During the July 4 weekend, 28 of us gathered for our third UB Island BIPOC Retreat Day, an unforgettable experience filled with joy, reflection, and community. Thank you to everyone who joined us on Spectacle Island in the Boston Harbor. It was a blessing to spend the day with friends new and old as each of us left feeling rejuvenated and inspired in the presence of God and one another.

“But those who hope in the LORD will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.” – Isaiah 40:31

From the moment we set sail on the boat, the energy was palpable. Rev. Devlin kicked off the day with a heartfelt devotional focused on laying our burdens down. This time of reflection set a peaceful tone, reminding us of the importance of rest and renewal amidst our busy lives.

One of the highlights was our collaboration with Ani Inoyo, local Christian entreprenuer and founder of Ani Design House. Ani Inoyo provided the beautiful gifts that added a touch of elegance to our gathering. Be sure to check out Ani Design House and explore her incredible range of products. Share your purchases and tag them on social media: @AniDesignHouse

Our day was also filled with fun and relaxation. Stiggity Stackz once again brought their freestyle dance battles, infusing the retreat with vibrant energy and creative expression. We enjoyed beach games, massages, and a delicious catered lunch that allowed us to connect and savor the company of friends old and new.

The retreat was not just about relaxation but also about coming together as a circle of restoration. The work of reconciliation can be exhausting, and this intentional space was created for BIPOC leaders involved with UniteBoston to focus on self-care and foster deeper connections. Participants shared how enriched and refreshed they felt after this day-long retreat.

What did the attendees think of the retreat?

P.S. A special thanks to Megan Lietz and her team from the Race & Christian Community Initiative for setting up and organizing supplies to contribute to the environment of rest for all attendees.

Amidst the number of new immigrant and refugee families arriving to our city, many churches are opening their doors and hearts to serve and care for our new neighbors. One of these churches is St. Michael’s Episcopal Church in Milton with Pastor Hall Kirkam, which served as a day shelter site for many of our new community members from Haiti. 

Read below to hear Pastor Hall’s reflection on the experience and how they have lived out Jesus’ call to welcome the ‘least of these.’

P.S. While the state has asked IFSI to pause on day center services until further notice, there are two urgent opportunities for congregations to serve our new neighbors:

1. Coordinating a Neighborhood Support Team, with up to $10k grant funding for teams that apply by 7/31
2. Coordinating an Intensive English class with IFSI, where churches provide space and volunteers for a three to six hour session so individuals can practice English towards job readiness. Contact Sheldine Jean-Baptiste to set up a call to discuss the details!

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I open my windows on days like this, sunny and warm in June while kids are still together before summer, in order to hear the preschoolers on a playground made tidy and furnished with games and such by The Village School, which rents space from us. I watch as a little one wears butterfly wings and chases another who’s on a tricycle (without a hint of the danger that butterflies face from moving vehicles on the highway).

Mark 9:30-37 tells us that Jesus was on his way to Capernaum in Galilee when he told his disciples a second time that he was going to be handed over to the authorities at some point and be killed. After they arrived, he asked them what they were talking about on the road, and they were quiet, because they’d been talking about who was the greatest among them. He told them, “Look, if you want to be ‘first’ as it were, you will need to be ‘last’, the servant of all. Like this child before me: If you welcome one of these children, you welcome me, and you welcome the one who sent me.”

I listen as families from Haiti, parents and preschool children working with Immigrant Family Services Institute (IFSI), make their way through our Memorial Chapel into the Lower Parish Hall for instruction, administrative help, a hot meal, and maybe a suitcase or clothes or a blessing bag of personal hygiene items, safe from the streets and from the gangs they have escaped back home, safe for now anyway in a place that is beautiful, well- and lovingly-cared-for, and made welcome, by the good people at St. Michael’s.

The children who file in are, well, children, thankfully curious and mischievous, mostly ready to play and eager for whatever is next.  They, too, are butterflies, chasing one another or peering from a doorway, and on the playground after school has let out.

We began hosting families in our Lower Parish Hall early April 2024, when Rev. Laura Everett from the Massachusetts Council of Churches reached out to parishes in the Milton area to see if any wanted to learn about sharing space.  I did, my parish responded to the plan I shared first with Wardens and then Vestry, and then members gamely raised their hands to offer ESL skills, daytime availability to play with kids, and cars for transporting food prepared at Church of the Holy Spirit in Mattapan.  We assembled a Signup Genius and an Amazon wish list.

It wasn’t easy. There were challenges with the increasing flows of traffic, which was alleviated as  a few parishioners signed up as cab-wranglers to help manage the coming and going of Haitian families while school families were coming and going as well.

In early June, IFSI decided to ‘pause’ at this location, perhaps as things with MassPort, IFSI, the Commonwealth, Haiti, and all the constituent details seem to float in unpredictable patterns and each day brings – as each brought – something unexpected.  The generosity of spirit of St. Michael’s parishioners, and then of The Village School, has helped many of us to open our eyes in order that we open our hearts to hold space, resources, and compassion for folks who come to our door.

Matthew 25:40 tells us that, when we welcome the least, we welcome the King.  

And Elizabeth Barrett Browning reminds us that:

Earth’s crammed with heaven 
And every common bush afire with God 
And only he who seeks takes off his shoes
The rest sit around and pluck blackberries.

Our world is hard, butterflies get smooshed by trucks, and people get hunted, tossed aside, and executed by greed and prejudice. Fear turns his wheel indeed, again and again, like Yeats’ widening gyre. “Be not afraid”, Jesus encourages.

If we can allow the possibility of solidarity with the least of Jesus’ siblings – the vulnerable, hungry, and stranger – we’ll discover God without having to squint so hard.

“For [Jesus] himself is our peace, who has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, by setting aside in his flesh the law with its commands and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself one new humanity out of the two, thus making peace, and in one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility.” (Eph 2:14-16).

This is one of the many Scriptural texts that make it clear that Christians are to be “united” and “one.” Yet, what does this unity and oneness look like, and how do we get there? Read below to hear about UniteBoston’s five ministry priorities this year on our “journey towards one:” Cohorts, Commitment, Challenge, Convene, and Clarify, and how you can take part in this journey with us.

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By: Rev. Kelly Fassett, Rev. Devlin Scott, and Rayza Carrasco

This past fall, UniteBoston’s staff and board sat down seeking to CLARIFY our ministry vision, strategy, and theory of change. Over the course of thirteen years, UniteBoston had gone from a small e-newsletter sent to a couple of dozen people to a full-fledged non-profit ministry with multiple staff. We had pursued the unity and oneness of Christians through hosting large united worship nights, coordinating a weekly events newsletter and website hub, convening missional collaboration conferences, launching neighborhood dinners, hosting learning groups, and more. 

We knew that at the center of the Christian faith is the confession that Jesus’ incarnation, death, and resurrection has reconciled us to God and to one another, thus forming an inseverable and eternal peace (Eph. 2:14). This central message of reconciliation is a prominent theme throughout the New Testament, and the early Christians were convinced of the centrality of unity among followers of Christ. (2 Cor 5:16-21, 1 Cor 1:10, Rom 12:4-5, Jn 11:52, Eph 4:3).

Yet, this “unity” and “oneness” is easier to live in theological constructs than in practice. Christian unity isn’t just a surface-level kumbaya togetherness, “hues in the pews,” as that often erases voices that are traditionally on the margins. True Biblical unity must not only encompass diversity but also erase hierarchy, inequity, injustice, and false structures of power. Biblical unity is a “deep unity,” one that leans into the places of division to discover the roots and possibilities of reconciliation and repair.  In the course of our ministry, we had seen that the barriers hindering Christian unity, equity, justice, and flourishing for all needed to be tackled head on. To this end, our staff and board brainstormed together and came up with three big barriers to Christian unity: imbalanced theology, righteous hubris, and historical injustices.

Christian unity is not just a belief or an event but is actually a question of discipleship: the way we understand and practice our love of God and neighbor on a daily basis. As our team sought to unpack these three barriers to Christian unity and CLARIFY the learning experiences and cohort models that could be designed to disciple people as ambassadors of reconciliation and repair (2 Cor 5:18-20), we immediately realized that we could not do this work on our own; this big-picture work will be much sharper and stronger when it is done with a collective community of leaders offering their insights and perspectives. This past year, we launched a Christian unity COHORT with twelve diverse leaders who met monthly to share their own personal stories of unity and disunity in the church and explored how people are living out God’s call towards unity, justice and reconciliation. 

Here are a few key ideas about Christian unity that Kelly and Devlin are taking away from the cohort journey:

Genuine, vulnerable story-sharing allows us to truly see one another, deepening our understanding of our unity in reconciled diversity. This transformative process reshapes our sense of connection and mutual worth, inspiring us to live out our shared brotherhood and sisterhood in Christ. When we really see one another, it changes how we feel connected to one another and how we feel they deserve what I deserve.

The journey towards Christian unity involves remembering and rediscovering who we are in Christ, cultivating authentic diverse friendships, carefully tending to wounds and places of rupture, and showing up for one another in sacrificial solidarity. This group has protected, celebrated, defended, and made room for one another, which has been challenging and immensely healing.

Here are a few reflections from members of the cohort: 

“The individuals in our cohort are all so different; culturally, liturgically, and theologically. But as I’ve listened to the stories of God’s movement in the lives of each of these new friends, I’ve been awed by just how much we have in common: a love for Jesus, a devotion to his church, wounds in need of healing, a deep longing for the Kingdom, along with a lot of courage and faith. This journey and these people have reinforced my commitment to move from curiosity, my belief that we have so much to learn from each other, and my hope that the chasms that divide us can be bridged.”

-Josh Wilson, Pastor at Reality Boston

“If the seed of Christian unity is our faith in Jesus, and the sunlight/water are our opportunities for joint ministry and mission, then the soil is most certainly our relationship and engagement with each other. The soil is aerated by our whole-hearted leaning into difference and disagreement with love.” 

– Edwin Johnson, Director of Organizing at Episcopal City Mission 

“In the Christian unity cohort, I found that our differences didn’t divide us; rather they made us connect more intentionally as we built friendships with one another. We don’t have to agree on all the things, but we can accept, love, and serve one another just like Jesus loved and served us.”

-Carolina de Jesus, Chief Executive Officer at the Boston Higher Education Resource Center

“As a Roman Catholic, I am reminded that the Catholic Church made a fundamental shift in its vision of Christian Unity from Vatican I to Vatican II, moving from an ecumenism of “return” to an ecumenism of “recognition” – the recognition of an esteem for the many gifts of God’s Spirit that reflect a genuine communion of faith and life with other Christian churches. As a result of the journey that we have shared in our Christian Unity cohort, I am convinced that the personal and relational always come before the structural and institutional. Journeying out of our isolations; meeting, sharing meals, sharing our stories, getting to know and trust one another; establishing friendships— these cohort experiences of relationship form the climate in which both individual Christians and separated communities become open to, recognize and receive gifts of the Holy Spirit from one another. It is this kind of climate that I have witnessed with our Unity Cohort from which a passion for unity is cultivated and sustained. Symbolic gestures are important among church leaders, but relationships of trust and mutual affection have to grow among members of different churches as well if receptive ecumenism is to flourish.”

-Michael James, Resident Minister and Faculty Member at Boston College

We’re now launching two new year-long working group COHORTS to help us shape the next season of UniteBoston. First, a “Sankofa journey” working group to reconstruct a common memory on the racial history of Boston and CHALLENGE people to be truth-tellers about the hidden history in our backyard. Second, a working group to explore the theology, practice, and heart posture of “Christian unity.” The working groups will help us unpack the three barriers to Christian unity we have identified and discern what content, experiences, and practical COMMITMENTS people can make towards becoming ambassadors of reconciliation and repair. We believe that UniteBoston’s role is to create opportunities for “beloved community” to emerge, one that leans into our diversities, nurtures belonging for all of God’s children, models redemptive power dynamics, and works together to nurture shalom across historic divides. As we nurture kinship relations among diverse siblings in Christ, we believe our self-giving love for each other will be a collective witness to the reconciling power of the gospel. 

Much of our team’s time and attention will be behind the scenes so we can do this work well. But don’t worry, we will continue our newsletter and website, and we are still planning to CONVENE Christians in Boston for a fall concert featuring a united gospel choir, as well as Boston Flourish on November 7. 

We’re grateful to have so many leaders and friends with us on the journey – You make this work possible, and you make it a lot of fun too! 

Join us on the Journey Towards One: 

• Pray for wisdom and discernment for our team and collaborating partners as we seek to understand how Christians in Boston might embody the oneness that Jesus prays for and refine UniteBoston’s missional priorities and theory of change.
• Stay engaged by reading the UniteBoston newsletter and following us on our social media Facebook Instagram
• We’d love to hear from you if you have any ideas, resources, or stories you’d like to share with us that might help us on this journey!

– Rev. Kelly, Rev. Devlin, and Rayza

Lord, make us instruments of your peace. 
Where there is hatred, let us sow love; 
where there is injury, pardon; 
where there is discord, union; 
where there is doubt, faith; 
where there is despair, hope; 
where there is darkness, light; 
where there is sadness, joy. 
Grant that we may not so much seek to be consoled as to console; 
to be understood as to understand; 
to be loved as to love. 
For it is in giving that we receive; it is in pardoning that we are pardoned; and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen.
– A Prayer attributed to St. Francis

Christ is Risen! Our guest blogger this week is Pastor Robin Lutjohann, pastor of Faith Lutheran Church in Cambridge. Pastor Robin and Pastor Raphaela Mueller have been offering powerful scriptural reflections daily during Lent. Read below to hear Pastor Robin’s reflection on the communal significance of Jesus as the Messiah and how our daily encounters with the Risen Christ bind us together as one family of God.

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Jesus went on with his disciples to the villages of Caesarea Philippi; and on the way he asked his disciples, “Who do people say that I am?” And they answered him, “John the Baptist; and others, Elijah; and still others, one of the prophets.” He asked them, “But who do you say that I am?” Peter answered him, “You are the Messiah.” And he sternly ordered them not to tell anyone about him. (Mark 8:27-30)

Because we live in a much more individualist culture and time than Jesus, it is easy for us to mis-hear Jesus’ question as an invitation to make a personal confession of faith. A “what does Jesus mean to me” kind of testimony. It doesn’t help that in English, both singular and plural second person pronouns are the same, “you.” But Jesus is asking “you” in the plural: “Who do ya’ll say that I am?” He is asking his disciples as a community of people who have been – together – transformed by his presence among them. And even though Peter alone answers, he answers in a way that isn’t just about him and his own personal thoughts and musings. For example, he doesn’t say: “You are MY Lord and savior.” Or: “I give my life to you.” Or: “I think… I believe… My theory is…” He isn’t really speaking for himself. He is speaking with the voice of his ancestors and their long-time expectation of an anointed heir of the Davidic kingship, when he says: “You are the Christ / Messiah / Anointed One…”

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: It makes sense that in our church, we recite the Creed together, in unison, when we gather. Even though it is said in the singular “I believe…” it is a collective “I” that speaks here. It is the “I believe” of the united voice of the one Body of Christ, the whole community of all those who trust in him as the promised savior not only of their own individual souls, but of the whole cosmos.

Don’t get me wrong, our individual concerns and fears, our particular biographies and thoughts are important to God. And there is a time and place to make our faith personal and individual, like when Thomas says, “My Lord and my God!” After all, no one experiences love in the general. If a loved one says to you, “I love you,” I really hope you wouldn’t reply, “I love all people.” 

But when it comes to answering the question, “Who is Jesus?” a purely personal testimony is not sufficient. It is good, as far as it goes, but is not yet “the Gospel” that saves and changes the world.

Only by offering our individual stories and opinions to a communal reality, can we begin to really say “who Jesus is” to each other and to the world. Because I, by myself, have too limited a point of view. There’s simply a lot that I am bound to be missing. I need your help, so I can see, through your eyes, more of who this Jesus really is. There are things you have learned and experienced that I have not. That is why I need you. And that is why you need me, too. That is why we need the Church. We might be able to believe alone. But we cannot confess Christ alone. It is a communal witness. Christ sends into the world not individual believers, but a people. 

It’s like those 3D glasses kids used to have with the round slides that you could pop in. A pretty crude technology compared to today’s Apple glasses or whatever. But that’s basically still how 3D vision works: Two slightly different perspectives, each seen by one of our eyes, are put together by our brains into one picture that holds these differing perspectives together to see a fuller picture with more depth — and more like the real thing! Now multiply that by a few billion — and then you get the complex, crystalline jewel through which the Spirit refracts the Word of God to us, that we may truly see, truly understand all that Jesus is and does for us. In this lifetime we will never be finished seeing, hearing, comprehending anew, with every person and perspective adding another facet to the total mosaic. 

Maybe this helps explain Jesus’ enigmatic warning at the end: to not “tell anyone about him.” It’s not that he didn’t want more people to be part of this community of faith. It’s that he didn’t want people to have a cheapened, second-hand experience, a kind of “faith by hearsay” information, but not transformation. Unfortunately, this kind of dead belief is what passes for “faith” a lot these days. But real faith is not some things you heard someone say, or what your parents told you to believe, or a list of intellectual propositions to which you assent. Faith, in essence, is trust in someONE more than belief in someTHING.

Only after the Holy Spirit was poured out on the community in Pentecost – and has kept on pouring ever since! – was it possible for people who had not walked with the man from Nazareth to have a living encounter with the Risen Christ. This encounter binds them into that same communal “I” that can say with Peter and the whole church: “You are the Messiah!” 

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To Commemorate Migrant Sunday, we are sharing a blog that is written by local author and theologian Daniel Montañez. Daniel is founder and director of Mygration Christian Conference, a PhD student at Boston University School of Theology, and the coeditor of “The Church and Migration: A Theological Vision for the People of God.” Read below to hear Daniel share about the Christian ethic of bridge-building based out of Ephesians 2.

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What are the walls of hostility we erect to exclude our immigrant neighbors? Walls can be physical, such as the 1,954-mile wall along the US-Mexico border. Hard and heavy walls made of bricks, metals, wires, and wood represent a division between people, culture, and national citizenry. Walls can also be mental or emotional, often resulting from difference in thought or feelings of fear toward those whom one may disagree with or not understand. In this way, walls can serve as a means of self-preservation and protection from the “other.” Finally, walls can be spiritual, as all too often Christians have excluded those who hold differing beliefs and convictions on religious matters. There is no shortage of reasons that feed the human proclivity to build walls; however, there are several reasons Christians are called to rise above the walls we build.

The book of Ephesians introduces us to a Christian ethic of bridge-building. In chapter 2, verses 14–18, Paul writes,

“For he himself is our peace, who has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, by setting aside in his flesh the law with its commands and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself one new humanity out of the two, thus making peace, and in one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility. He came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near. For through him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit.”

The two groups Paul describes are Jewish and Gentile believers. There was much hostility between these two people groups in the Old Testament, as the Jews were considered God’s chosen people, according to the covenant relationship established with the nation of Israel. The practice of circumcision served as a physical sign of Israel’s covenant relationship with God and operated as a means of citizenship into the Israelite community and inheritance of God’s promises. Because the Gentiles were uncircumcised, they did not belong to the covenant community, as they were, as Paul describes, “without hope and without God in the world” (Eph 2:12).

However, while the Gentiles were not included within the promises of the Mosaic covenant, this is not to say that God was not at work building bridges between Jews and Gentiles in the Old Testament. The Greek word for Gentiles is “ethnos,” meaning nation or people. It is within the Abrahamic covenant that God promises to Abraham that “through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed,” (Gen 22:18), signaling the coming together of Jews and Gentiles through a messianic figure from Israel. Jesus Christ is the fulfillment of this messianic promise and the one who builds bridges between Jews and Gentiles, establishing a model and an ethic for Christian living.

Many biblical scholars believe the wall Paul was referring to in this passage was “the Mosaic law itself with its detailed holiness code.” It served as an ideological fence around Israel, keeping outsiders and foreigners from participating in the social, cultural, and religious life of the community. The crucifixion of Christ served to destroy the wall that separated Jews and Gentiles from fellowship with one another. Furthermore, Christ’s sacrifice on the cross served as the atonement for humanity’s sins and the restoration of their relationship with God the Father. For this reason, it can be stated that Jesus Christ did not come to build a wall, but a bridge between God and humanity, and between Jews and Gentiles. It was a project so costly that only the riches of heaven could pay for this bridge through Christ’s blood on the cross.

What, then, are the implications of a Christian ethic of bridge-building for our world today? First, it calls us to move from an ethic of exclusion to embrace. In “The Church and Migration: A Theological Vision for the People of God, which I coedited with Wilmer EstradaCarrasquillo, Estrada-Carrasquillo posits an ethic of hospitality as a necessary component for embracing our immigrant neighbors. He writes, “Hospitality to migrant communities can take many shapes and forms. But to serve them well, we must look beyond the surface. We must make a concerted effort to know them and develop intentional relationships.” It is only by embracing an ethic of encounter with our immigrant neighbors that we discover the common ground on which we stand, and the prospect of embracing one another as members of the kin-dom of God.

Second, a Christian ethic of bridgebuilding calls us to move from a mindset of scarcity to opportunity. All too often we hear negative rhetoric of immigrants stealing American jobs and the economic burden immigrants have on the US economy. While these claims are often unsubstantiated, what is frequently overlooked is the revitalization immigrants are bringing to the life of the church. The Latino immigrant church, for example, is rapidly growing in the United States, buoyed by a Hispanic population that is expected to grow to 110 million by 2060.

Carolyn Dirksen argues, “If the American Church can embrace their spiritual brothers and sisters in this great migration, they will reaffirm their commitments to Christ and invite a kind of rejuvenation the Church has seldom seen.” To move from scarcity to opportunity means to believe that not only are there enough materials for building bridges, but that we can also partner in the work of building a better future together.

Finally, a Christian ethic of bridge building demands that Christians move from a place of fear to faith. According to Alejandra Guajardo-Hodge, “Fear may be a natural response to these modern-day challenges but is not the response that God demands of us. Love is the only way to face the challenge of the shifting world in God-honoring ways.” To choose faith over fear means to tear down the hostile walls of partisan politics that divide our nation, and to cast a new vision for the role of the church in the public square—“not to further exacerbate the problems of this world, but to become a part of the solution,” as we write in The Church and Migration.

The social ethic that Christ sets before us is a call to embrace the opportunity by faith to tear down the walls of hostility that divide us from our neighbors and to build bridges toward a holistic vision of peace, justice, and the flourishing of all humankind.

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This article was originally published in the Boston University School of Theology 2023 Magazine entitled “Reaching Across.” You can also check out Daniel Montanez’ book “The Church and Migration,” which serves as an accessible and educational guide for pastors, church leaders, and parishioners to better understand what the Bible says about God’s heart towards people on the move and how these truths can be applied in our modern world. It is available for purchase in English and Spanish.