and more about faithfulness. It means you lead not because you feel secure, but because your calling demands it.
There is, perhaps, a strange grace in that.
I’ve begun to wonder whether this waiting season is not just my personal struggle, but a mirror of the broader church. Aren’t we all, in some way, leading while waiting? Waiting for clarity, for renewal, for relevance, for the next chapter of faithfulness in an anxious world. We live in the “already and not yet,” and the tension is real.
But we are not powerless. We can speak. We can build. We can hope. And we can act.
Borderlands as places of spiritual formation
In the past year, I’ve had the privilege of consulting with nationally recognized resident ministry programs and preaching at churches navigating their own uncertainties. I’ve spoken with elected officials on Capitol Hill about the quiet erosion of pathways for foreign-born religious leaders. And I’ve written, prayed and pastored through it all.
What I’ve discovered is this: the church needs voices from the edges. We need people who know how to lead from the borderlands, between countries, between certainty and doubt, between systems that seem immovable and the Spirit who refuses to be caged.
The church needs voices from the edges.
That borderland space, though often marked by frustration, has become a place of deep spiritual formation for me. I’ve had to reckon with identity in a new way, what it means to be called by God to a people and a place that I’m still not allowed to fully claim as home. I’ve wrestled with how to keep pastoring when my own future feels fragile. And I’ve had to trust, again and again, that God does not call us without equipping us, even if the tools don’t come when we expect them.
The defiant hope of waiting
There’s a kind of humility that grows in the waiting. And alongside it, a defiant hope. The kind of hope that dares to believe the church can be a force for good, even when systems falter. The kind of hope that leads people to build something beautiful even when their residency is stamped with an expiration date.
I think of the people in my congregation, those who’ve weathered their own seasons of waiting. Couples waiting for test results. Immigrants waiting for asylum hearings. Parents waiting for their children to come home. Churches waiting for revitalization. Waiting is part of the human condition. But what makes waiting holy is how we live in the midst of it.
Waiting is part of the human condition. But what makes waiting holy is how we live in the midst of it.
One Sunday, as I was preaching about faithfulness in uncertain times, a member approached me afterward and said, “Pastor, you get it. You’re not just preaching about trust, you’re living it.” That meant more than I can say. Not because I feel heroic or brave, far from it, but because it reminded me that authenticity is ministry. That being honest about the hard places can make room for others to be honest too.
This is part of why I’ve begun to speak more publicly about the immigration crisis affecting religious workers. It’s not just about me. It’s about the thousands of pastors, youth directors, chaplains, teachers and mission workers who are quietly carrying the weight of a system that has stalled. These leaders are faithfully serving congregations, presbyteries and communities, often with little recognition or support. Their work is not temporary. Their impact is not marginal. And yet, many face the looming threat of forced departure simply because the system no longer works as it was designed to.
Many [religious workers] face the looming threat of forced departure simply because the system no longer works as it was designed to.
Finding agency
I’ve learned that advocacy is a form of pastoral care. When we raise our voices for justice, not just in sermons, but in letters and meetings and public witness, we’re doing gospel work. I’ve sat in meetings with senators, walked on Capitol Hill, and told stories that I hope put a human face on policy. It’s not glamorous, and it often feels like shouting into the void. But I believe that silence serves no one. And I believe the church must be present in these conversations, not just for its own leaders, but as a witness to the kind of world God intends.
Advocacy is a form of pastoral care.
In a way, all of this has brought me back to the basics of call. Why did I become a pastor? Why did I leave one form of public service in Scotland for another in the United States? The answer is the same now as it was then: to walk with people through the sacred ordinary. To help them see God’s fingerprints on their lives. To speak words of life in a world so full of noise.
And so I keep showing up.
I show up for the session meetings and the pastoral visits. I show up for the baptisms and the budget meetings. I show up for my family, who are navigating this alongside me. I show up in hope. Not because I know how it all turns out, but because I believe God is in the waiting too.
My story is one of many. There are pastors from across the globe who have answered a call to serve American congregations and are now being told that their presence, though needed and valued, is temporary. But our ministry isn’t temporary. It’s real. It’s sacramental. It’s grounded in love, in sweat, in pastoral imagination.
Our ministry isn’t temporary. It’s real. It’s sacramental. It’s grounded in love, in sweat, in pastoral imagination.
So I offer this reflection not just as an immigration story, but as a calling story. A reminder that even when we stand in uncertainty, we are still standing on holy ground. And perhaps the gospel rings truest when we proclaim hope from the threshold rather than places of privilege.
If you’re a church leader reading this, I hope you’ll pay attention to the quiet burdens some of your colleagues are carrying. If you’re a congregant, know that your pastor may be leading through more than you realize. And if you’re someone with influence, policy, denominational or institutional, I urge you to listen, to advocate and to act.
The church has always been led by people willing to stand in the in-between. Maybe this is our moment to do the same.
The story behind the EB-4 visa crisis
by Justin Myers, Outlook reporting
A years-long backlog of visa applicants has increased wait times for most new employment-based, fourth preference (EB-4) applicants by over a decade, stoking turmoil. EB-4 hopefuls, which primarily include religious workers and “special immigrant juveniles (SIJ),” now face a challenging path forward.
The backlog is connected to the large number of juvenile applicants from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras (the “North Central American (NCA)” countries). From 2014 to 2015, increased violence in NCA countries led many SIJ applicants to seek safety in America via EB-4 visas. Applications hit a record high in 2016, surpassing the EB-4 visas available to those countries. Countries that exceed this limit are labeled “oversubscribed.”
So, the DOS granted SIJs from NCA countries an “oversubscribed” status in a 2016 visa bulletin. The federal agency communicated that SIJs who applied before 2010 would receive a final decision on their visa. Every other SIJ applicant was placed in a holding pattern with drastically increased wait times. Following this announcement, large numbers of NCA youth continued to submit SIJ applications. By 2023, over 100,000 NCA youth were caught in the EB-4 backlog, per the National Immigration Project. Non-NCA SIJ applicants retained their promised visa schedules, enjoying wait times of a couple of years at most.
In 2023, DOS said that NCA countries were never actually oversubscribed because they only surpassed the EB-4 caps and not all other visa category caps. The backlog reentered the regular administrative fold, creating an average wait time of 15 years for new EB-4 applicants, including religious workers.
Without new legislation, which has been introduced but not passed, religious workers are limited to five years of temporary status in the U.S. with an R-1 visa before they must return home and wait a decade for permanent EB-4 status.
