Today, we want to feature the “Codman Square, Can We Talk?” program. This program was established as a replication of “Can We Talk?” which originated at Roxbury Presbyterian Church. UB’s Communications Administrator Percy Ballah had the chance to attend a session and interview some of the leaders involved – Read below to learn about how faith leaders in Codman Square are collaborating to provide a safe space to support their neighbors who have been impacted by trauma.  

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Imagine logging into a zoom room and immediately being greeted by a diverse group of smiling faces with smooth jazz music echoing through your speakers. Seconds into the virtual gathering, a friendly host greets the group with a warm welcome, “Hi everyone. Welcome; we will be starting this session in five minutes. We are glad you can join us tonight!” She encourages the audience to “enjoy the soul music and get your vibe right.” She is speaking to everyone, but the welcoming tone in her voice makes you feel like she is addressing you directly. 

If it’s your first time, you may feel anxious because you will notice unfamiliar names and faces in the zoom room. Yet, the first impression you receive immediately makes you feel connected to this virtual family of strangers. Then, a few minutes later, the friendly host speaks again, “Welcome again – we are going to start in just a moment. We are so glad you are here.” Now pause; before you continue reading this blog, I want you to guess what this zoom session is about? 

From the description I gave you, you may have imagined the zoom session to be friendly and welcoming to all people. This perception is an accurate description of the positive atmosphere that the community of “Codman Square, Can We Talk?” strives to create at their monthly gatherings. It is “a safe place to share your story and have your voice heard and welcomed. It is a community-based, clinically-supported program that increases awareness and understanding of trauma, offers mental health resources, and a safe environment for what can at times be painful conversations about violence, loss, and everything in between.”

Four years ago, the vision for the “Codman Square, Can We Talk?” sessions was born in response to the increase of violence in Dorchester. Local faith leaders in Codman Square came together to seek God for an intentional strategy to support their neighbors who were grieving and traumatized by tragic experiences. Paul Malkemes, Director of The Boston Project Ministries, Paulea Mooney McCoy, and Maridena Rojas, the Community Engagement Manager, mobilized teams to go door to door. According to Paulea, as they listened intently to their neighbors, “people expressed they needed someone to talk to, someone to tell their story to, and have a conversation with.” This critical feedback informed their decision to seek out a strategic method to support their neighbors. 

In their search, they discovered the model of  “Can We Talk?” used at the Social Impact Center at Roxbury Presbyterian Church (SIC) – a non-profit organization with the mission to create and implement educational and economic development programs to strengthen the Roxbury community. In response to the increase in violence in proximity to Roxbury Presbyterian Church, SIC worked with Partners HealthCare, Brigham Women’s Hospital, and community members to launch The Cory Johnson Program for Post-Traumatic Healing (CJP) in September 2014. It was named after a young church member who was tragically killed in a random shooting in 2010. Due to its proven track record of supporting families, CJP has been replicated in other parts of the country and in Roxbury, Dorchester, and South Boston local neighborhoods. 

As Paulea and the Boston Project team became more familiar with CJP, they partnered with other faith leaders and nonprofits in Codman Square to be trained in facilitating “Can We Talk?” sessions. After two years of preparation, they were confident that 2020 was the best time to replicate this model in their community. The teams working together represented the Emmanuel Gospel Center, Neighborhood Church of Dorchester, Second Church in Dorchester, Life Church Dorchester, Roxbury Presbyterian Church’s Social Impact Center, and Boston Project Ministries. Like many initiatives, their plans were interrupted by a global pandemic – but they were not deterred because they were determined to support families and individuals impacted by trauma. This healing space became even more crucial amidst the trauma that was experienced during the pandemic, especially by communities of color. With the support of CJP, the Codman Square team made adjustments to start remote sessions until it was safe to meet in person. As of right now, they have hosted four “Can We Talk” sessions.  

When I participated in one of their sessions, I was very encouraged. As people courageously stepped out of their comfort zones to share vulnerable stories and listen intently to each other, I felt hope rising within me. As a former Dorchester resident, I vividly remember the heartbroken looks on people’s faces and the outburst of tears at funerals when families lost loved ones to gun violence. I often wrestled with how to best support the families and individuals impacted by these traumatic experiences. At times, I felt helpless while serving the community as a Youth Worker at The Boston Project Ministries and a Youth Minister at Morning Star Baptist Church. It never occurred to me that creating a safe space for people to have vulnerable conversations could be a catalyst towards experiencing inner healing. I now understand that inner healing often happens by cultivating a support system to help people navigate through the pain of grief. 

Through these interviews, I was blessed to witness the powerful team of local faith leaders, churches, and nonprofits intentionally create this safe space. I am confident that God will continue to use this program to have a substantial impact on many people. I look forward to hearing powerful testimonies of inner healing and wholeness emerging out of Codman Square.

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Get involved! The Codman Square “Can We Talk” gatherings would love your help as they launch and expand their ministry. Here’s how you can get involved:

1. Spread the word to neighbors in Codman Square / Dorchester who may have experienced forms of trauma and need a space to share “whatever is on their heart.” Gatherings currently take place on the second Tuesday of each month at 7 pm using this Zoom link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82051403502. For more information, feel free to contact them at cwtcodman@gmail.com or 617-910-0456
2. If you have artistic talents through music, poetry, or dance, you can inquire about possibly volunteering to use your gift at one of the sessions.
3. They would be grateful for your financial support to host the in-person gatherings and provide meals for the community.
4. Please pray for this initiative, as well as the other “Can We Talk” gatherings happening in Roxbury, the South End, and other sites that are being launched.

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² At that time the Lord said to Joshua, “Make flint knives and circumcise the Israelites again.” ³ So Joshua made flint knives and circumcised the Israelites at Gibeath Haaraloth.^{[b] 4} Now this is why he did so: All those who came out of Egypt—all the men of military age—died in the wilderness on the way after leaving Egypt. ⁵ All the people that came out had been circumcised, but all the people born in the wilderness during the journey from Egypt had not. ⁶ The Israelites had moved about in the wilderness forty years until all the men who were of military age when they left Egypt had died, since they had not obeyed the Lord. For the Lord had sworn to them that they would not see the land he had solemnly promised their ancestors to give us, a land flowing with milk and honey. ⁷ So he raised up their sons in their place, and these were the ones Joshua circumcised. They were still uncircumcised because they had not been circumcised on the way. 

Joshua 5:2-7

Rev. Kelly asked me to share a devotional at the recent UB Board meeting, mentioning that, “it would be great to talk about what the Lord is doing in the church at this time . . . .”

Well, I would never try to tell anyone that I know the mind of Jesus for His Church. I do, however, have a sense of what I believe He wants me to understand concerning His purpose in this time. So, with humility I offer the following observations about today’s Scripture reading.

The context is critical, right? Israel has formerly and finally entered the Promised Land. God tells Joshua to circumcise all the males. Why, because all of the men (everyone of military age) that left Egypt have all died in the wilderness. Those who are left were young men not born in Egypt and have not been circumcised.

This is an important part of this message and where I want to focus. They got out of Egypt, but did not get out of the wilderness. An entire generation was marched around the wilderness for 40 years until they keeled over and died. Why? Because of their disobedience. Because they refused, in some cases to leave Egypt behind and, in other cases, to leave the wilderness behind. They got stuck in being who they were and doing what they did. So, when they were all gone, God let Israel cross the Jordan.

Now, we know there were two exceptions; Joshua and Caleb. We know both of these men had a passion for God’s will and God’s promise. We also know that the wilderness experience only made each of them more determined to achieve God’s next level of purpose for them.

I meet with groups of Black pastors every Tuesday. This is one of the highlights of my week. We have been meeting since this pandemic began and it has become a rich fellowship. One of our older pastors –not referencing this passage particularly, but this story generally– stated that Egypt was the way we did “church” before. By that, and I’m using my words not a quote, Egypt is the church defined and limited by a building, a place, a set of rituals, and a group of traditions.  

Egypt is the Church draining of young people and unable to ask them why they have left and are leaving. Egypt is the church declaring its relationship with world that Jesus took on flesh and entered that of “war;” the “culture war;” a relationship where people take sides and battle to the death. Egypt is the church becoming irrelevant to and unable to connect with the World that Jesus died to save.

The pandemic is the wilderness. The disruption of the entire world has made congregations re-think past practices and innovate the delivery of the Gospel, the making of disciples in new ways. I jokingly tell people that it only took my church 215 years to get online. The truth, however, is more sobering. When our very existence depended on it, it took six days. And when we did move to livestream, we saw our attendance shoot up dramatically. We saw members who had moved away “return” to the fellowship. We saw people we never saw before, who never came through our doors, come to our service. This is true for many, many churches.

Now we are in the post-COVID phase. By this, I don’t mean the COVID is over. No, I mean that we are in the midst of this. COVID will be with us for a while to come. It is the new Wilderness. The question is whether we will continue to listen for the Voice and Will of God? Will we continue to innovate and re-imagine ministry? We will continue to try to discern what God is doing now and what He would have us do?

Or will congregations rush back to “what used to be;” to Egypt or to what they’ve grown accustomed to in the wilderness? I hear so many people say, “we can’t wait to get back to the way things were.” I hope we never do. See, we forget that before COVID, churches were closing at rates faster than they were being planted. We forget that many churches were considered irrelevant and/or counterproductive to the issues of the day. Many have forgotten that our churches were destitute of the next generations; young people who did not give up on Christ, just the religion that bears His name.

I think that if we do not take advantage of this opportunity, this grace Jesus has given us to listen, discern, and obey, many congregations will die in this wilderness. Indeed, many have. I believe that if people continue just to see this as an inconvenience to be forgotten, they will have wasted a gift from the Lord, like the Wilderness really was, and will die in disobedience.

I have been saying repeatedly – and I hope it is inspired by God and not just what I’m pulling out of my armpit—that the wilderness experience has two purposes; it is preparation and it is elimination. It prepares people for the next phase of God’s Divine Plan, or it eliminates them as a hindrance to it.

If nothing else, I hope this devotion challenges all of us to really attempt to discern what the will of God is for His people now.

Many people are still feeling the after-shock of the Covid-19 pandemic that forced them into isolation. One of the significant challenges has been the restrictions on physical interaction. While remote gatherings can provide levels of human interaction, many have found that virtual gatherings are not sufficient enough to fill the relational void caused by isolation. It requires an uncanny type of resilience and creative methods to cultivate authentic friendships and develop new relationships. 

In this week’s blog, we are excited to highlight a resilient and creative group of young people from Young Life Boston who have been intentional about developing genuine friendships even through the pandemic. According to Emma Dickinson, the writer of this blog, “this restricted season has limited our ability to host and lead traditional Young Life programs, and for the greater Church, our ability to gather in typical fashion. But it has by no means slowed our collective ability to tell the people of Boston about Jesus through the bonds of friendship.”

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Can I pull back the curtain and tell you what we are talking about in one of our Young Life high school small groups? 

How to be friends. 

I’m not talking about how to form the elusive high school clique. And I’m definitely not talking about how to grow your Instagram followers, a perceived community based on incomplete windows into each other’s lives.  

We are breaking down examples of friendship that we find in Scripture. We are talking about Ruth and Naomi, Mary and Elizabeth, Jesus with John, Peter, and James. We are asking each other hard questions about exclusion, rejection, and selfishness. We are seeing God’s good design for community, how His way is for us to live at peace with one another, by any means possible. (Romans 12:18). 

We are earnestly praying for every high school student in our city – that they would know of the love Jesus has for them.  And we are humbly praying for ourselves – that we could be a bright light amongst the darkness in our schools. 

We don’t believe that the gospel goes out into our communities of young people because of great programs. It’s because of the Holy Spirit. It’s because of the relationships we are building with students. And it’s absolutely because of the relationships we are empowering them to have with others. One leader received a text from a student that read:

“hey. i just wanted to say thank you for inviting me to young life tonight. it’s exactly what i needed.”

This student, we will call her Julie, reached out to one of our Young Life leaders at the beginning of January with an “enough is enough” attitude. She was done doing high school on her own, done with trying to follow Jesus in her own strength. Julie did not ask for more programs and she did not ask for more resources. She asked for friendship. She asked for someone to walk alongside her as she walked toward Jesus again, after a season of waywardness. 

A consequence of the pandemic has surely been further isolation for our young people. Do you want to know what I’m seeing in a culture that prioritizes self-protection and survival over gospel friendships? I am watching young people and the generations that precede them dive deeper into chosen isolation than ever before. While there are many people in Boston in isolated situations by circumstance, there are potentially many more who are simply but profoundly numb from the trauma of the last year. 

This restricted season has limited our ability to host and lead traditional Young Life programs, and for the greater Church, our ability to gather in typical fashion. But it has by no means slowed our collective ability to tell the people of Boston about Jesus through the bonds of friendship. 

We can be encouraged and motivated by what Paul writes in Philippians 1:12, that his difficult circumstances served him in advancing the gospel. Our pandemic chains are no match for the love of God, displayed through the body of Christ, by laying down our lives for our friends (John 15:13).  

Boston, what would it require of us to continue to press in, brush off discouragement and pursue meaningful friendships? What if the revitalization of our gatherings as vaccines roll out and restrictions decrease only matter if we are fully engaged with one another in a Romans 12 kind of way? 

It can be truly messy. It is most always awkward. It will cost you. You will definitely be inconvenienced. But if friendship is God’s design, and we are God’s people, and this is the city He’s asked us to serve – how else would we spend our days? Who else would we want to be? 

I am praying, Boston brothers and sisters, that we’d be known for the way we pursue one another and the “other”. I am praying we’d be a witness to the friendship God has offered us. I am praying the words of Jesus, that we would be one (John 17:22). 

Hey UniteBoston Community! We recently came across this really cool podcast series by Park Street Church in Boston called “Park Street Dialogues.” It features local Christian leaders from Boston who are making an impact in different sectors of the city. In each episode, Pastor Mark Booker hosts a series of conversations with various guests about their work and ministry in the city to highlight how God is at work in the city. The podcast focuses on strengthening the unity of the church and connecting Christians in Boston and beyond. Read more about the podcast in our blog below and listen to it here: www.parkstreet.org/dialogues/.

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By K. Percy Ballah

In my work serving as the Communications Administrator with UniteBoston these past few months, we have been seeking to highlight and elevate the ways that God is at work in our city. I was impressed to see the strong theme of unity and collaboration present within the Park Street Church Dialogue podcast to “connect followers of Jesus in Boston and beyond” so that they can do more together than they can apart. In episode zero, Pastor Booker shares his deep conviction for the Church to function as a unified body. He believes that when the Church expresses unity through collaboration, they tap into a divine power that “demonstrates to the world that Jesus is alive.” According to Pastor Booker, this unity is unique because the Holy Spirit sustains it; it is “a supernatural reality, not just a social phenomenon.”

Throughout the podcast, Pastor Booker has heart-to-heart conversations with a diverse group of local Christian leaders who are making an impact through their churches, non-profits, and parachurch ministries. They discuss various topics ranging from God’s calling to serve in Boston, to racial justice, post-trauma healing, youth ministry, church planting, networking, and much more. Some voices featured on the podcast are Pastor Barry Kang from Symphony Church, Dana Baker from the Boston Trauma Healing Collaborative, Jua Robinson from Boston Collaborative, Reverend David Wright from BMA TenPoint, and Christian and Mary Grant from The Boston Project and Young Life Boston. Their collective voices provide a holistic perspective on how Jesus is working through his diverse body to address the surmounting challenges people face in our city. 

Some of the featured guests on the “Park Street Dialogues” podcast.

Leaning into the honest dialogue between Pastor Booker and his featured guests provides a glimpse into the powerful ways that God is working through the local church in Boston. As the podcast audience listens intently, Pastor Booker hopes that God will speak to their hearts about the active role they are called to play to strengthen the unity of the local Church in Boston. 

If you are a Christian in Boston who is longing to make an impact in your local neighborhood,  I encourage you to check out this podcast. I am confident that you will feel inspired to partner with other Christians in your local community as you learn about the diverse ways God is at work in the city.  The Park Street Dialogues podcast is available on Apple Podcast, Spotify, and Google Podcast. Or, just start by listening here: www.parkstreet.org/dialogues/.

This Thursday was the National Day of Prayer, and we’re honored to feature a blog written by the coordinator of the inaugural UB School of Prayer! Anne Freeman lives in Roslindale and works as a free-lance American Sign Language interpreter. She also serves as Coordinator of New England Deaf & Hard of Hearing Ministry under the umbrella of The American Baptist Churches of Massachusetts. Anne is married and has a teenage daughter. Read below to hear about how prayer can be a powerful tool for nurturing spiritual unity across Christians.

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Prayer is a uniting practice that we as Christians participate in, but due to COVID 19, we’ve had limited opportunities to pray together in person. I was feeling a bit frustrated over the lack of places for us to go deeper in prayer, both in learning about it as well as praying together.  To my knowledge, there were no initiatives that provided both learning and praying with others, so I sensed an invitation from God to take the initiative and see what might be done to go deeper in prayer with Christians throughout the city.

After some conversations and prayer with leaders from my house church, I checked with Rev. Kelly Fassett, team leader for UniteBoston, to see if I could serve under that umbrella to offer both teaching on prayer and prayer itself. She agreed to give me a chance to try something new, and the UniteBoston School of Prayer was born!

Ideas came to mind for what this might look like: sessions that offered teachings on a variety of topics related to prayer from a variety of places in the Body of Christ in the greater Boston area. An opportunity for both lay people and professional clergy to do the teachings.  A format for the participants to pray together, using what they had just learned and in so doing, maturing in their understanding, experience and expression of prayer.  

I also strongly value the mission of UniteBoston, which encourages unity by encouraging us to focus on what we all have in common.  I think praying together and sharing what we’ve learned with each other is a way to pursue God’s dream for unity as we “major on the majors.” Above all, I recognized that the way we grow in prayer is by praying!

I created a flyer and was able to line up six great teachers from a broad spectrum of Christian backgrounds to lead the first six meetings: Joy Niemiera, Doreen Bennett, Pastor Dave Hill, Lorienne Schwenk, Pastor Kathleen Verna, and myself.  We covered our own personal prayer histories, intercessory and contemplative prayer, Lectio Divina, going from duty to delight, praying the Word, and the ACTS acronym.

 In the survey that I sent after the sessions were over, I learned that many appreciated the chance to be part of the meetings and thought it made for greater learning to move out of the circles they normally fellowship in.  They felt enriched in their understanding of the aspects of prayer that were covered, and found what we were doing to be refreshing.  These are exactly the things I was hoping for!

It was truly a pleasure for me to see teachers in action. They told me it was an honor and blessing to get the invitation to lead.  I felt like a producer, getting to use my administrative and networking skills to plan and organize these meetings. Zoom proved to be a useful tool because we could not have done this in person.  I suppose I can consider it a pandemic “silver lining”!  

Because all participants were interested in prayer in the first place, they brought a lot to the table regarding knowledge and experience.  These were not rookies! Most of them serve as leaders either in their home churches or in a parachurch organization, however, their humility in realizing that they still have more to learn was evident. 

The first woman to register told me that she felt this was an answer to prayer.  She was just telling God her prayer life was weak and then got the flier about the School of Prayer! 

John Bumyan said “You can do more than pray after you pray, but you cannot do more than pray until you have prayed.” I am convinced that prayer is a primary component of God’s kingdom coming to our city. I was inspired by how God worked through this initiative and am looking forward to hosting another School of Prayer soon!

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We are grateful for Anne taking the initiative to launch and organize the School of Prayer! You can read a summary Powerpoint from each of the sessions here. If you’re interested in being notified for future opportunities such as these, you can contact Anne Freeman at annefreeman14@gmail.com