Forming Reconciling Leaders in a Fractured World
These are challenging times: the division, hostility, and violence seem to be unraveling the fabric of our nation. It is tempting to retreat into our in-groups, blame our enemies, or imagine peace as “my side” prevailing. We lament that the Church, too, has too often mirrored the culture of hostility, division, and hatred rather than the fruits of the spirit of love, joy, peace, patience, and kindness. The Body of Christ is called to something more: to show the world how God is gathering all people into a new humanity and beloved community, in alignment with Jesus’ prayer “that they would be one.”
The UniteBoston team has been developing the Beloved Community Lab, a curriculum to disciple leaders in holistic spiritual formation—loving God and neighbor, and living this love out in tangible ways, through belovedness, diversity, reconciliation, justice, and shalom.
We have sixteen incredible local pastors as part of our pilot cohort – Click below to read more about them, what we’re learning together, and how you can join in our journey.
A few years ago, a team of diverse Christian leaders in Boston began asking:
What kind of discipleship forms leaders who can embody God’s call to oneness in our divided world?
How can we live as witnesses to the reconciling love of Christ, while honoring our deepest convictions?
In 2023, we gathered a cohort of twelve local pastoral leaders and began to meet monthly to hear them share their stories of both unity and disunity in the church. We began to realize that the path to unity runs through our differences, not around them. Shallow “kumbaya” togetherness isn’t enough; God calls us to a deeper accompaniment where we bring our full selves to the table and seek one another’s good in costly solidarity.
We also began to see that leaning into Jesus’ dream for our oneness is deep, hard work of tending to the wounds that have fractured Christ’s body. From this conviction, five key themes emerged as the building blocks of our curriculum: belovedness, diversity, reconciliation, justice, and shalom.
In 2024, a diverse team of local pastors began to sketch out lesson plans which became our Beloved Community Lab—a yearlong journey for Christian leaders to learn and practice unity, justice, and reconciliation in their own contexts. You can read more about how God transformed them on this journey here. We call it a “lab” because it’s both theological and practical: a space to experiment, reflect, and grow as peacemakers who embody the way of Jesus in our polarized time.
The Beloved Community Lab combines Scripture, theology, and practice through twelve interactive sessions that integrate heart, head, and hands. Participants engage case studies, small group discussion, and spiritual disciplines as we seek to grow in the reconciling, peacemaking Way of Jesus.
This fall, we are excited to share about the next stage in our journey: piloting our cohort curriculum. We’re honored to have sixteen incredible local pastors which will be meeting for twelve sessions and a closing retreat from September 2025 to June 2026! We are so grateful for their presence and participation in this journey!
- Rev. Dr. John Ames – Senior Pastor at First Baptist Church of Norwood, Regional Director of SEND Relief (Reformed Baptist)
- Rev. Dr. Michael Balboni – Pastoral team at Restoration Fellowship (Evangelical)
- Jeff Bass – Vice chair of stewards at New Roots AME; former Executive Director at the Emmanuel Gospel Center (Evangelical/Ecumenical)
- Rev. Rocklyn E. Clarke – Pastor of Life Church Boston (Evangelical/Pentecostal)
- Rev. Valerie Copeland – Pastor of Neighborhood Church of Dorchester (Non-Denominational)
- Rev. Gina Tillotson-Cordy – Pastor of Lynn First Church of the Nazarene (Nazarene)
- Rev. Dr. Gregg Detwiler – Founding Director of the Intercultural Ministries Program at the Emmanuel Gospel Center (Assemblies of God)
- Rev. Dr. Kazimiera Fraley (Kaza) – Pastor of First Church of the Nazarene of Cambridge (Nazarene)
- Rev. Kat Hampson – Pastor of Riverwalk Church (Evangelical Covenant Church)
- Dr. Michael James – Faculty and Resident Minister at Boston College; participant in the Boston Focolare Community (Catholic)
- Rev. Jihyon (Sophia) Kim – Youth Pastor, First Korean Church of Cambridge (Non-denominational Korean)
- Rev. Dr. Daniel Montañez – Executive Director of the Center for Public Theology & Migration (Pentecostal)
- Rev. Christina Rathbone – Executive Director of Common Cathedral (Episcopal)
- Rev. Reggie Smalls – Pastor of Bethel Pentecostal Church (Pentecostal)
- Rev. Mariama White-Hammond – Pastor of New Roots AME (African Methodist Episcopal)
- Rev. Cindy Worthington-Berry – Pastor of First Congregational Church of Natick (United Church of Christ)
Through these sessions, our hope is that participants will be shaped into reconciling leaders who foster beloved community by:
- Embracing deep unity rooted in the imago Dei, upholding the dignity and belovedness of all people.
- Applying a holistic theological framework—using Scripture, Tradition, Reason, and Experience—to strengthen their relationship with Jesus Christ.
- Discerning the Way of Jesus in complex situations through “litmus test” questions and wisdom from diverse theological streams.
- Clarifying theological commitments through a “Truth 101” framework that distinguishes creeds, doctrines, and convictions.
- Cultivating Christlike character and self-awareness, transforming righteous hubris into humble curiosity.
- Practicing listening and managing triggers when engaging those from different perspectives.
- Navigating conflict constructively, distinguishing between types of conflict and applying tools to love people well across divides.
A Vision of the Beloved Community
We’ve learned that engaging well across lines of difference can be incredibly challenging! Yet the Beloved Community Lab points toward a vision of the Church as a living signpost of God’s shalom—where love, justice, and unity coexist.
We envision:
- Leaders equipped as reconcilers, grounded in Scripture and able to lead with humility and courage.
- Congregations reflecting beloved community, engaging hard conversations with grace and becoming places of healing and transformation.
- A wider Church culture known not for its division, but for loving like Jesus and embodying God’s reconciling power in the world.
The Beloved Community Lab is more than a curriculum—it is an experiment in Christian unity. Together, we are learning what it means not just to talk about reconciliation, but to live it.
As one participant described, “This is not just another leadership program—it’s a way of following Jesus that meets this moment: a way that leans into difference without fear, faces conflict with grace, and embodies love across every line that seeks to divide us.”
Free Resource!
We are refining and editing the curriculum this year and will be publicly releasing dimensions of our curriculum in summer 2026! For now, we wanted to share this Belovedness Daily Practice, built around the concept of: “I am beloved. You are beloved. We are beloved.“
This resource grounds us in the practice of agápē—seeing every person as a beloved image-bearer of God. It introduces a framework of belovedness between God, neighbor, and self, identifies barriers such as distorted views of God and dehumanization of others, and offers practical spiritual exercises to “rehumanize” relationships—including humble curiosity, centering marginalized voices, and loving even those we perceive as enemies. Through daily prayers, news-engagement practices, and a shared litany rooted in the fruit of the Spirit, this guide calls believers to live out a visible, countercultural Christian witness of justice, unity, and peace as members of one Body in Christ.
PRAY WITH US: We’d be honored to have your partnership in prayer:
- Pray for each participant in the Beloved Community Lab, that it would be a space of trust and nurture for God to build deep friendships across cultural, racial, and theological lines
- Pray for wisdom as we discern the specific concepts and practices to focus each session
- Pray that this work would bear lasting fruit in Boston and beyond, drawing us all closer to God’s dream of a reconciled and beloved community, that Christians would be known by our love (Jn 13:35)
Thanks for being part of this journey with us! We are grateful for your participation in the UB community through participation, finances, and prayer. It’s truly an honor to see God’s work in us unfold, as together we seek the shalom of our beloved city.