Blog – Page 62 – UniteBoston

Sep 12 2015

10 Days starts on Sunday: Make Room!

Hello friends from UniteBoston!

With 10 Days this year, I really want to encourage you to consider pausing everything in order to seek Jesus.

Now, I know that is a tall order, with everything we have going on in our lives. But as UniteBoston, we really have to take the lead in this. Seriously, let’s make it a priority to clear our calendars and seek God together!

How would God respond if a city sought Him in this way? And how would God respond to you if you took up that invitation?

One of the things that I know about Jesus is that He responds to whatever part of my heart that I give to him. He is worthy of us devoting our whole schedules and our entire lives to Him.

The question is: How does God want you to spend these ten days?

Here are some ideas:

Make room in your schedule to attend the 10 Days Boston daytime prayer and/or evening gatherings. My encouragement would be to attend a gathering from a Christian tradition that is new and/or uncomfortable for you
Stay overnight to retreat at YWAM in Somerville
Set aside time for daily prayer with your family, roommates, or small group
Lead a session of daytime prayer at Youth With A Mission – Email Kelly (kelly@uniteboston.com) to learn more

Every year I hear people say how they wished they could have attended other evenings, and how next year they want to participate more fully. So, today is the day, the time is now!

May God’s peace be upon our city as we seek Him,

Kelly Steinhaus

UniteBoston Team Leader

www.uniteboston.com

Sep 06 2015

Christ, Our Peace

This week, we hear from UniteBoston’s own Kelly Steinhaus, as she shares how the upcoming 10 Days of Prayer provides Boston’s diverse Christian community an opportunity to reconcile differences by remembering Christ as our Peace.

For He himself is our peace, who has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility… 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. (Ephesians 2:14-16)

What a radical concept Christian unity is! The fact that in Christ, we are one!

This heavenly reality certainly does not appear to be true when we look around the world. We all come from various backgrounds and cultures, life experiences, and we have our own denominational distinctions. Each person sees the world very differently, and because of this, we are inherently prone to disagree with and distance ourselves from those who are culturally, denominationally, and ethnically distinct from us.

Yes, it is easier to worship with people who look like us, act like us, and have the same theological beliefs as us. But as Christians we are called to go beyond this place of comfort to see and value Christ in our neighbor.

Paul acknowledges the difficulty of extending Christian fellowship by exhorting us to “earnestly endeavor to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace” (Ephesians 4:3). According to Karl Barth, the Greek word here implies a “full effort of the whole man, involving his will, sentiment, reason, strength, and total attitude”. “Earnestly endeavor” is not simply an outward action of embracing the other, but is first and foremost an inward examination of our hearts.

When you look at your brother or sister, do you see Jesus? What might be hindering your view?

From my experience, one of the chief hindrances to Christian unity is my need to be right. This places walls between me and my brothers and sisters, resulting in a self-righteous attitude. At the end of the day, only God knows those who are His, and so the “right” answer is Jesus’ work and righteousness, extended to all.

During 10 Days Boston, we have the opportunity to step outside our comfort zones to get to know our brothers and sisters from various denominations and backgrounds. As we do this, we learn to respect those that disagree with us. We learn to be confident in the fact that the fellowship of the saints goes beyond a uniform doctrine to involve a unity of Spirit (Eph 4:3) based on the inward spiritual rebirth of those who confess faith in Jesus as Lord. We also learn to value the breadth of Christian traditions rather than promoting a particular expression as having greater spiritual authority over another. Indeed, the deep, difficult work of Christian unity is to respect and honor those with whom we may have significant disagreements.

When we step back, we realize that the one and only thing that makes us one is our revelation of Jesus Christ. It is what Jesus did in his incarnation, sacrifice, and resurrection that has reconciled us to God and to one another, thus forming an inseverable and eternal peace. It’s as we all gaze at Christ’s sacrificial work on the cross that we are one.

Jesus, we confess our tendency to exclude rather than to include, to judge rather than to honor, and to assert our position rather than to love unconditionally. Lord, have mercy.

*Note: This devotional is a part of the 2015 daily devotional published by the national 10 Days team.

Aug 19 2015

An Eastern Orthodox Worship Primer in 3 Minutes!

This past March, the Institute for Christian Unity hosted a WEE forum entitled “Orthodox Christian Worship in Five Senses.” The presentation was made by Aaron Friar, a graduate of Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology, and an Associate with the Institute for Christian Unity. Aaron’s address was a very appealing look into the sacred experience of Orthodox worship, and it was particularly revealing for those who are not so familiar with the Eastern Orthodox Church.

Click on the following image to watch their 3-minute video:

Jul 08 2015

Race and Grace: A Boston Fellow Points the Way

This week, UniteBoston features Terrance Moore, who was a 2015 graduate of the Boston Fellows program . Terrance hosted a conversation at a local church on race – He suggests that each of us, regardless of ethnicity or culture, should:

1. Be prayerful in processing and acting. We are often too quick to act on serious issues without personal brokenness. To understand the hurt, ask the Lord to take you to the place of your own pain and brokenness when he saved you. Pray for: revelation, healing, growth, reconciliation, restoration, overcoming, humility, compassion, work, burden and conviction. Pray against: insensitivity, inconvenience/sleepiness, pride, self-righteousness. (Joel 2:13; Ps. 34:17-19)

2. Make the pain the priority; don’t ignore or minimize it. Whatever the details of any one case, America’s story includes 250 years of slavery, 90 years of Jim Crow, 60 years of separate-but-equal, 35 years of racist housing policy, and the current state of mass incarceration, police brutality and discrimination, and militarization of inner-city neighborhoods. #BlackLivesMatter is a response to the message that they don’t. Do not discount the pain. Hurt with your brothers and sisters. Approach the Father with it, with them.

3. Educate yourself to the nuance, depth, and perspectives outside of your own experiences on the issue. Ask black friends about their experiences, and listen with an open heart.

4. Embrace the inconvenience and discomfort of the matter; don’t opt out. This is hard work. We don’t feel qualified. It’s uncomfortable, inconvenient, scary, susceptible to conflict. The church must act in practical ways to restore justice. Sometimes this will mean engaging those who hold harmful and ignorant views on the issues, even close friends or relatives.

5. Don’t forsake the opportunity to minister through bearing burdens for the opportunity “to be right” in your opinion. Don’t try to prove that you “get it.” You can’t, not fully. And that’s the point, in part.

6. Actively participate, but be a guest by not taking the attention off the issue or the amplification of black voices. Ask. Listen. Give voice to people silenced and ignored.

“Overall, the state of racial relations in America is a very dismal one. Luckily, the Church must remember, God is in the business of resurrecting what seems dead. The process of reconciliation begins at the source of God’s salvation for us: compassion. If the Church can undertake America’s racial issues at a heart level where we compassionately seek to hurt, listen, walk, and work with its brothers and sisters of the black community under the healing lordship of our Father, we will be the restorers of justice God has called us to be. To do that, we have to move past intentions and obstacles and embrace the dirty and difficult work of reconciliation; just as Jesus did for us.”

*Note: Originally published in a Boston Fellows email; reprinted with permission

Jul 03 2015

Will We Rise?

Jeff Bass, Executive Director for the Emmanuel Gospel Center, was stirred by the recent events in Charleston and listened in on a national call of Christian leaders considering how the church can and should respond to the recent shootings. He writes for the UniteBoston Blog this week:

On May 18, 1992, at Morningstar Baptist Church in Boston, gang violence disrupted a funeral service for a young man who had been gunned down by a drive-by shooting. The stabbing and shooting in the church was a clear wake-up call. “Everyone recognized a line had been crossed. You couldn’t sit idly by anymore.” (Rev. Jeffrey Brown, quoted in the Boston Globe). The Morningstar incident was a turning point in Boston’s history.

“It catalyzed a clergy that by its own admission had failed to grasp the dimensions of youth violence. The Boston TenPoint Coalition, an alliance of ministers and lay leaders, was born. Preachers went into the neighborhood to minister to troubled adolescents. It gave youth workers and community activists renewed urgency in their fight to keep teenagers away from drugs and violence. And it built common cause between ministers and the police after years of mutual distrust, giving rise to the acclaimed community policing strategy that led to a dramatic, unforeseen decline in violence known as the Boston Miracle.” -As reported by the Boston Globe (May 18, 2012)

On June 17, 2015, violence disrupted a Bible study at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, SC, where nine people, including the senior pastor, were shot and killed by a white man with ties to white supremacist groups. In the last week, while the church and the nation grapple with how to respond, at least three predominately black churches in the South have been destroyed by arson. As we mourn with our brothers and sisters in Charleston, please pray that the shooting at Emanuel AME and related events will stir and motivate the nation as the violence at Morningstar Baptist stirred and motivated Boston in the early 90s.

The status quo is not acceptable. Our nation has deep, systemic issues that require sincere repentance, real change, and gracious healing. Like Boston in the 90s, we need renewed urgency, a greater sense of common cause, and new strategies. Like Boston, the church can and should play a key role. Pray that we will rise up for such a time as this.

We do not choose our moments. Moments choose us. They place before us the question of whether or not we will rise to their occasion. The tragic killings of the Charleston 9 presents yet another moment in the history of our nation where we’ve been chosen. The question is whether or not we will rise to it. -Bishop Claude Alexander, The Park Church, Charlotte

*Note: Originally published here; reprinted with permission

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