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Christian Creatives and the Church
The arts are an important opportunity for spiritual formation. How can churches reach unbelievers through the arts while caring for the creatives in their pews at the same time?
Photography by R9 Foto for The Emmanuel Gospel Center
Christian Creatives and the Church
It’s time for the two to support each other.
by Hanno van der Bijl, Managing Editor, Applied Research & Consulting
Armani Alexis Acevedo is an artist, designer, entrepreneur, and hip hop artist. Everything he does is to glorify God, but at one point in his life, he just could not see a home inside the Church for his creative passion.
He is thankful for the spiritual foundation he received from his church growing up but he didn’t feel fully supported in his calling until recently. A lot of that has to do with the buy-in of his pastors, including Davie Hernandez, co-senior pastor of Restoration City Church.
“It definitely is an encouragement to know that your pastors support you in that way, from the little things, even sharing my posts, or my songs, or our collections — he's probably wearing one of our tees right now,” Armani said. “Those things really mean a lot.”
But Armani still hears parishioners voicing their disapproval: “I don’t think this glorifies God” or “This art is too loud.” These moments don’t come without pain as Armani invests hours and heart into his creative projects.
“As artists, I feel like we do see things a little differently and appreciate detail more and the commitment behind it,” he said.
Christian creatives like Armani intentionally pursue their vocations as believers and artists, actively integrating their faith and work.
They live in the tension of a Church trying to stay faithful in a changing world. They’re caught between competing visions of what the Church should look like and how it should operate.
They don’t always feel seen. Many feel like spiritual orphans in a world that neither understands nor values their faith and a Church that neither acknowledges nor appreciates their gifts.
Some church leaders do see them. They say Christian artists are an untapped resource.
Pastor Valerie “Val” Copeland, pastor of Neighborhood Church of Dorchester, said God has given every Christian gifts and skills for a reason.
“Christian creatives sit in church without their gifts being used, without space being made for their gifts, while they sort of dry up on the vine,” she said. “If we need a singer or guitarist or drummer, we'll search them out. But where's the imagination to say if they are gifts that God has given you, then it's incumbent upon us to figure out how to make room for them?”
“Christian creatives sit in church without their gifts being used, without space being made for their gifts, while they sort of dry up on the vine.”
It hasn’t always been this way. Historically the Church has been a driving force for the arts, integrating it in its worship, teaching, and architecture. In some places marked by post-Christianity, the churches may be empty but their beauty continues to bear witness.
The arts have the power to speak to people in ways that sermons can’t. The Christian creatives sitting in the pews could help address some of the biggest challenges facing churches today. This is an opportunity for churches to support creatives while at the same time mobilizing them for mission.
In an effort to help churches do that, we connected with Christian creatives and pastors to learn from them how churches can support and equip the artists sitting in the pews.
A creative God
Christian creatives say they draw inspiration from the Creator — and that churches should too.
“God is the first artist,” Pastor Val said. “The beauty of art and the drama of art calls our hearts to something greater than ourselves and reminds us that God’s design is intentional: the way that he uses color, the way that he uses the drama of thunder and lightning, the way that he calls us to be creative in how we love the world.”
God’s creation is not only beautiful, it's also unique. He made humans in his image to reflect his creativity. For Michael “Mike Mack” McPherson, founder of Elevation Conference, the rich diversity of God’s created order is the “essence of creativity.”
“God is the first artist. The beauty of art and the drama of art calls our hearts to something greater than ourselves and reminds us that God’s design is intentional.”
“He could have easily made every single bug the same — every single ladybug could have the same amount of spots, and he decided that he would splatter and make them all look so different and so unique,” Mike Mack said. “But then we come into the Christian world and we look at art and music and we're like ‘It's supposed to sound like this.’”
Creatives embrace the call to “sing a new song.” They thrive on expressing themselves through their work, improvising to bring something new out of the old.
Many creatives feel that a lot of churches function exactly the opposite way. The familiarity of traditions provide safety and stability; however, if churches hold them too tightly there can be little room for something new. The tension between creative expression and commitment to tradition can often be at odds.
“The overarching problem is that the Church is terrified of so much. The Church creeps around so much,” Mike Mack said. “The Church still has — despite what Paul said — a 'taste not, touch not' mentality (Col. 2:20-23) about almost everything that could be considered sin and is probably not actually sin.”
Christian creatives often face the impossible task of producing art that checks all the boxes for churches theologically and for the world aesthetically. Placing restrictions on artists that don’t concern the core message of the gospel chokes creativity.
A creative Church
The COVID-19 pandemic forced churches to get creative. The crisis compounded the new challenges with long-standing issues that surfaced and threatened division. Many people did not return to worship services after lockdown measures were lifted, and increasingly younger generations don’t want anything to do with the institutional church.
To minister in this new reality, Pastor Val said “our missiology has to shift.”
“I talk to a lot of folks who are just really hanging onto the Church by a string,” she said.
Christian ministry is often geared to preaching that appeals to the head, but it is missing out on the power of the arts to reach the heart.
“This is definitely an area that the Christian Church has fallen asleep on,” Pastor Val said. “We've sort of limited God to the area of our brain: think about it, write about it, talk about it.”
Pastor Valerie Copeland
But with the state of the broader culture, this will not be enough to communicate the gospel effectively to many people. The call of Jesus’ Great Commission is to “go” to people instead of telling them to “come” to the Church.
“I think too often we're waiting for people to meet our criteria — and it's completely backwards,” Pastor Val said. “This idea — I'm willing to do whatever it takes to tell you about God: a God that loves you, a God that inspired all of this beauty, and a God that finds beauty in you — I'm willing to do whatever it takes. You've got to be willing to do whatever it takes.”
Pastor Val said Grace Chapel’s passion week display was a moving example of how God can use the arts to “preach” the message of the gospel. The display included beautiful art installations with quiet spaces for reflection.
“The last installation is just an empty tomb, and I can't tell you how that thing just brought me to my knees,” she said. “I've heard many sermons about the empty tomb that didn't bring me to my knees. Seeing that empty tomb brought me to my knees.”
In addition to proclaiming the Good News in different ways, Pastor Val said Christian creatives have the opportunity to help heal the fallout from broken or false views of God. Images have power, and when they’re not created to look like the people they’re meant for, it can have a lasting negative impact. Creatives can step in to redirect the image and narrative that disaffected people have of God.
“Give them platform, stop hiding them, stop discouraging them, be more encouraging, give them opportunities to present — especially on Sunday mornings. If you look around your congregation, there’s probably people who do all sorts of really cool, really unique things.”
“One of the ways that Christian creatives can be helpful is in bringing these important issues to light but also in correcting the narratives that have been associated with these images, and redirecting the narrative towards what is true and who we are as Christian believers,” Pastor Val said.
For churches that want to take the risk and change their approach to ministry, it will likely mean a painful period of adjustment, she said. But church leaders who worry about how to reach the unbelievers in their community may not realize that God has already provided them with the answer right there in the pews.
God has equipped Christian creatives in their congregations with gifts to preach the beauty of the gospel. But they must be empowered, not exploited.
“Give them platform, stop hiding them, stop discouraging them, be more encouraging, give them opportunities to present — especially on Sunday mornings,” Mike Mack said. “If you look around your congregation, there's probably people who do all sorts of really cool, really unique things.”
Creatives have their own ideas for how churches can begin to support them as they live out their calling to glorify God. They stress that this will mean a change in the usual mindset and approach to ministry. Of the many ways they can help, churches can start praying and thinking creatively about how they approach their finances, building space, and ministry staff.
Creative with support
One of the basic ways churches can begin to think creatively about equipping the artists in their pews is by supporting them financially.
An economy shaped by modern technology and social media has conditioned us to expect things to be free. Coupled with the tendency in churches to spiritualize volunteerism as Christian service, this dynamic puts Christian creatives in a difficult spot. They’re often expected to use their gifts and skills for free. And not complain about it.
“One of the things that does concern me is the inability for creatives, in general, particularly Christian creatives — particularly Christian creatives of color — to make a living,” Pastor Val said.
“We’ve got to start seeing people as an investment in the kingdom versus their output as the investment.”
It’s not fair the way churches impoverish Christian artists as they pursue their ministries, Pastor Val said.
“Christian creators contribute so much more to our economy than they get back,” she said. “They contribute so much more to the economy of the Church than they get back.”
When churches exploit the work of their people, it compromises the Church’s witness to the world.
“Justice starts in the house of the Lord. We cannot be out there fighting for justice and defending the rights of the poor and the exploited and then be exploiting people within the house of the Lord,” Pastor Val said. “We've got to start seeing people as an investment in the kingdom versus their output as the investment.”
Individual Christians can also think creatively about their tithing and giving. Mike Mack is confident that there are believers in the area who want to “make sure that New England’s a hub for artistry” and that Christian creatives have the tools and access they need to thrive.
“Somebody out there has that heart, but they've probably been told that the only way that you can give is to give it directly into the Church,” he said.
Being open to think creatively when it comes to finances is an opportunity to walk in step with the Spirit and partner with what God is doing on the ground.
“Are you listening to the voice of God? Do you ever wake up in the morning and say, ‘What does my city need? What do I gotta do?’” Mike Mack said. “Do you ever see somebody who's a creative and just think to yourself, ‘Wow, this person could really use assistance. I believe in what they're doing — let me help them out’?”
Creative with space
Boston is not kind to Christian artists and creatives looking for event space. They can have a tough time finding venues that will meet their needs at an affordable rate.
Many churches have significant real estate footprints with resources that could be used to support the work of creatives. Stewarding those resources well has kingdom implications.
Mike Mack said that along with everyone else, church leaders will one day have to give an account for what they received and what they did with it — “especially the stuff that we prayed for.”
“You look around and it’s like, what resources is the church sitting on? What young, up-and-coming rapper is actually the greatest preacher in your church, and you’re just not utilizing him because you don’t like the way that he does it?”
“‘Lord, I need this, please give me this.’ And he's like: ‘You just want it for yourself, you wicked servant. You just want it so you can hoard it. Why should I give it to you?’” Mike Mack said. “Somebody's praying for their building fund right now — got money coming in from everywhere — and have no plans of using it for the people who gave to it.”
Churches can use their spaces to host concerts, exhibits, and other artistic events. They can work collaboratively with creatives to further the kingdom in their local communities with the use of their building space.
Creative with staff
Beyond physical assets and resources, churches can build out their ministry staff with Christian creatives who feel called to serve in the church.
“Put the creatives in your church on staff. Pay for their position,” Pastor Val said. “Put people on staff so that they're actually able to do what they need to do and also support the life that they need to live.”
Bringing creatives on staff may not come intuitively to some church leaders. It may mean interrogating our ideas of what a church staffer looks like.
“You look around and it's like, what resources is the church sitting on?” Mike Mack said. “What young, up-and-coming rapper is actually the greatest preacher in your church, and you're just not utilizing him because you don't like the way that he does it?”
“Church” may not look exactly the same anymore. Christian creatives may have interests that don’t naturally align with the way many churches usually approach the arts. They might not play a musical instrument or want to lead the children’s Christmas play.
“It’s glorifying God just in a different approach. I think once people can realize that, they’ll definitely leave more space for more opportunity for creatives like myself and others.”
“We have to start — and I'm hoping even at my church — making room for the ministries — no matter how unique they are — so that this is a place where they can flourish,” Pastor Val said. “This is a place where we will financially invest in that ministry just like we're going to invest in the summer camp, the food pantry, the marriage retreat.”
Pastor Val said church leaders should recognize that creatives are also theologians. They should invite creatives to look for ways they can visually bring to life what is being taught or preached from the pulpit.
“One of my dreams is that someone would do a dramatic piece of the encounter between Jesus and Satan in the desert, where they have this word battle, and Jesus literally drops the mic at the end. It is done. It's a wrap,” she said. “It's so dramatic. This interaction between Jesus and Satan is intense, it's high stakes. And I'm like, why hasn't this been made into a dramatic piece yet?”
Creatives like Acevdeo are confident churches can make use of them and support them at the same time. He encourages creatives to be plugged into a local church community, rooted and grounded in Christ alone. He believes this spiritual vitality will help shift hearts and minds within congregations to make room for artists with unique gifts who relate in different ways.
“It's glorifying God just in a different approach,” Armani said. “I think once people can realize that, they'll definitely leave more space for more opportunity for creatives like myself and others.”
WATCH: Church & Creatives
Have you ever experienced music or art that has helped you feel closer and more connected to God? For many people, creativity and artistic expression have become an important part of their faith. The Emmanuel Gospel Center connected with Christian creatives and pastors to learn from them how churches can support and equip the artists sitting in the pews. Watch this video that dives into this world of faith and creativity while highlighting opportunities for support and collaboration.
Mutual learning is helping Black churches thrive
Two church leaders participating in the BBCVP’s Thriving Initiative shared their strategies for serving the community and keeping their congregants safe from COVID during worship services.
Pastor Jean Louis of Free Pentecostal Church of God and Pastor Bisi Asere of Apostolic Church LAWNA meet for the first time in person after participating in online meetings for half a year. Rosa Cabán with R9 Foto for The Emmanuel Gospel Center
Mutual learning is helping Black churches thrive
Black Church leaders reflect on God’s work in Boston.
By Hanno van der Bijl, Managing Editor, Applied Research & Consulting
“I see God bringing people together, having conversations that are important that we haven’t had. We’re being more open with one another and more transparent about ways that we can partner and collaborate.”
That sentiment expressed by Gina Benjamin was echoed by others reflecting on God’s work in Boston at a recent meeting for the Boston Black Church Vitality Project.
Benjamin, social services director of the community center at Mount of Olives Evangelical Baptist Church in Hyde Park, is part of the project’s Thriving Initiative, a cohort of 10 ethnically and denominationally diverse Black churches that are located in four predominantly Black neighborhoods in the city.
Members of these churches participating in the cohort said God is using the pandemic and other challenges not only to unify and strengthen the Church, but also to create opportunities for compassion and evangelism.
The cohort meets together for two hours every other month for fellowship, peer learning, skills-based workshops and group training, and discussions about opportunities for collaborative ministry. During a meeting earlier this year, two church leaders shared their strategies for serving the community and keeping their congregants safe from COVID during worship services.
Caring for the community
At the onset of the pandemic, Fania Alvarez, who heads up The Greater Boston Nazarene Compassion Center (GBNCC), said the leadership team decided they could not stop. But they knew they would have to do things differently.
The GBNCC runs a food pantry that distributes more than 7,000 pounds of food to families in need every week. When COVID hit, people started lining up hours earlier than usual with little social distancing.
The GBNCC decided to open up a couple of hours earlier to accommodate the crowd.
“It was really challenging, but God was in the midst of it,” Alvarez said.
Launched by the Haitian Church of the Nazarene — Friends of the Humble almost 30 years ago, the GBNCC serves low-income families and individuals who have limited access to services and resources in the community.
In addition to the food pantry, the ministry runs a safety-net program, assisting people with government programs such as SNAP and WIC. The GBNCC also provides English language literacy and workforce development classes.
Once the vaccines became available, the ministry served as a vaccination clinic. The shots were a godsend, but some people were hesitant, Alvarez said.
“We had to find strategies to work with them. We had to go out and convince and educate them on the vaccine,” she said. “It wasn’t an easy time, but we made it. We can say we made it.”
Churches that want to develop a social ministry of their own need a dedicated leader who is able to manage programs and secure resources from donors and charitable organizations.
“Pray to the Lord so you can find somebody that has the heart for it,” Alvarez said.
In a meeting earlier this year cohort participants were asked: “What do you see God doing in the city?” Here’s what they said.
Managing churcH through pandemic
In 2017, the Rev. Kenneth Sims at New Hope Baptist Church started bringing bank machines into the church services.
“Some of our real spiritual-deep folk thought that I lost my mind bringing a machine to receive tithes and offerings,” Rev. Sims said. “But that was the biggest aspect of our giving.”
He also felt compelled Sunday after Sunday to tell his congregants to get a smartphone.
“It didn’t really seem spiritual at the time,” he said. “The church eventually caught on. Every Sunday — especially the seniors — would flash their smartphones and say, ‘Reverend Sims, I have a smartphone. I don’t know how to use it but I have one.’”
Then the pandemic hit. No collection plates were passed around to receive contributions. All in-person services stopped.
“I just thank God … because we weren’t scrambling,” Rev. Sims said. “That taught me one thing: to really listen to the voice of God even when it’s in opposition to what many people are thinking. Listen to God because he knows the future.”
Rev. Sims met with nurses in the church to chart a way forward. An executive committee made up of four teams was formed to oversee the church’s response to COVID.
“We knew we were coming back to church,” he said. “We didn’t know when, so we started planning so that we’d be prepared.”
A security team oversees registration, traffic, and parking. A health-and-hygiene team handles pre-screening, including handwashing, mask-wearing, and seating. A social distancing and redesign team handles seat spacing and equipment. A cleaning and disinfecting team cleans the bathrooms after each use.
Rev. Sims said members of the congregation took ownership of the various teams and made a difference.
“It got the people involved, and it wasn’t all about me. I’ve been trying for the last few years to get away from that — to stay in my role, of course, overseeing — but not having to do it directly,” he said. “People have been empowered, and they have taken off. I don’t get in their way.”
After a five-month hiatus, the church resumed in-person worship services in August 2020. Rev. Sims said the church continues to practice the safety measures it put in place.
“Our main concern was that our people remained safe,” he said.
The executive team spent many hours meeting, praying, discussing, and researching their options to balance out the physical and spiritual needs of the congregation.
“I did not believe that New Hope could survive spiritually being away from the church gathering from March 2020 to now,” Rev. Sims said. “I could not see that.”
While some members have come down with the virus, Rev. Sims said it was not due to their worship services as far as they know.
“We have not had any kind of super-spreader situations going on at New Hope since we’ve returned,” he said. “That’s been a tremendous blessing for us.”
With even more tools at their disposal than they had at the beginning of the pandemic, Rev. Sims is confident the church can keep moving forward.
“I’m just of the impression that, yes, let’s do all that we can to be safe: let’s do everything that we can, and then we’re leaving the rest up to the Lord,” he said. “What I can’t control, what I can’t power over, I leave that to the Lord.”
TAKE ACTION
The Thriving Initiative is a three-year process rooted in learning, discerning, and doing ministry. Participating churches are examining their mission and values in light of shifting social and cultural landscapes in Boston.
By deploying tools such as interview guides, congregant surveys, and ministry inventories that BBCVP designed to support churches in understanding the needs and perspectives of congregant and community stakeholders, the cohort leads in a learning endeavor that seeks to model the work of reflection that is essential in order for the Church to remain relevant and vital.
Through online articles, reports on what is being learned, videos, and data visualization, the Boston Black Church Vitality Project project will share these stories of innovation, successful strategies, and effective use of leverage points that exemplify models of prophetic leadership, community care, spiritual formation, and the pursuit of justice.
The Thriving Initiative is generously funded by the Lilly Endowment with additional support from Boston Baptist Social Union and others. For more information, visit blackchurchvitality.com.
Do you know where you’re standing?
Why EGC’s new “Fact Friday” series explores the church’s history and legacy in Boston one short video at a time.
Updated Feb. 21, 2024
Do you know where you’re standing?
Why EGC’s new “Fact Friday” series explores the church’s history and legacy in Boston one short video at a time.
by Hanno van der Bijl, Managing Editor, Applied Research & Consulting
Did you know that the African Meeting House on Beacon Hill was co-founded by Cato Gardner, a formerly enslaved man born in Africa?
Or that Twelfth Baptist Church was the spiritual home of Wilhelmina Crosson, a pioneering Black school teacher in Boston, who also was instrumental in launching the precursor to Black History Month?
How about this gem: Boston’s oldest church congregation is not downtown — it’s in Dorchester. On June 6, 1630, the First Parish Church in Dorchester was the first congregation to meet in what is present-day Boston. The First Church of Boston did not organize until about two months later.
These are just some insights from the Emmanuel Gospel Center’s new “Fact Friday” video series on Instagram.
“The city’s churches have a rich history,” said Caleb McCoy, marketing manager at EGC. “I think those legacies impact how we view the church today, so it’s important to share that information with as many as possible.”
The Fact Friday team includes Jaronzie Harris, program manager for the Boston Black Church Vitality Project, and Rudy Mitchell, senior researcher at EGC. Since February, this dynamic duo has been creating videos exploring the church’s long history in Boston, leaving EGC’s Instagram followers hungry for more.
“People who live in Boston may walk by church buildings but they may not know, one, what has gone on there in the past and, two, what’s going on here in the present,” Mitchell said.
Bridging that gap between the past and present is one of the project’s key motivators.
“It’s been fun for me to share but also to learn,” Harris said. “Doing this project is engaging me in research. I have to go and find out about these things, which I enjoy doing.”
Harris said learning about St. Cyprian’s Episcopal Church’s rich history, for example, led her to discover some surprises about the church’s ministry today as she listened to a recent sermon.
“It was interesting to hear this minister preaching Black theology from a different tradition about a festival I didn’t know about,” Harris said. “I haven’t heard that type of militant preaching in Boston before.”
Caleb McCoy (right) films a recent Fact Friday video with Rudy Mitchell (left) and Jaronzie Harris (center).
The city’s Black churches have a rich legacy of gospel ministry and social action.
“Almost every time you look at one of the Black churches in the 1800s, you see they were deeply involved in the abolitionist movement and advocating for the rights of enslaved peoples,” Mitchell said. “A lot of rich history inspired continued activism in more recent times.”
The team believes the Black church’s spiritual legacy continues to buoy the community as it faces its own headwinds today.
“We are in a time that’s very racially charged right now,” McCoy said, “but it’s important to know that Black Christianity and the Black church has a legacy that’s gone before us and has a rich history in the fight for equality and justice in our own city.”
The team also enjoys parsing out curiosities such as why a church on Warren Street in Roxbury is called “The Historic Charles Street AME Church.”
In addition to digging around the past, the project has a forward-looking orientation. Boston, for example, was home to the first YMCA in the United States. What would such an innovative approach to ministry look like today?
“The Bible often tells us to remember how God was at work in the past, and we certainly can learn from history,” Mitchell said. “Even though the form and methods may change, we can be inspired to be used by God in our own time for similar purposes.”
For decades, EGC has been channeling its research and learning into specific programming and events. The Boston Church Directory, for example, demonstrates how its use of applied research is a dynamic process, bringing people in along the way.
But learning is ongoing, and it’s important to share that process, Harris said.
“I’m learning these things for Fact Friday, sure, but I’m also learning these things to better support my churches, to better understand the Boston landscape,” she said.
EGC also tries to provide a larger perspective on Christianity in Boston not just across different denominations and cultural groups but also over time. At times that research has uncovered illuminating insights.
“Historically, we saw that, between 1970 and 2010, more new churches started in Boston than in any other comparable period in Boston’s history,” Mitchell said.
Many of those churches have important stories to tell, known only by a few. Through various research projects, EGC tries to get those stories out in the open.
“We have all this historical information,” Harris said. “So how can we tell a story that is digestible for a broader audience?”
Here are some of the churches, institutions, sites, and individuals the team has covered so far:
TAKE ACTION
Follow EGC on Instagram @egcboston and watch for new reels and videos on Fridays.
What would you like to know about the history of the church in Boston? Let us know by filling out the feedback form below.
Additional Resources
Curious to learn more about the story of the church in Boston? Give these resources below a try.
Daman, Steve. “Understanding Boston’s Quiet Revival.” Emmanuel Research Review. December 2013/January 2014. Accessed January 22, 2015.
Hartley, Benjamin L. Evangelicals at a Crossroads: Revivalism and Social Reform in Boston, 1860-1910. Lebanon, N.H.: University Press of New England, 2011.
Hayden, Robert C. Faith, Culture and Leadership: A History of the Black Church in Boston. Boston: Boston Branch NAACP, 1983.
Horton, James Oliver, and Lois E. Horton. Black Bostonians: Family Life and Community Struggle in the Antebellum North, rev. ed. New York: Holmes & Meier Publishers, 2000. See chapter 4: “Community and the Church.”
Johnson, Marilynn S. "The Quiet Revival: New Immigrants and the Transformation of Christianity in Greater Boston." Religion and American Culture: A Journal of Interpretation V 24, No. 2 (Summer 2014): 231-248.
Mitchell, Rudy. The History of Revivalism in Boston. Boston: Emmanuel Gospel Center, 2007.
Mitchell, Rudy, Brian Corcoran, and Steve Daman, editors. New England’s Book of Acts. Boston: Emmanuel Gospel Center, 2007. The New England Book of Acts has studies of the recent history of ethnic and immigrant groups and their churches and a summary of the history of the African-American church in Boston.
Investing in Haitian churches and communities
The Emmanuel Gospel Center is partnering with the Fellowship of Haitian Evangelical Pastors of New England on “Pwojè Rebati” to raise funds for restoration efforts in Southern Haiti.
Investing in Haitian churches and communities
How Haitian leaders are working together to counter a broken legacy of relief aid to the battered country.
By Hanno van der Bijl, Managing Editor, Applied Research & Consulting
Four earthquakes. Four hurricanes. A cholera outbreak. Political and social upheaval. The COVID-19 pandemic.
These are just some of the crises to hit Haiti since 2010.
Billions of dollars in foreign aid remain unaccounted for, with little of it going into the hands of Haitians.
This is part of the reason the Emmanuel Gospel Center is partnering with the Fellowship of Haitian Evangelical Pastors of New England (FHEPNE) on “Pwojè Rebati” — “Project Rebuild” in Haitian Creole — to raise funds for restoration efforts in Southern Haiti. The fellowship’s partner on the ground, Ligue des pasteurs du Sud D’Haiti (LIPASH), is a group of pastors in Les Cayes, representing 3,000 churches in about 20 municipalities.
Haitian leaders identified several important needs: rebuilding churches, providing housing for families, and distributing food.
“We would like to impact the lives of people in the area spiritually, socially, and mentally, because at the end of the day, people will gather together, they will feel gratified to have a place of worship where they can express their spiritual gratitude to God,” said Pastor Varnel Antoine of FHEPNE. “From a Haitian cultural perspective, they are very religious, and they believe in worshiping God regardless of their situation. You cannot take that away from them.”
People are walking or driving for miles to go to church. More than just a place to meet on Sunday mornings, the church serves as one of the primary forms of social infrastructure for Haitians. It provides a place to worship, safety and shelter, social support and community, a second family.
“Churches are such a pillar of community in Haitian culture,” said Marjory Neret, a member of the Pwojè Rebati fundraising team. “The churches are providing far more than just the place of worship — they’re really connecting people to a lifeline. So this is actually a far more significant project than it might seem on the surface.”
In addition to rebuilding church buildings, Pastor Antoine said the team hopes to get families off the street and into two-bedroom homes to live in.
“We hope that this project, Pwojè Rebati, will be a catalyst that will motivate other organizations to help in their rebuilding efforts so that people can go back and focus on God in adoration and exaltation for who he is,” he said. “That’s what we can tackle right now.”
‘You have a big faith’
Raising money is not easy. It takes time and effort. Often the Haitian leaders who are in the best position to effectively allocate and use the funds are tied up with important and urgent demands on their time. A chasm lies between those with financial resources in countries like the United States and those experienced Haitian leaders in the middle of the action. EGC works to bridge that divide.
After an earthquake and tropical depression hit Haiti last August, FHEPNE and EGC began raising funds.
They had collected about $112,000 when EGC’s executive director, Jeff Bass, was approached by an old friend, a Boston pastor he has known for several decades. The pastor serves on the board of an organization that wanted to donate $250,000 toward Haiti relief. “That’s awesome,” Bass said. And they wanted it to be a matching gift. “That’s challenging,” Bass said with a nervous chuckle.
After some further conversation, the organization agreed to count the $112,000 that had already been raised toward the matching amount, making the challenge considerably more manageable.
Bass presented the proposal to FHEPNE. Pastor Antoine said the group had never raised that much money before.
“It’s going to be a drop in the bucket for all that has to be done,’” he told his colleagues.
Many churches in the Les Cayes area — not to mention other regions of Haiti — had been impacted. So he decided to set a goal of not just making the $250,000 matching challenge but to prayerfully push for $1 million.
Pastor Antoine’s colleagues hesitated. “‘Hmm, I don’t know, you have a big faith,’” he said they told him. But given the high construction costs, they decided to take the plunge.
FHEPNE launched the fundraiser, and EGC signed on as a fiscal sponsor as well as fundraising consultant free of charge.
EGC hired Neret, a Haitian-American leader who graduated from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. With her extensive connections in the Haitian community, Neret brings a critically important perspective to the project.
Neret has broadened the team’s outlook and experience and helped strengthen how it describes the project in addition to reaching out to hundreds of people as part of the fundraising effort.
“A lot of people, especially those who are Haitian, are pretty receptive,” she said. “They’ve been more than willing to help — most of them right away.”
A big break came when the Imago Dei Fund in Boston donated $85,000. As of early May, the team has raised $213,000. It is now pushing to get to the full $250,000 matching amount by the end of June, and hopefully further toward Pastor Antoine’s bigger vision.
“It’s a blessing. It’s the work of the Lord,” Pastor Antoine said. “I believe that he’s got his hand on it, so we need to do our due diligence, waiting for him to use us as instruments in his hand.”
Half of the challenge is raising the funds. The other half is making sure it’s spent well in Haiti.
Half of the challenge is raising the funds. The other half is making sure it’s spent well in Haiti.
The Pwojè Rebati team is discerning how it can have a distributed impact in several communities.
Part of the process is securing accurate quotes from architects and contractors for building temporary church structures. That has not come without its own heartache. The chauffeur of the architectural firm working on the project was taken hostage, and an architect’s son took his own life in despair over the situation in the country.
Pastor Antoine said the team will be accountable to small and large donors alike. The Haitian pastors in Boston and Southern Haiti are working together to create mechanisms of accountability and for wiring the money safely, which will not all go out at once.
The first phase of the project includes a church building, housing, and food distribution in one community.
“We will start with one project, one region, and see the outcome of that first project,” Pastor Antoine said. “From that point on, we will decide on the next step.”
0.6%
While billions of dollars in relief aid has been promised to help communities like Les Cayes in Haiti, success has been elusive.
The damage inflicted by the 2010 earthquake was assessed at $7.9 billion. The government of Haiti requested $11.5 billion in aid for a 10-year plan that would have helped the country not only recover but also redevelop. International donors pledged a total of $10.76 billion toward that end.
From 2010 to 2012, several countries gave $6.43 billion in humanitarian and recovery aid for Haiti. Non-governmental organizations raised an additional $3.06 billion from private donors.
Of the $6.43 billion, less than 10% went to the government of Haiti and less than 0.6% of it went to Haitian organizations and businesses in the form of grants, according to data collected by Dr. Paul Farmer’s U.N. office.
Dr. Farmer, who passed away this year, had served as a special adviser on community-based health and aid delivery to the Secretary-General of the United Nations from 2009 to 2019. His U.N. office tried to track down how much aid money was pledged, committed and disbursed to Haiti. Billions of dollars remain unaccounted for.
Without greater transparency, Dr. Farmer’s office was left to theorize that not enough aid was requested and pledged and that, of what was given, the majority of aid did not remain in Haiti. Instead, it went to contractors and non-governmental organizations based in other countries.
Haiti is not the only nation to receive such a small share of incoming aid in a time of crisis. Between 2007 and 2011, 5% of humanitarian aid went toward the public sectors of recipient countries, and of the $4.27 billion that was raised through U.N. humanitarian flash appeals in 2012, only 0.6% went directly to local organizations in various countries. Liberia suffered a similar fate in 2012 when it was struggling with Ebola.
Giving only a tiny fraction of official development assistance, or ODA, directly to a country’s political and business leaders undermines its ability to recover from disasters and thrive.
“An estimated 75% of all ODA to the poorest countries never reaches the recipient country,” Dr. Farmer’s U.N. office’s report stated. “In addition, UN flash appeals almost always do not allow for the recipient government to receive funding. Bypassing of the public sector has a significant impact on development outcomes as there is a correlation between investment in the public sector and a decrease in poverty and disease.”
Countries such as Rwanda, which receive more than half of their ODA through their own national systems, make some of the best development progress in overall wellbeing.
The world’s first independent Black republic
This is not the first time Haiti’s future has been compromised by more powerful institutions and countries.
Originally known as Saint-Domingue, Haiti was France’s most lucrative colony in the late 18th century. The flag of liberty that was raised in the American colonies in 1776 and France in 1789 was also planted in Haiti when the enslaved people revolted against their colonial slave masters in 1791.
At first, President Thomas Jefferson saw Black Haitians’ struggle for self-determination in line with his own idealism and the revolutionary fervor of the day.
“St. Domingo has expelled all its whites, has given freedom to all its blacks, has established a regular government of the blacks and colored people, and seems now to have taken its ultimate form, and that to which all of the West India islands must come,” he wrote to his daughter Martha in 1793.
A depiction of the Battle of Ravine-à-Couleuvres in 1802.
Haiti was the world’s first independent Black republic. The first nation to permanently ban slavery. However, a successful country led by free, former enslaved Africans was too much of a threat to slave owners in the United States. Jefferson tried to isolate the island nation and blunt its economic prospects. The U.S. wouldn’t recognize Haiti as a country until 1862.
But as scholar Annette Gordon-Reed wrote, the U.S. owes Haiti a “debt we can’t repay.” Were it not for Haiti’s successful repulse of Napoléon’s invasion, the French emperor may not have sold the Louisiana territory to the United States for $15 million, or about $18 per square mile.
In 1814, when French King Louis XVIII tried to force Haiti to surrender, Alexandre Pétion, the ruler in southern Haiti, offered to pay France $15 million in exchange for the country’s independence, using the Louisiana Purchase as a benchmark. The king refused.
In what scholar Marlene Daut calls the “greatest heist in history,” French King Charles X sent a flotilla of warships with more than 500 cannons to force Haiti to pay 150 million francs — about 10 times the amount the U.S. had paid for the Louisiana territory. In 1825, Haitian President Jean-Pierre Boyer committed the country to pay the reparations in five equal installments, taking out loans from French banks. The agreement was revised in 1838 after Haiti defaulted on the enormous debt.
The money went to more than 7,900 former slave owners and their decendants in France, but by the time Haiti fully paid off the debt in 1947, none of the originally enslaved people or slave owners were alive. The total amount was more than twice the value of France’s claims, negatively impacting Haiti’s national education, health care and public infrastructure for centuries. In 2020, French economist Thomas Piketty said France should repay Haiti at least $28 billion in restitution.
For its recent project, “The Ransom,” The New York Times spent months studying old documents and consulting with more than a dozen leading economists and financial historians to calculate how much Haiti paid in reparations as well as the larger economic impact on the country over the centuries.
It found that Haiti paid about $560 million in today’s dollars. Had that money remained in the country, it would have added at least $21 billion to the Haitian economy. But experts told the Times the impact of the reparations and the initial loan go far beyond that. Taking into consideration that the country might have grown at a similar rate as its neighbors, Haiti lost about $115 billion.
“Put another way, if Haiti had not been forced to pay its former slaves masters, one team of international scholars recently estimated, the country per capita income in 2018 could have been almost six times as large — about the same as in its next-door neighbor, the Dominican Republic,” according to the Times.
“Overall, Haiti is just being punished for being the first republic of slaves to overthrow slave masters.”
In addition to not recognizing Haitian independence for decades and trying at times to annex its territory, the United States has repeatedly exploited the country.
From 1915 to 1934, the U.S. installed its own regime, rewrote the constitution, and took control of the country’s finances. During a demonstration in Les Cayes in 1929, U.S. Marines fired on 1,500 people, killing 12 and wounding 23. About 15,000 Haitians were killed during the 19-year occupation. U.S. soldiers pulled out in 1934, but the U.S. maintained control of Haiti’s finances until 1947, diverting about 40% of Haiti’s national income to service debt repayments to France and the U.S.
Since then the U.S. continues to back authoritarian Haitian leaders who appear to be allied with its interests. To reverse this trend, Haitian scholars and others advocate for the U.S. to support a group of Haitian civil organizations called the Commission to Search for a Haitian Solution to the Crisis.
“Overall, Haiti is just being punished for being the first republic of slaves to overthrow slave masters,” Neret told EGC. “They’ve made sure to put lots of political things in place to make them pay for that and to be an example to all of the other places.”
Getting behind leaders God is using
Bass, EGC’s executive director, recalls attending a conference in New York City that included a panel discussion on addressing the problems facing Haiti.
“There wasn’t a Haitian on it,” he said. “I walked out — this can’t work.”
Given the broken legacy of foreign relief aid and exploitation of Haiti, the church must adopt a new model if it wants to help.
EGC has a track record of partnering with the Haitian Christian community since the 1980s. After the earthquake in 2010, a local foundation provided EGC with about $100,000 in relief aid for Haiti. EGC then worked with the Rev. Dr. Soliny Védrine, senior pastor at Boston Missionary Baptist Church and a former EGC staff member, to partner with a dozen Haitian pastors in Greater Boston to distribute the $100,000 as they saw best.
“They created these feedback mechanisms where people reported how they spent the money,” Bass said. “It was very effective.”
This approach stands in contrast to problematic models of aid and development and outside input that unwittingly reinforce the same corruption, paternalism and racism that have caused many of Haiti’s biggest problems. Most aid and development organizations assume they can import solutions from the outside without long-standing relationships with the humanitarian and development ecosystem in place. The people most impacted are often shut out of the decision-making process.
The reality is that, when disaster strikes, there are already local leaders, organizations and systems in place working to address the needs. Excluding these leaders from the table is counterproductive and colonialistic.
“How can you plan a decent reconstruction if you don’t take into consideration the existing building blocks of local setups?” wrote Marie-Rose Romain Murphy, co-founder of the Haiti Community Foundation, in a CDA Collaborative Learning Projects article. “How can you develop effective and sustainable programs if citizens of the country are not included in those plans’ design?”
These dynamics motivate EGC to prioritize local leaders who have the vantage point and perspective needed to assess and innovate. Not placing relief aid directly in their hands and giving them decision-making power perpetuates Haiti’s struggles.
“EGC’s philosophy, and becoming more so,” Bass said, “is to get behind local, on-the-ground leaders as much as possible.”
TAKE ACTION
Give
You are invited into this effort. We are asking you to prayerfully consider assisting us with this challenge. This is a great opportunity for the church to step up and support our brothers and sisters in Haiti and locally in Greater Boston.
You can make a tax-deductible gift for Pwojè Rebati by clicking here and typing “Haiti Relief” in the “For” box. Thanks to the generous donor who has offered a $250,000 matching gift challenge, your gift will be matched 1:1 until the full amount has been met. EGC is passing through 100% of the donations to support the work in Southern Haiti.
Learn More
To learn more, check out the following organizations and resources. The list is not intended to be exhaustive.
Organizations
Fellowship of Haitian Evangelical Pastors of New England
The fellowship provides Haitian evangelical pastors in New England a “platform whereby its members will be provided ministry support, fellowship, spiritual development, cultural awareness, social services and needed resources, for the advancement and the well-being of each individual.”
The foundation seeks to “foster thriving Haitian communities with justice and opportunities for all, and to nurture and support Haitian leadership focused on national self-determination and collaborative development.”
Resources
“What if?” Questions with answers for a paradigm shift in the Aid System
In this CDA Collaborative Learning Projects article, Marie-Rose Romain Murphy, co-founder of the Haiti Community Foundation, casts a vision for how the aid sector can reflect on past mistakes and change course to empower local leaders so that “Aid … would (finally!) be about ending Aid.”
You call it philanthropy, we call it ‘Devlopman Tèt Ansanm’
In this article published by Alliance Magazine in London, Marie-Rose Romain Murphy lays out four critical changes the philanthropy world must adopt moving forward.
The Haiti Community Foundation: the impossible made possible
In this address given at a gathering organized by the South Africa-based Global Fund for Community Foundations, Marie-Rose Romain Murphy tells the story of the Haiti Community Foundation and its impact on Haiti in the aftermath of the 2010 earthquake.
This article by Chris Herlinger in the National Catholic Reporter includes insights and assessments that go beyond just the facts that much aid did not reach people in need and make a lasting difference.
Owning Our Future: Haitian Perspectives in Film
These 10 short films were produced by Haitians in partnership with Haitian community media and development organizations, Community Supported Film, and international non-governmental organizations.
When Helping Hurts: How to Alleviate Poverty without Hurting the Poor…and Yourself
Although this book by Steve Corbett and Brian Fikkert is not about Haiti, it does help people with uninformed, good intentions think through their approach to helping to avoid pitfalls, ineffectiveness, counter-productivity, and paternalism.
Research was contributed by Rudy Mitchell.
Nurturing Black Church vitality
The Boston Black Church Vitality Project (BBCVP) at the Emmanuel Gospel Center is kicking off its Thriving Initiative with a cohort of ethnically and denominationally diverse Black churches that are located in four predominantly Black neighborhoods in the city.
Nurturing Black Church vitality
Black churches in Boston embark on long-term learning initiative
by Hanno van der Bijl, Managing Editor, Applied Research & Consulting
The Boston Black Church Vitality Project (BBCVP) at the Emmanuel Gospel Center is kicking off its Thriving Initiative with a cohort of ethnically and denominationally diverse Black churches that are located in four predominantly Black neighborhoods in the city.
These past few years, churches have faced a compounded crisis without the most essential part of their legacy — the ability to gather, fellowship, pray and worship together. Many Black churches are still grappling with the challenges extended by prolonged closure.
The convening of a cohort committed to learning, growth, and collaboration during times when Christian community has become increasingly siloed due to the isolating effects of the pandemic is a testament to the resilience and dedication of Black pastors in the city.
The initiative is a three-year process rooted in learning, discerning, and doing ministry. Participating churches will examine their mission and values in light of shifting social and cultural landscapes in Boston.
“We’re not here to save anybody. We’re not here to fix anybody. We’re not here to tell anybody what to do, how to do it, and when to do it. That’s not the goal,” said Dr. Emmett G. Price III, CEO of the Black Christian Experience Resource Center and Dean of Africana Studies at Berklee College of Music. “The goal is to bring folks together, who are already doing the work in powerful and meaningful ways, so that you can share best practices with each other.”
“The goal is to bring folks together, who are already doing the work in powerful and meaningful ways, so that you can share best practices with each other.”
By deploying tools such as interview guides, congregant surveys, and ministry inventories that BBCVP designed to support churches in understanding the needs and perspectives of congregant and community stakeholders, the cohort will lead in a learning endeavor that seeks to model the work of reflection that is essential in order for the Church to remain relevant and vital.
“Nobody really wants to talk about what happens on the ground in Boston, because Boston doesn’t fit into the phenotype of the quote-unquote Black Church in the nation — you know that better than anybody else,” Dr. Price said, addressing cohort participants. “So, here’s our opportunity to come together and talk about what vitality and thriving looks like, and not to wait for other people to come tell us about ourselves.”
Through online articles, reports on what is being learned, videos, and data visualization, the BBCVP project will share these stories of innovation, successful strategies, and effective use of leverage points that exemplify models of prophetic leadership, community care, spiritual formation, and the pursuit of justice.
“For us to prepare as the Black Church — broadly defined, narrowly defined — we need data. We can’t just keep doing things on a wing and a prayer,” said Rev. David Wright, executive director of BMA Tenpoint. “We want to gather hard data so that we can assess what’s happening and then begin to prayerfully make plans so that we can prepare for the future.”
“We want to gather hard data so that we can assess what’s happening and then begin to prayerfully make plans so that we can prepare for the future.”
The cohort is made up of a diverse group of church leaders that includes Black Americans, Haitians, Nigerians, and St. Lucians. And the diverse list of churches represents historic neighborhoods in the city, including Dorchester, Hyde Park, Mattapan, and Roxbury.
“We understand that the Black Church is not monolithic,” said Jaronzie Harris, program manager at the BBCVP. “So, I’m excited to hear what kinds of conversations are coming out of that exchange, what we have to learn from each other, what we have to share with each other.”
“I’m excited to hear what kinds of conversations are coming out of that exchange, what we have to learn from each other, what we have to share with each other.”
During the first cohort meeting, pastors and church leaders shared their excitement about the project as well as the places they’re already witnessing vitality.
Mount of Olives Evangelical Baptist Church is addressing food insecurity and digital literacy as well as providing community education on COVID-19 and distribution of personal protective equipment, said Rev. Dr. Joel Piton, senior pastor of the Hyde Park church.
Twelfth Baptist Church in Roxbury is also focused on communal care with peace walks, a preschool and after-school program, as well as a food pantry and vaccination center. In addition, the church provided financial resources for families negatively impacted by the lengthy U.S. federal government shutdown in late 2018 and early 2019.
“What’s deep in my heart is the proactivity of the gospel,” said Rev. Willie Bodrick II, senior pastor at Twelfth Baptist Church. “I think it is the framework in which Jesus presents to us how we should manifest our words and the words of ministry into the actions of people’s lives.”
“What’s deep in my heart is the proactivity of the gospel. I think it is the framework in which Jesus presents to us how we should manifest our words and the words of ministry into the actions of people’s lives.”
TAKE ACTION
The Thriving Initiative is generously funded by the Lilly Endowment. For more information, visit blackchurchvitality.com.
A Bigger Fire: 2018 New England City Forum
Shared vision of God’s call is building across New England. But we need to get out of our silos to see it. UniteBoston’s Kelly Steinhaus shares themes emerging from the 2018 New England City Forum.
A Bigger Fire: 2018 New England City Forum
By Kelly Steinhaus, Director of UniteBoston
New England has the reputation of lacking a Christian presence. But my experience shows otherwise—Christians in New England are some of the most faith-filled, gospel-driven people I’ve ever met.
At times, I get discouraged by what I think I should see of gospel impact in New England. But when I come together with other Christian leaders, my perspective changes. I get filled with faith and excited about how God is at work in our midst.
For this reason, I love working with UniteBoston and the New England City Forum. Within the walls of our churches and church networks, we can feel isolated. Coming together, we can see the larger story of God’s movement emerging.
Learning Together at the New England City Forum
This year’s City Forum brought together 96 leaders from 17 cities throughout New England. Many participants expressed to us how refreshing it is to be with people from different settings with similar visions and goals.
We heard city presentations in the morning from New Haven and Springfield. In the afternoon, we hosted a “world cafe” style discussion, where people chose topic tables to discuss and collaborate on how to advance the gospel in New England.
We then asked participants in the forum to share with us what they took from the day that would most impact their ministry. Here’s what we learned.
1. God is on the move across New England—but we don’t hear about it.
We asked participants why they came to the forum. The most frequent reason they shared was to discover what God is doing more broadly in New England.
“I felt led to get out of my comfort zone and engage with others,” said one, wanting to “know New England better and what God is doing here.” Another attended “to learn about what God is doing in New England and meet some of the people He’s doing it through.”
Looking back over the day, one participant responded with the observation, “God is doing much in terms of our cities/movements. Most Christians are unaware beyond their own church, much less in other New England cities.” Another came away with the conviction that “God is moving—stay the course.”
2. Collaboration is the next normal.
Both of the city reports from New Haven and Springfield stressed the need for collaboration. Collaboration is celebrating the uniqueness of each community while partnering across differences.
“God has given charisma to all the churches, so we need to ask for them and each other,” shared one, acknowledging our need, “to humble ourselves and stop saying to other parts of the body, ‘I don’t need you.’”
Another added that we need collaboration across denominational, racial and socio-economic lines for the Church to “fulfill her calling and fully grow into her potential,” so that “revival can become a reality.”
Through Christ, we're all adopted into God’s family, and thus we are all on the same team—like it or not. So we have to be intentional about partnering across the beautiful diversity of Christ’s Church: across race, denomination, and generation, to name a few.
Rather than individually blowing on our own fires and hoping for success, it is time for us to take down the walls and come together to build a bigger bonfire. As we humbly open our hearts for greater partnership, a vision bigger than preserving our individual ministries will emerge.
I believe such unity is a tangible sign of the “revival” for which many have been longing and praying. To this end, the Luis Palau Association’s City Gospel Movement website was recently launched to help people to connect with gospel-oriented collaboration throughout the nation.
3. Building diverse leadership and sharing power are essential.
Building kingdom collaboration requires diverse leadership. To make this goal a reality, we must commit both to racial reconciliation and power-sharing.
After viewing a video of Christena Cleveland, which emphasizes Jesus’ way of the first to be last, many participants echoed the need to develop diverse leadership.
Watch Video
“Racial reconciliation can be modeled by pastors becoming friends,” wrote one participant, “learning to trust one each other and serving together as individuals and churches.”
Another responded in the form of a prayer, “God, please give me the heart and mind that is curious to genuinely seek to hear the power and truth of the person in front of me.”
Working together across our differences isn’t easy. As Pastor Todd Foster of the New Haven multi-church collaboration Bridges of Hope observed, “Being in the same room doesn’t mean you’re on the same page.” In his experience, we need to deal with the issues intentionally if we are to tear down the necessary walls.
But a fuller movement of God will come when we take the next step beyond mutual understanding. Real momentum will come when, as one participant shared, we become “ruthless about developing diverse organizational/neighborhood leaders,” with a commitment to “share the airtime.”
I’m convinced that if there is one thing needed in New England, it's a humble willingness to lay down our power to serve one another. I believe now is a God-ordained season where we must recognize we need one another like never before.
When we asked how we could improve the forum, many people suggested taking steps towards greater diversity among forum participants on various dimensions—ethnicity, vocation, and cities represented.
Internally, we’ve also held multiple conversations about what it could look like to develop more diverse leadership within the forum and ways we have not yet hit our own marks.
Looking Forward
Each Christian—each church—is a part of something much bigger than we can see. A united vision emerges the more we come together. The Emmanuel Gospel Center, Vision New England, and UniteBoston are committed to supporting unity-focused collaborations and creating spaces to learn from one another.
We’re grateful to NECF hosts and participants for fruitful conversations over the past three years. We’ve been encouraged to hear what God is doing and privileged to connect leaders in a shared learning space.
At this point, we do not plan to reconvene the New England City Forum next year. Instead, our team would like to take some time to reassess God's leading as we support more learning opportunities for Christians across ethnicity, vocation, denomination, and New England geography. We welcome your input.
We are grateful for your participation in the New England City Forum and are eager to see how the Lord will bring us together again in the future.
![Connecting Multi-Site Church Leaders [PhotoJournal]](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/57ff1c7ae58c62d6f84ba841/1513116581077-WOWU94O437SJAKKAMZMA/DSC_0438-for-header.jpg)
Connecting Multi-Site Church Leaders [PhotoJournal]
On November 20, Vision New England brought together 38 current and aspiring multi-site leaders from across New England for a Multi-Site Forum at LifeSong Church in Sutton, MA. The full-day event provided a space for peers to build relationships with fellow multi-site leaders, exchange insights, and share successes and failures in their multi-site experience.
On November 20, Vision New England brought together 38 current and aspiring multi-site leaders from across New England for a Multi-Site Forum at LifeSong Church in Sutton, MA. The full-day event provided a space for peers to build relationships with fellow multi-site leaders, exchange insights, and share successes and failures in their multi-site experience.
Bob Atherton, VNE Vice President of Member Services and the forum's organizer initially thought the event would draw a handful of leaders. As registration grew to include leadership teams from 17 churches across seven states, it became clear that current and aspiring multi-site leaders were eager for time to learn and connect.
The plenary sessions, facilitated by veteran multi-site leader, Pastor Rex Keener, focused on seven critical questions for current and aspiring multi-site leaders.
7 Critical Questions
Why should our church go multi-site?
How do we determine which multi-site approach fits us best?
What constitutes success?
How do we get our church ready to launch its first site?
How do we manage the multi-site monster?
What are the persistent challenges of a multi-site church?
What is the multi-site movement’s “dirty little secret”?
Pastor Rex presented best-practices and personal experiences around each of the critical questions. He made it clear at the start of the day that he wasn't trying to talk anyone into multi-site leaderships.
"If you wanted a sales guy today, you got the wrong guy, but I'll tell you the truth about it as I see it.” His transparency and candor about both his success and failures set the tone for how participants would share in their small group discussion.
““What is needed it this—to share both success and shortcomings.”
-participant”
Participants were grateful that the small group discussions were both honest and practical. One participant noted that "learning about the realities of the challenges was very sobering and very helpful." Another said, "What is needed is this—to share both success and shortcomings."
Based on small group report-backs and participant surveys, Vision New England and EGC’s Applied Research & Consulting team discovered four key insights multi-site leaders repeatedly shared.
We believe their insights clarify—both for leaders exploring the multi-site option and for current multi-site staff facing vexing challenges to sustainability—the need for four life-preserving team commitments:
Staying Afloat in Multi-Site Ministry: 4 Key Commitments for Long-Term Health
Multi-site ministry is hard. But a few simple team practices can make the difference between a failed "experiment" and a thriving multi-site community.
Staying Afloat in Multi-Site Ministry
4 Key Commitments for Long-Term Health
By the EGC Applied Research & Consulting Team and Vision New England
Multi-site church leadership is risky. Enough funding, attendance, and facilities for a site launch provide a great start. But for a new worship location and community to survive and thrive long-term, more is needed.
The multi-site church movement—wherein a single team manages the operations and shepherding of multiple co-branded churches—hit a major stride in the US just 25 years ago. So multi-sites are not yet old enough to assess their long-term impact on American Christianity. But lead teams are swimming in deep enough waters to have learned some key factors crucial to sustainability.
On November 20, Vision New England brought together 38 current and aspiring multi-site leaders from across New England for a Multi-Site Consultation at LifeSong Church in Sutton, MA. The full-day event provided a space for peers to share insights, successes and failures, and a few dirty little secrets of the multi-site experience.
Based on small group report-backs and participant surveys, Vision New England and EGC’s Applied Research & Consulting team discovered four key insights multi-site leaders repeatedly shared. We believe their insights clarify—both for leaders exploring the multi-site option and for current multi-site staff facing vexing challenges to sustainability—the need for four life-preserving team commitments.
1. Connect with Other Multi-Site Teams
Opportunities are rare to talk openly and honestly about the unique challenges of multi-site ministry. But regular connection to peers in the multi-site experience is make-or-break crucial for team health and practical insights.
Actionable ministry team learning and development happens best with others in the multi-site boat. Other church structures—church plants, missional communities, denominational leadership—are not comparable. The multi-site situation involves logistical challenges not relevant to other leadership experiences.
““What is needed is this—to share both success and shortcomings.””
Furthermore, spending time with multi-site peers means the conversation won’t shrink away from addressing real-world hazards or the ugly side of multi-site. “Hearing from others and their success and failures” added value in the table discussions.
According to a 2014 Generis report surveying 535 multi-site leaders from around the world, multi-sites also grow faster than single churches or church plants. To stay ahead of the whirlwind, multi-site leaders acknowledge the wisdom of ongoing relationships with others who are currently leading a multi-site or exploring it as an option.
2. Clarify Your Multi-Site Approach & Leadership Structure
Org charts aren’t sexy, and little to no attention is devoted to organizational strategy in seminary training. But a prayerfully and carefully constructed chain of team responsibility and support can mean the difference between a failed experiment and a thriving multi-site community.
“Getting a grasp on different models of multi-site ministry was tremendous," reflected one participant. Lack of clarity on multi-site approach and leadership structure was the most commonly cited ministry challenge by both current and in-process leaders.
Adapted from Pastor Rex Keener's plenary presentation at the Multi-Site Consultation, November 20, 2017, in Sutton, MA. Click to enlarge.
In plenary session, Pastor Rex Keener clarified that multi-site is not a single organizational approach, but three: franchise, localized, or church-plant style (with multi-site governance). For leaders to thrive, they need to be clear about which multi-site approach they’ve chosen. Asking and agreeing upfront, “What are we going to standardize?” avoids unnecessary community stress.
In Pastor Rex’s experience, asking leaders to adjust, for example, from a more controlled role towards more autonomy is usually not difficult. But asking leaders to adjust mid-stream from more autonomy to less can be painful and demoralizing.
“A prayerfully and carefully constructed chain of team responsibility and support can mean the difference between a failed experiment and a thriving multi-site community.”
In addition, different multi-site approaches require different gifts and skills. Intentionally choosing your church’s approach from the start allows your team to avoid squandering your leaders’ gifts in the wrong role.
For example, sustainable franchise leaders tend to excel in interpersonal skills for partner-, leader-, and community building, whereas effective church plant pastors require strong communication gifts for regular preaching.
But more than any other topic, leaders cited the leadership org chart conversation as the most helpful and impactful part of the day. There Pastor Rex shared multiple, legitimate options for chains of authority and leader support.
Adapted from Pastor Rex Keener's plenary presentation at the Multi-Site Consultation, Nov 20, 2017, in Sutton, MA. Click to enlarge.
For example, in some multi-sites the senior leader directly supervises the campus pastors as well as other key leaders. In other multi-sites, the senior leader supervises another pastor who oversees and supports the campus pastors. Pastor Rex recommended the latter structure especially for churches with more than two sites, because it tends to be more readily scalable—adding a fourth or fifth site will not require a lead team restructure.
3. Go Deeper on Timeline, Location & Real Cost
Participants agreed that not enough conversation has been happening around the logistical challenges of multi-sites. According to one participant, “The conversation around the way to think through location, timeline, and budgeting were helpful in that they didn’t offer what to think but how to think.”
The financial realities of multi-sites were of particular interest. The most impactful topic of the day was, as one leader put it, “the budget stuff—NO ONE has written a book about that yet!” Published estimates for the first-year cost of launching a multi-site vary wildly. Participants in the room shared estimates ranging from $250,000 to $1 million. In the Generis survey of 535 multi-site churches, first-year estimates ranged from $46,000 to $1.4 million.
“Not enough conversation has been happening around the logistical challenges of multi-sites.”
The budget discussion raised a number of factors responsible for the wide range of estimates, including: the number of staff; the combined attendance at all sites; whether the site is buying, leasing, or renting property; and the leadership structure.
The leaders broadly appreciated the time devoted to this level of logistical detail, and expressed a desire for more opportunities for such practical deep dives.
4. Prepare to Face Hard Realities
The idea of launching a multi-site in some ways can feel to a church community like a reward for a job well done. When a church community multiplies beyond its capacity, it must expand or risk crowding people out—Yay, growth!
“Going multi-site fixes nothing, it only multiplies everything.”
But leaders can hold an unconscious assumption that multi-site ministry will “just flow”—that the “repeat performance” will be easier than the sweat and spiritual labor that went into the original. Similarly, churches struggling to address the needs of a community bursting at the seams may assume that the multi-site launch will bring relief for overworked ministers.
The reality can often be the opposite of these assumptions, and churches considering a multi-site need to enter such a commitment with eyes wide open. D’Angelo and Stigile warn,
Multi-site creates more problems than it solves—it multiplies exactly who you are today, nothing more, nothing less. It’s not only the good that grows, it has a way of expanding everything in your church…Going multi-site fixes nothing, it only multiplies everything.
For example, despite its efficiencies multi-sites require substantially more—not less— leadership development. Multi-sites boast a higher average level of lay participation that individual churches. Wise lead teams plan to exercise intensive leadership development as a given duty, and prepare for even higher levels of leadership skill and maturity themselves.
Pastor Rex candidly shared the pain with which his church learned the need to restructure their lead team. As the senior pastor, he had been overseeing each campus pastor directly. But he was spread too thin and ministry quality visibly suffered.
His church has now taken the hard transition to a model where he supervises another leader who oversees the campus pastors. This mid-stream shift has involved significant growing pains. Pastor Rex hoped with his radical candor to spare other church communities of this kind of potentially avoidable team stress.
As a reality check for those exploring multi-site, or those bewildered by their multi-site experience, consider how the participants in this conference honestly describe multi-site leadership:
““More is not necessarily better, just different.” ”
““A difficult road, if you choose it.””
““Think about your systems and structures and make sure you are ready for the challenges.””
Experienced leaders agree that leading a multi-site is not trivial—it’s a hard upward calling. But take heart—leaders also shared measured words of wisdom and hope:
““No one has done this perfectly. Keep working on a solution that fits your situation.” ”
““Take it slow.” ”
Vision New England unifies, encourages, and equips the diverse Body of Christ in New England for intentional evangelism. VNE recently convened the Multisite Consultation to create an opportunity for peer fellowship, support, and shared insights among multi-site church teams in New England. Bob Atherton, VNE's Vice President of Member Services, would be happy to connect you with other local multi-site leaders.
Multi-Site Ministry In-Depth: Reading List
Recommended reading for multi-site leaders and those exploring multi-site as an option.
Multi-Site Ministry In-Depth: Reading List
By Rudy Mitchell, Senior Researcher
Highly Recommended
Bird, Warren. "Leadership Network/Generis Multisite Church Scorecards: Master Growth, More Believers and Greater Lay Participation." Leadership Network, 2014.
D’Angelo, David, and Ryan Stigile. MultiSite Church Pitfalls: 7 Dangers You Cannot Afford to Ignore. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2016.
Surratt, Geoff, Gregg Ligon, and Warren Bird. The Multi-Site Church Revolution. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 2006.
Tomberlin, Jim, and Warren Bird. Better Together: Making Church Mergers Work. San Francisco, Calif.: Jossey-Bass, 2012.
Also Recommended
Banks, Adelle M. “Multisite Churches are Outpacing Growth of Megachurches.” The Christian Century, 19 September 2012, 17-18.
Barna Group. More Than Multisite: Inside Today's Methods and Models for Launching New Congregations. Ventura, Calif.: Barna Group, 2016.
Bettis, Kara. “Beyond the Screens: How Can Multisite Churches Convey Pastoral Presence?” Leadership 36, no.3 (Summer 2015): 55-57.
Collier, Bryan. The Go-to Church: Post Megachurch Growth. Nashville, Tenn.: Abingdon Press, 2013.
Ferguson, Dave. “The Multi-site Church: Some Strengths of this New Life Form.” Leadership 24, no. 2 (Spring 2003): 80-84.
House, Brad, and Gregg Allison, MultiChurch: Exploring the Future of Multisite. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 2017.
McConnell, Scott. Multi-Site Churches: Guidance for the Movement’s Next Generation. Nashville, Tenn.: B&H Books, 2009.
Pope, Randy. “3 Reasons We Stopped Doing Multisite Church: It's Hard to Lead Locally from a Distance.” Leadership, 36, no. 3 (Summer 2015): 58-59.
Smietana, Bob. “Flip This Church: More Small Churches Are Joining Big Ones In Order To Keep their Doors Open: Can The Multisite Movement Grow Without Treating Congregations As Little More Than Real Estate?” Christianity Today, June 2015, 42-48.
Surratt, Geof. Of Course People Prefer Live Preaching, But Video Venues Work When You Work Them. The Exchange: A Blog by Ed Stetzer, Christianity Today online, December 17, 2013.
Surratt, Geoff, Greg Ligon, and Warren Bird. A Multi-site Church Roadtrip : Exploring the New Normal. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 2009.
Tomberlin, Jim. 125 Tips for MultiSite Churches, MultiSite Solutions. Scottsdale, AZ, 2011.
Tomberlin, Jim, and Tim Cool. Church Locality. Nashville, Tenn.: Rainer Publishing, 2014.
![Ethiopian Churches in Greater Boston [map]](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/57ff1c7ae58c62d6f84ba841/1506113852983-TSLLC1FENTJJGZYIO7MM/orthodox+cross+church.jpeg)
Ethiopian Churches in Greater Boston [map]
Find Ethiopian churches in the greater Boston area.
Ethiopian Churches in Greater Boston [map]
Map of Ethiopian Churches in Greater Boston. Data source: Emmanuel Gospel Center's Boston Church Directory, 2017. Click for interactive map.
Mekane Hiwot St. Michael Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church, Boston, MA
Ethiopian Evangelical Church, Boston, MA.
Boston Ethiopian Christian Fellowship, Cambridge, MA
St. Gabriel WelidetaLemariam Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church, Brookline, MA
![Beyond Church Walls: What Christian Leaders Can Learn from Movement Chaplains [Interview]](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/57ff1c7ae58c62d6f84ba841/1550010291251-EVMN3KQ15A70OBTAD4JQ/movement-chaplaincy_outdoorcitygroup.jpg)
Beyond Church Walls: What Christian Leaders Can Learn from Movement Chaplains [Interview]
People who profess no faith affiliation, often called "nones," as in "none of the above", comprise nearly 23% percent of the U.S.'s adult population. How do we develop meaningful connections with a generation that may never enter a church building? We sat down with anti-racism activist and spiritual director Tracy Bindel to discuss this question.
Beyond Church Walls: What Christian Leaders Can Learn from Movement Chaplains [Interview]
by Stacie Mickelson, Director of Applied Research & Consulting
People who profess no faith affiliation, often called "nones”—as in "none of the above"—comprise nearly 23% percent of the U.S.'s adult population. How do we develop meaningful connections with a generation that might never enter a church building? We sat down with anti-racism activist and spiritual director Tracy Bindel to discuss this question.
“How do we develop meaningful connections with a generation that might never enter a church building?”
SM: Can you tell me a little bit about yourself – what you do with your time?
TB: I spend a lot of time bolstering and equipping social justice activists in the Boston area and beyond. I do that through Lenten spiritual direction, and I also run Circles (supportive contemplation-action groups) mostly for young people—Millennials who are engaged in some sort of justice work in the world.
SM: You use the term ‘Nones’. Can you explain what that is?
TB: It seems to be a word that is quite popular among faithful Millennials. There’s a group of people who are deeply spiritual and longing for deep and faithful community, and they aren’t willing to be affiliated with large institutional religions.
SM: What is Movement Chaplaincy?
TB: It’s an emergent field. It’s somewhere at the intersection of the multi-faith chaplaincy that you would see in a university and the traditional chaplaincy like in hospitals. It recognizes that people are in the world doing work together and need support—and more dynamic support—to do this work for the long haul.
At SURJ Boston, when we have meetings, between 3 to 500 people show up. When you have five hundred people anywhere, you need all kinds of support, you don’t just need programming. Conflicts come up. Interpersonal stuff comes up. People don’t know how to navigate bigger questions on race, privilege, etc. Those are actually spiritual questions.
“[Movement Chaplaincy is] somewhere at the intersection of the multi-faith chaplaincy (that you would see in a university) and traditional chaplaincy (like in hospitals).”
There are a lot of deeply faithful people thinking about, How do we actually shepherd this movement towards health and wellness, as we seek to dismantle systems of injustice?
SM: Are there places for churches to engage in movement chaplaincy?
TB: I think there’s a huge need for churches to follow the leadership of people in movement building work right now. But there’s hesitancy I see.
I don’t have a lot of criticism of the church. But I think we could be doing more if we would trust that the Spirit is working outside of our walls, and that it’s okay for us to wander out and not be afraid of what could happen. I think the hesitancy I see mostly has to do with fear of “those people”—a separation between spiritual and secular people, which I don’t believe really exists.
TIPS FROM THE FRONT LINES
If you’re interested in learning more about engaging ‘nones’ or getting involved in anti-racism work, Tracy has some practical tips for you:
1. Learn New Spiritual Language.
Listen to the podcast “On Being”, which brings together intersections in spirituality. It will give you the language to access people outside of the spiritual language that you currently have.
2. Check Your Fear.
Consider what you internally fear in people who don’t have the same values and faith that you do, because God is not afraid of that. Ask yourself: How much of my discomfort is just language translation? Where do I need to learn how to speak a different language to reach and connect genuinely with these people? And where do I fear our differences in values?
3. Support & Learn from Those Doing Frontline Ministry in the 21st Century.
I think most people in the United States know it’s bad to be racist. But most people don't actually know what it means to live into a practice of anti-racism. Go and find the people who do. I guarantee there are people in your community who are trying, whether that’s through meditation or policy work or legislation. There are different ways people are committed to practicing that value. Go and learn from them—that is applied spirituality.
4. Look For God Already at Work.
If we were to pose the question as, “What do you know about God?” rather than, “Do you know him or not?”, we would enter into a much more dynamic conversation. I just like to put on my curious exploration hat and say, “I wonder where God might be at this meeting? Maybe I’ll go see.”
5. Invest in Church-Based Community Organizers.
Anti-racism work is deeply spiritual. But there are thousands of people outside church walls who are also talking about it, and churches need to be in relationship with them—we need to be more coordinated and connected. Will your congregation support someone to spend dedicated hours each week coordinating with other parts of the movement to do this work well? My really big hope is for churches to hire community organizers to connect and organize congregations around these social issues.
Take Action
TRACY BINDEL
Tracy is an anti-racism activist and spiritual director who describes her work as Movement Chaplaincy, an emergent stream of chaplaincy that supports activists and social justice movement builders. She is a co-founder of Freedom Beyond Whiteness, a nationwide network of contemplative action circles, and she works locally with the Boston chapter of Showing Up for Racial Justice (SURJ), a network of 3500+ people that is comprised of many small issue-based working groups.
How Are We Doing?
High-Rise Gospel Presence: A Case for Neighborhood Chaplains
Neighborhood Chaplaincy is an innovative approach to ministering the love of Jesus in emerging communities. Steve Daman makes the case for how Boston would benefit from neighborhood chaplains.
High-Rise Gospel Presence: A Case for Neighborhood Chaplains
By Steve Daman
In recent blogs, we’ve been talking about Boston’s soon coming population increase and asking how the Church might prepare for that growth. Will some of Boston’s 575 existing churches rise to the challenge and create relational pathways to serve the many new neighborhoods being planned and built in Boston?
We hope they will, and that church planters will pioneer new congregations among Boston’s newest residents. But can we do more? Might there be other ways to bring the love of Jesus into brand new communities?
Asking the Right Questions
Dr. Mark Yoon, Chaplain at Boston University and former EGC Board Chairman, starts with a question, not an answer. “The first question that comes to my mind is: who are the people moving into these planned communities? Why are they moving there? What are the driving factors?”
According to Dr. Yoon, thoughtful community assessment would be the obvious starting point. To launch any new outreach into these neighborhoods will require “serious time and effort to get this right,” he says. “Getting this right” will likely require innovative solutions.
Let’s assume, for example, that a community analysis shows that many of Boston’s newest residents are young, urban professionals. Dr. Paul Grogen, President & CEO of the Boston Foundation, noted recently, “Boston is a haven for young, highly educated people. Boston has the highest concentration of 20-to-34-year-olds of any large city in America, and 65 percent of Boston’s young adults have a bachelor’s degree or higher”, compared with 36 percent nationally.
If the people moving into these new communities are affluent, educated young people, it is likely that many may be what statisticians are calling nones or dones.
Nones are people who self-identify as atheists or agnostics, as well as those who say their religion is “nothing in particular.” Pew Research finds nones now make up 23% of U.S. adults, up from 16% in 2007.
Sociologist Josh Packard defines dones as “people who are disillusioned with church. Though they were committed to the church for years—often as lay leaders—they no longer attend,” he says. “Whether because they’re dissatisfied with the structure, social message, or politics of the institutional church, they’ve decided they are better off without organized religion.”
Adopting New Church-Planting Models
It would seem likely that the dones and nones won’t be looking for a church in Boston—at least not the kind of church they have rejected.
“To make inroads into these communities,” Dr. Yoon continues, “one’s gospel/missional perspective will be paramount. Most of our church leaders have old church-planting models that focus on certain attractions they roll out.”
What will be required instead, he says, is a church-planting model “built on vulnerability and surrender, and skill on how to engage, and prayer.” This combination, he feels, although essential for the task, will be “a rare find!”
What, then, might be some non-traditional ideas for establishing a compelling Gospel presence in a brand new, affluent, high-rise neighborhood?
Neighborhood Chaplaincy
What if Christians embed “neighborhood chaplaincies” into emerging communities? Rather than starting with a church, could we start with a brick-and-mortar service center, positioned to help and serve and love in the name of Jesus Christ?
Imagine a church, or a collaborative of churches, sending certified chaplains into new communities to extend grace and life in nontraditional ways to new, young and/or affluent Bostonians. Could this be a way to implant a compelling Gospel presence among this population?
Picture a storefront in sparkling, new retail space—a bright, colorful, inviting and safe space where residents in the same building complex might make first-contact. I envision a go-to place for any question about life or spirit, healing or wholeness, a place where there is no wrong question, where Spirit-filled Christians are ready to listen and offer effective help.
The neighborhood chaplaincy office may serve as a non-denominational pastoral counseling center, offer exploratory Bible classes, and sponsor community-building events. As with workplace chaplains, neighborhood chaplains may serve as spiritually aware social workers, advising residents about such issues as divorce, illness, employment concerns, and such. They may be asked to conduct weddings or funerals for residents. As passionate networkers, they would serve residents by pointing them to local churches, agencies, medical services, and the like.
Community Chaplain Services (CCS) in Ohio provides one intriguing ministry model. According to their website, CCS “is designed to offer assistance to those in need, serving the spiritual, emotional, physical, social needs of individuals, families, businesses, corporations, schools, and groups in the community.” This ministry grew from a community-based café ministry into a full-service educational resource and pastoral service provider.
Other than this one example, a quick web survey uncovers little else. Given the ongoing worldwide trend toward increased urbanization, coupled with the biblical mandate to make disciples of all nations, including the urbanized communities, the lack of neighborhood chaplaincy models is surprising. One would think the idea of embedded chaplaincy among the affluent would have taken root by now.
CURRENT Chaplaincy Models
Certainly, the core idea of chaplaincy has been around a long time and has seen various expressions around the world. One can find chaplaincy venues such as workplace and corporate, hospitals and institutions, prison, military, public safety (serving first responders), recovery ministry chaplains, and more.
Community chaplaincy in high-crime or low-income neighborhoods is also widespread. Here in Boston, the go-to person for this kind of urban community chaplaincy is Rev. Dr. LeSette Wright, the founder of Peaceseekers, a Boston-based ministry working to cultivate partnerships for preventing violence and promoting God’s peace, and a Senior Chaplain with the International Fellowship of Chaplains.
Through Peaceseekers and other partners, Rev. Dr. Wright initiated the Greater Boston Community Chaplaincy Collaborative, which has trained over 100 people to serve as community chaplains. Rev. Dr. Wright says their main work is to be a prevention and response team, “quietly serving in diverse places" to provide spiritual and emotional care among New England communities.
Trained chaplains minister "everywhere from street corners to firehouses to homeless shelters, barber shops, nursing homes, boys’ and girls’ clubs; meeting for spiritual direction with crime victims, lawyers, nurses, police officers, doctors, construction workers, students, children, clergy, etc.”
“We do not have a focus on the affluent or the new high rises,” Rev. Dr. Wright admits. “We do not exclude them, but they have not been a primary focus.”
Who Will Pay For It?
Rev. Dr. Wright says that the biggest challenge she has faced establishing a network of community chaplains in Boston is funding. Some churches and denominations have provided missionary funding for chaplains. She says the interest and openness from the community for this initiative is high, and “with additional funding and administrative support in managing this effort we will continue to grow as a chaplaincy collaborative.”
If Boston were to plant neighborhood chaplaincy programs in new, emerging, affluent districts, funding would still be an issue.
Rev. Renee Roederer, a community chaplain with the Presbyterian Church in Ann Arbor, Michigan, has been writing about this kind of outreach, asking the same questions. “What if we could call people to serve as chaplains for particular towns and neighborhoods, organizing spiritual life and community connections in uncharted ways?” she writes. “Who will pay for it?”
Rev. Roederer further considers, “What would be needed, and what obstacles would have to be cleared, in order to create such roles? What if some of our seminarians could serve in this way upon graduation?”
“I’m a realist, knowing it would take a lot of financial support and creativity to form these kinds of roles,” she says, “but the shifts we're seeing in spiritual demographics are already necessitating them.”
TAKE ACTION
Attend a Discussion Group
Are you interested in joining a follow-up discussion with other Christian leaders on the potential for Neighborhood Chaplaincy in Boston?
Go Deeper
We have more questions than answers! Check out the questions we're asking as we consider fostering a Neighborhood Chaplaincy movement in Boston.
Learn More
WHAT DID YOU THINK?
From the Bible Belt to Boston: What God's Doing in New England
Are you ministering in a spiritual desert? In a recent study, Boston was ranked one of the most “Post-Christian” cities in the U.S. Kathryn Hamilton, an EGC communications intern from West Texas, weighs in about her experience with Boston’s spiritual climate and Christian vitality.
From the Bible Belt to Boston: How God’s Moving in New England
by Kathryn Hamilton
Do the numbers lie?
In the most recent “post-Christian” study by Barna Group, a research organization focused on the intersection of faith and culture, Boston ranked 2nd among “The Most Post-Christian Cities in America: 2017.” In fact, eight out of the top 10 are located in the Northeast, five of which are located in New England.
To qualify as “post-Christian” for Barna’s study, individuals had to meet nine or more of Barna’s 16 criteria that indicate “a lack of Christian identity, belief and practice, including, individuals who identify as atheist, have never made a commitment to Jesus, have not attended church in the last year or have not read the Bible in the last week.”
https://www.barna.com/research/post-christian-cities-america-2017/
As I reflect on my two months interning for EGC and prepare to return home to my “Bible-Belt” town in West Texas, I find myself a bit baffled, as my experience has been far from spiritually dry and Godless.
“Saying you’re a Christian in Boston is weighty. There is no cultural norm influencing your religious affiliation. ”
Knowing the Lord was calling me to Boston, it was seeing numbers Barna posted in 2015 that sparked my initial interest – that Boston ranked 4th among the top dechurched cities. However, as I settled into my temporary home in Cambridge and plugged into a local church there, I was in awe of how “Christian” the Christians in the Boston area were.
Cultural Christianity is prominent in my region of Texas. You grow up “Christian,” go to church on a regular basis (or at least on Christian holidays) and hold to what you consider “good Christian morals.” You hear the Gospel preached so much that the meaning numbs and you fall prey to the comfort and ease of day-to-day life.
Let me disclaim, this is a broad generalization. I'm where I am spiritually because of devoted and loving Christian parents and mentors that demonstrated the hands and feet of Jesus. I generalize the culture of the Bible Belt to make the point that saying you’re a Christian in Texas and saying you’re a Christian in Boston can reveal starkly different fruit. Saying you’re a Christian in Boston is weighty. There is no cultural norm influencing your religious affiliation. You’re a Christian because you choose to follow and live for Jesus.
The Christian community that I have found here in Boston is unlike anything I’ve seen or experienced before. The community seen in the early church of Acts is still alive, and, from my experience, flourishing. It’s small but strong.
They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common. They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.
Acts 2:42-47 has been my Boston.
Where I thought there was going to be nothing but pluralistic, moral relative doctrine, I have found sound, Gospel-oriented teaching. Where I expected to see scattered believers, I have seen great unity. Where I knew social injustices and needs to be present, I saw the church on the front lines. Where I expected to be a lone believer and disheartened by the lack of believers, I’ve been the one nurtured and influenced.
“Where I expected to see scattered believers, I have seen great unity. Where I knew social injustices and needs to be present, I saw the church on the front lines.”
So if Boston Christian community is anything like the early church, the Lord is going to “add to their number daily” those who are being saved.
I’m sure that Barna’s numbers are accurate, and that Boston is in fact one of the most post-Christian cities in America. But as church planters who come to Boston because of that number partner with and learn from the Christian vitality already here, the fruits of both their labors are multiplying.
Seeds are being sown on good soil in Boston, and a revival is growing roots.
RESPOND
Are you from the Bible Belt? Do you agree? Disagree? Have a different experience? I'd love to hear from you!
Are you interested in internships with EGC? We have volunteers, interns, associates, and fellows working with us each semester.
About the Author
Kathryn Hamilton is a Summer 2017 Communications BETA at EGC. She graduates in 2018 with an Advertising and Public Relations major from Abilene Christian University. Growing up in the church in Dallas and Abilene, TX, she developed a heart for missions among unreached people groups. After graduation, she plans to work in the non-profit sector or with corporate social responsibility. In Boston, she has enjoyed the diverse culture, the "T", lots and lots of J.P. Licks and, of course, the people.
![God Met Me in Boston [Interview]](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/57ff1c7ae58c62d6f84ba841/1529427271630-4CUDW0ICCL9D8IQ4SV4I/Ruth+%26+Cherchaela+2.jpg)
![[Video] The Power of Story: Defying the 'Godless New England' Narrative](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/57ff1c7ae58c62d6f84ba841/1521656472413-O4GQ2EDB7BBZW7QYAYX3/Stacie+Caleb+GO.jpg)
What's Next: My 5 Dreams For Church Planting in Boston
Rev. Ralph Kee, animator of the Greater Boston Church Planting Collaborative, has been giving a lot of thought to this idea: What may be the Church’s dreams for Boston for the next few decades? What should be the Church’s priorities? Where are the Church’s growth edges? In this article, Ralph offers his own five basic ideas, his five dreams about church planting for Boston’s future.
What’s Next: My 5 Dreams for Church Planting in Boston
by Rev. Ralph Kee, Animator, Greater Boston Church Planting Collaborative
Where are we headed as the Church in Boston? What might be some goals, dreams, and potential growth points for the Body of Christ in Boston over the next several decades?
As I’ve engaged with the Boston 2030 initiative, I’ve been giving a lot of thought to what it means for Christians in the next several decades. Here are my dreams about Boston’s church planting future:
Dream #1: Holistic Churches Multiplying Churches
I see Boston filled with Gospel-permeated, holistic churches.
By holistic churches, I mean those that serve the city with the whole Gospel by ministering to the whole person. I think that’s what God dreams and wants for Boston, because that’s what he wants for all his created people. Paul writes, “God has made known to us the mystery of his will,” and his will is “to bring all things together in Christ, both things in the heavens and things on the earth.” (Eph. 1:9,10)
Boston is staged to grow. I moved to a Boston of 641,000 in 1971. By Boston’s 400th birthday in 2030, the population is expected to jump to 724,000 or more. In light of this growth, we at the Greater Boston Church Planting Collaborative have been asking two key questions:
1. Where will these new Bostonians live? Whole new neighborhoods are underway to house several thousand people each, all within Boston’s city limits.
Learn More: Where to Plant a Church in Boston: Areas of Growth
2. Where will these new Bostonians go to church? Will the Church be ready? Who will lead the way to envision new expressions of Church for new Bostonians? The apostolic task of the Church, a leading task from Ephesians 4:11, is to multiply communities of faith—churches multiplying churches. Let’s do it!
Learn More: Multiplying Churches in Boston Now
Dream #2. Both Gentrifiers and Born-Bostonians Playing a Part
I see Gospel-entrenched gentrifiers and neighborhood-based Christian activists together salting the city.
Boston is becoming more and more gentrified. Researchers spot gentrification where census tracts show increases in both home values and in the percentage of adults with bachelor’s degrees. I’ve had to come to terms with the fact that in the neighborhood where I’ve lived for 46 years, I too, am a gentrifier.
Today, gentrifiers include young Christian professionals moving into older neighborhoods all over the city to be salt and light, to love their neighbors, to do Jesus-style thinking and living in that neighborhood. These folks can be “entrenched gentrifiers,” incoming residents who, in their own minds and hearts, want to appreciate and have purposeful “attachment to the local meanings, heritage, history and people” they are now living near.
For example, intentional Christian communities—where several families or singles live together in shared commitment to each other and to their neighbors—are flourishing.
Boston’s "Gospel-entrenched gentrifiers", as I call them, are not pioneers, but reinforcements. They join embedded Kingdom builders—second-, third-, and many-generation Bostonians—Christ-followers who are dreaming big dreams for their neighborhoods.
“Boston’s Gospel-entrenched gentrifiers, as I call them, are not pioneers, but reinforcements.”
One such Kingdom builder is Caleb McCoy, a fourth-generation Dorchester resident and EGC’s Development Manager. Caleb has a homegrown knowledge of and love for the city. He says, “I believe my role in the church is to help make the Gospel relevant and personal to people that may not feel that God’s plan applies to them.”
Caleb’s vision is to use his musical and communications gifts to inspire “a revival of young and middle-aged adults, joined together, exemplifying the Gospel through preaching and the arts.”
I am excited about Caleb’s vision. I have a dream that such neighborhood-based Christian activism will be the engine to drive effective ministry today and tomorrow.
Dream #3. Relevant, Hands-On Ministry of Reconciliation
I see today’s Boston’s Kingdom citizens reconnecting what has been severed by sin.
I am dreaming that Boston’s visionary, prophetic Christians will, with God-inspired imagination, help build new communities of faith. These newly imagined churches will demonstrate the Kingdom of God in today’s urban context.
The prophetic task, as I see it, is to cast a vision for a redeemed creation. Empowered by the Spirit of God, today’s prophets can work to reconnect what was disconnected by sin.
When sin entered the world, it entered the whole world—not just the human heart, but the very heart of the created order. Original sin instantly caused four original schisms, (Learn More: The Prophetic Task):
humanity separated from God
humanity separated from the created order
man separated from woman
people separated from people
What is to be done about these painful schisms? Thankfully, they are all resolved in Christ, as we the Church fulfill the prophetic task! We proclaim the Kingdom of God, and partner with God in his work of connecting, redeeming, healing, and bringing Kingdom-of-God life and peace to every facet of Boston.
Consider the refugees coming to Boston today. What will they find? Will they experience more schism in their torn lives? Or will some neighborhood church in Boston welcome them, embrace them as valued people loved by God, and begin to effectively reverse the curse of schisms in their lives by loving them well? (Learn more: Greater Boston Refugee Ministry).
And if some Boston residents were to observe Christians living in their neighborhood, reversing the curses of the four schisms, would these observers not be more ready to listen to the spoken Gospel message?
Dream #4: The Good News Proclaimed in Boston’s Heart Languages
I believe God is calling evangelists to speak the Gospel in the languages of Boston.
I want to see Boston gifted with many evangelists, men and women who can speak and live out the Gospel in the languages of Boston’s old-timers, of second- and third-generation Southies, or Townies, or Dorchesterites. Who will speak the Gospel to:
the retired men of South Boston who hang at the coffee shop every day?
the women who gather at Ramirez Grocery or Rossi Market?
the generations of men and boys who gather at the corner barbershop?
the freshmen or grad students at BU or BC or MIT?
those who speak the 100+ languages of newcomers arriving from the four corners of the earth?
We know the Gospel is two handed: word and deed. We need to do both: preach the Word and do the Gospel.
Today particularly, we need to be careful not to focus only on meeting basic needs and neglect preaching. One follows the other. After neighborhoods see the Gospel in action, I think they will be more ready to have someone fully explain it to them and invite them to believe in Jesus themselves. Show and tell.
Who of those already living in Boston are called to evangelistic preaching in Boston specifically? Who yearns to spend their lives preaching the Gospel in Boston? Do you?
In Romans, Paul asked, “And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? And how can anyone preach unless they are sent? As it is written: ‘How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!’” (Rom. 10:14,15)
Dream #5. Church Planters Collaborating Closely
I want to see church planters in Boston thinking of themselves as players on a Boston-wide team.
The Greater Boston Church Planting Collaborative started gathering in 2000, and we chose the word “collaborative” intentionally. In the Book of Acts, the story of early church planting, we see nothing but collaborative ministry efforts. One church, one basic team, one overarching goal everyone shared and worked toward—that’s the Acts of the Apostles.
Collaboration is basic to church planting—and so it should be in Boston. I want to see Boston’s church planters meeting face to face, setting shared goals, being mutually accountable and passionately focused.
I imagine church planters setting Boston-wide church-growth and church-planting goals collaboratively. I envision shared strategies to cover ground and to plan over time—setting 6-month, 12-month, 2-year, and 15-year goals.
“How long will it take you to build the wall, Nehemiah?” King Artaxerxes asked (Neh 2:6). Nehemiah, a slave in a foreign land under a tyrant, was the last person in a position to guarantee any purpose-driven time goals. But he did tell Artaxerxes a time goal, because he had to. And they met it—the collaboration of faithful residents working side by side in Jerusalem finished the wall in fifty-two days!
Let’s collaborate, set some prayerful goals, and see the work get done!
To see the full-length article, click here: I’m Dreaming About Boston’s Future—Are You?
TAKE ACTION
So those are my five big church planting dreams for Boston. What do you think? Are you dreaming with me? Dream big! When we get some more ideas, we’ll share them in a future post. Send me an email—I would love to hear from you.
Are you a church planter? I invite you to join us at the Greater Boston Church Planting Collaborative!
Ralph Kee came to Boston in 1971 to help plant a church emerging out of the Emmanuel Gospel Center’s neighborhood outreach. Starting churches became his clear, lifelong calling. He has since been involved in launching or revitalizing dozens of churches in and around Boston. In 2000, Ralph started the Greater Boston Church Planting Collaborative, a peer mentoring fellowship to encourage and equip church planters. Today he spends time mentoring church planters, mostly one-on-one, usually over coffee.
![Biblical Theology Of Leadership [Resource List]](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/57ff1c7ae58c62d6f84ba841/1503082312592-NX21D7QBK2IYCYEPM32I/pexels-church_Theology.jpg)
Tips for Developing Church Leadership
Starting a new church, but short on leaders? A few years ago, we interviewed a number of Greater Boston’s church planters to ask how they were developing new leaders for their churches. Here are some of their tips for raising new leaders.
Tips for Developing Church Leadership
by Rudy Mitchell and Steve Daman
Starting a new church, but short on leaders?
A few years ago, we interviewed a number of Greater Boston’s church planters to ask how they were developing new leaders for their churches. Here are some of their tips for raising new leaders.
1. Pray first. While you might be thinking you need people with particular skills, what you really need are people with spiritual maturity and Christ-like character. These foundational qualities take time to develop and time to discern. Lining up leadership should not be rushed. Do what Jesus did before he chose his team. Get up on the mountain and pray.
2. Examine and test. You don’t want to rush into appointing someone as a leader until you have thoughtfully and prayerfully assessed their potential and discovered their passion. To get there, you’ll need sufficient face time to begin to listen to their hearts.
- Motives: Ask them to tell you their story about their calling to serve Christ and his church, and see if you can discern their motives for accepting a leadership role.
- Beliefs: Are their beliefs sound and consistent with Scripture and with the church’s vision?
- Character: Are they teachable? Faithful? Humble? Do they love Jesus?
- Skills: Talk openly about the candidate’s strengths and potentials, but also weaknesses and limits. (You might go first in this one.)
- Vision: Ask them about their vision for the position and brainstorm together what it might look like for them to take leadership over a particular ministry. See how that conversation goes.
Don’t be afraid or embarrassed to implement this type of assessment as it may save both you and the candidate much pain and difficulty if, in fact, it turns out they are not the right person for the job. For scriptural precedent on testing, read 2 Corinthians 13.
3. Make disciples. Developing leaders can look exactly like making disciples.
- Replicate yourself: Move beyond the rigid supervisor/supervisee relationship and consider that your goal is to replicate yourself, to pass the torch to others who can learn to do the work even better than you do.
- Spend time together: Training, discipling and mentoring require that you and the emerging leader spend time together and become part of each other’s lives in a deep and meaningful way.
- Lean in: Lean in to the relational aspect of leadership development. Make yourself available. Listen well. From listening will grow understanding, spontaneous prayer, love, and maturity.
- Huddle up: Add a regular Bible study time with your mentee with an eye toward applying what you learn reflecting on Scripture to ministry and life situations. This kind of intentional discipling can be one-on-one or in small huddles of three or more.
- Grow yourself: With humility, remember that iron sharpens iron, and through this relationship, you’ll be changing and growing, too.
4. Learn together. Add to the essential, relational side of leadership development some formal training and exploration. Look for opportunities to gain knowledge and insight together.
- Create training opportunities: Learning can happen in regular leadership meetings, special training sessions, or on retreats. Listening, vision casting, and discussion can all help.
- Pick resources: Choose books or articles, and maybe online resources or video series that your team can study and discuss.
- Flex scheduling: If team members seem too busy or have conflicting schedules, you might be able to provide some training through virtual online meetings, one-on-one or in groups.
- Back to school: See what’s available at local Christian colleges, Bible institutes, and seminaries. Encourage your emerging leaders to pursue and gain academic credentials along with practical knowledge. The learning and the credentials may open doors for them for even more effective ministry.
5. Do and reflect. When it comes to raising up leaders, nothing can substitute for hands-on-experience and on-the-job training. Perhaps your church or ministry can offer internships, residency, or apprenticeship training. In the same way that Jesus’ disciples watched and followed, listened and asked questions, and then were sent out, follow that pattern.
- Show and send: After instruction in and modeling specific skills in real life ministry with your mentees along for the ride, start delegating responsibilities and monitor how it goes. Let them lead a small group, or teach a lesson, or get out and get dirty serving.
- Reflect and send again: Observe, supervise, and coach. Give feedback. Reflect together what happened. Pray together. Send them out again.
A couple final hints:
- Articulate roles and responsibilities: Make sure the new leaders can articulate back to you their responsibilities and what they are accountable for so that your expectations and theirs are always in sync.
- Shepherd their hearts: Periodically discern if the leaders find joy and fulfillment not only in doing the work of ministry, but in learning to do it better.
SOURCE: In 2014, the Emmanuel Gospel Center’s Applied Research team completed 41 in-depth interviews with Boston area church planters of various denominations, ethnic groups, and church planting networks. This article was derived largely from responses given by these church planters regarding their own practice and view of leadership development, with added insights from the EGC Applied Research team.
TAKE ACTION
Connect with church planters: Visit the Greater Boston Church Planting Collaborative.
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