Nurturing Relational Connections Across Boston's Christian Community
This is a Christmas night of worship and celebration where many greater Boston church will come together to lift up the name of Jesus. There will be worship, dance, spoken word, some of Boston’s biggest Christian Hip Hop artists, and pizza party that follows the show. Join us as we celebrate our Lord’s humble INVASION into our dark work as a baby in a manger.
Get you ticket HERE!
2000 years ago the Word, our Creator, put on flesh to INVADE our fallen world in the form of a baby. 33 years later as a full grown man, he gave His life on a Roman cross to bring salvation to anyone who would believe.
We exist to glorify our creator with every aspect of our being. Join us as we come together to celebrate our creator’s D-Day this Christmas.
From 7-10 PM we will have dance ministries, youth choirs, spoken word, a little Christian Hip Hop and a message on John 1:14.
Come for the show and stay for the After Glow! DJ Mott will be spinning the best of Christian Hip Hop and Reggae on the 1’s and 2’s until midnight.
Intro: UniteBoston was inspired by Derek Arledge’s devotion to attend the various gatherings around the city during the 10 Days of Prayer in October. This week, Derek Arledge draws some fascinating parallels from his experience with 10 Days Boston and his background in fitness.
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”What is that echo?”
”Oh my! Everyone is praying again.“
"Are your arms tired for worshipping so much? My shoulders are getting sore.”
"I’m so hungry; I can’t wait to have communion again.”
Church is a part of life, whether folks like it or not.
But fitness is also a part of life, whether folks like it or not. Sigh.
I was recently a part of 10 Days Boston, a ten day gathering of worship and prayer around Greater Boston. I had the opportunity to visit other denominations as a way of promoting unity among various churches in the Greater Boston Area.
While some rank Boston as one of the least spiritually-minded cities in the nation (with a score of 98 out of 100,) my experience proved otherwise. By encouraging followers of Christ to consider others with love, intrigue, fervor, and an open heart rather than bias, I have seen how 10 Days Boston breaks barriers and builds relationships to express unity the way God desires.
Additionally, I found that God also has a lot of humor that unexpectedly snuck up on me. Oh yes! If you attend a different church every day for one week, then you have to be physically able, trained and ready for the experience.
This brings me to share a bit about fitness. Boston is a dynamic place highlighting many aspects of health; some even consider Boston to be the health mecca of the United States. In fact, there are many parallels between fitness and church, and UniteBoston hints at this parallel. Although there are many houses of the Lord, Boston is not currently known as an area filled with life-giving churches. Someone has to be willing to meet these individuals that are all in for God to dispel the negative stereotype of a church-less Greater Boston Area. So, my encouragement to Christians in Boston is to have an active mind, body and spirit in exploring what God is doing in the city. Indeed, your spirit is the smartest of the three. Let me explain.
During 10 Days, I experienced a Korean worship gathering for the first time. This opened my mind to a different way of worship and prayer. In fact, I felt that the convenience of having a translator and headphones enriched my worship experience. As each person prayed, it was very similar to being in a group exercise class. The sanctuary was rightfully dark and intimate like a spin class in the evening. But here at the worship service, the “instructors” kept changing, each person expressing his/her own genre of energy expenditure. This only made me desire more of God and inspire my curiosity to see what the next day would be like.
The next service I attended was the Taize service at Trinity Church. Below is a selfie of my wife Chandace and I at the Taize prayer gathering on Sunday evening.
The last time I heard Latin spoken was at Gonzaga High School, so it was somewhat of a shock for me to hear this in a Taize service in a preserved church in the middle of downtown Boston. Honestly, this makes exercising in the oldest YMCA in the middle of downtown Boston a run for its sweat. Sometimes, you just enter a service and everything feels sacred. And sometimes…you enter a gym for the first time and everything feels sacred and sweaty. But, the former wins!
After a few days of re-arranging everything on your schedule and getting your family organized to attend these various churches, you thank the Lord that you can actually move well. Then, He reminds you that you need to nourish yourself throughout the day and stretch.
Why? A properly nourished individual will want to eat again if they move more. Hence, one take at communion should make a budding, adventurous, and curious churchgoer hungry for more communion and the body of Christ. “Be still” for one second, because as you lift your arms and open your palms as a sign of receiving the Lord, your deltoids begin to develop lactic acid. Lactic acid gets the bad rep of tiring out your muscles, but I think it brings us back to the Lord to remind us that He is where we draw our strength from.
Practice makes perfect. The energetic services at these UniteBoston gatherings included many prayers. Many people were blessed as a result of lifting hands high. As Christians became healthier spiritually, I believe that the city of Boston and indeed the world was impacted mightily.
All in all, I learned that the city of Boston has some serious worshippers. In my mind, Boston is not only a city that is among the first in health but also a city known for its love towards the Lord!
By Derek Arledge, http://derekteempt.blogspot.com
This week, Doug Hall from the Emmanuel Gospel Center shares with UniteBoston a reflection following an event he had attended at Lion of Judah in the South End of the city. 
Doug and Judy Hall have had a tremendous influence in the body of Christ, here in the Greater Boston area over the past 50 plus years. Doug began leading the Emmanuel Gospel Center, with his wife Judy, in 1964, and is also the current president. He is an adjunct professor with Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary as well. Together, they wrote, ‘The Cat and The Toaster,’ and have worked side by side in urban ministry since the early 1960’s.
This past April during an event hosted at Congregation Lion of Judah’s new facility, they were both impacted by the dramatic difference they had witnessed at the site of this new building, at 68 Northhampton Street in the South End.
They reflected on how much had changed in the past 35 years. Once this had been a terrible slum with a violent bar at it’s center, but over the decades a tremendous transformation has taken shape.
Doug shared that they remembered a important evangelistic meeting that was held at this location in 1969. Following that event two significant things transpired:
1. The bar in the center of this slum, ‘Louie’s Lounge’, burned to the ground that very same night.
2. Judy experienced a vision where she saw that this location would be redeemed by significant Christian developments in the days to come.
The redemption did not happened as quickly as they hoped, but over time the spiritual landscape has indeed changed not just in this location but in the city of Boston and surrounding communities.
Doug said that they were encouraged years ago, when an anointed church planter named Juan Vergara came to start a Hispanic church in the South End, together with Ralph Kee and the Conservative Baptist group. The church originally started at EGC’s building, but later moved to Cambridge, under the name Central Baptist (Iglesia Bautista Central). Years later an EGC staff member Eduardo Maynard, challenged this church to acquire some property that had come available on Northampton Street, they did so, with no knowledge that it overlooked the very site of the evangelistic prayer meeting held in 1969. What was once an urban ghetto became the site of a thriving Christian community.
It is significant to note that this all began with a meeting that invited the presence of God, and a vision from God given to a woman who would foresee that in this dark place God would do a redemptive miracle.
Doug shared, “When I think of the restoration we are witnessing today, it appears to be aligned with the scripture found in Luke 3:4-6:”
“ As is written in the book of the words of Isaiah the prophet:
A voice of one calling in the desert,
Prepare the way for the Lord,
Make straight paths for him.
Every valley shall be filled in,
Every mountain and hill made low.
The crooked roads shall become straight,
The rough ways smooth.
And all mankind will see God’s salvation.”
Doug said, “This was one of a number of visions that were revealed in dark and desolate places, visions that prophesied God’s redemptive power would indeed be poured out in our city. The Quiet Revival, that represents the move of God happening now just below the surface through church planting and ministries throughout the city, began when Boston was on the verge of economic collapse, and filled with slums. But God has made the rough places smooth. It may be wise for us to pay attention to visions that occur in dark places, because surely through those visions we are seeing God’s redemptive power being displayed today.”
Below, two young woman pray over the city during UniteBoston’s spring evening night of prayer for Boston.
Written by Sheila Donegan