This week’s guest blogger is Ellen Bass, Director of the Boston Capacity Institute at the Black Ministerial Alliance. Ellen is a member of River of Life Church and began an initiative last year which encouraged church members to visit other congregations’ worship services on Sunday mornings. Read below to hear church members’ insights and key learnings about the kingdom of God in Boston through worship and fellowship  across historic barriers.

With about 60 members, River of Life Church in Jamaica Plain, Boston, is the typical size for a small New England church.[1]

You might be surprised to learn that a year ago, its leadership decided to send 10% of its members to visit other churches once a month. The little church wanted to experience worship and fellowship in different contexts from its own dually affiliated denominations of Christian & Missionary Alliance and American Baptist, as well as its own primarily white culture. The church’s leaders and members set out to connect with the rich diversity and unity of the broader Body of Christ in Boston.

A total of 17 different people visited the following churches over the course of the year:

• People’s Baptist Church
• Arabic Evangelical Baptist Church
• Congregacion Leon de Juda
• Bethel AME Church
• First Baptist Church JP
• Boston Chinatown Evangelical Church
• Eternal Covenant
• Roxbury Presbyterian Church
• Holy Resurrection Orthodox Church
• Community of St. Egidio at Mission Church

After each worship service, a small group from both churches often shared a meal together to get better acquainted. Anyone from our church was invited and encouraged to sign up to visit the churches they wanted to get to know better. Although it took some planning to get us to the right place at the right time, we learned a lot together!=

• We loved the hospitality of People’s Baptist Church; they spend five minutes every Sunday during the worship service with everyone in the congregation vigorously greeting everyone else in the room!
• The Orthodox Church had a beautiful family feel, with lots of people caring for all the children in the middle of the worship service, and plenty of acceptance for children’s noises and behaviors!
• We experienced how a shared culture makes fellowship very deep and close in these churches: Bulgarian Orthodox, Arabic, Black, and Latino. We found Middle-Eastern culture to be especially hospitable.
• Immigrant communities spoke about the challenges of language and culture, especially for their youth. These churches wanted to maintain an authentic culture within families across generations, but clearly the younger generations spoke a different language and had a different culture from the older generations. How do we all reach our youth effectively with the gospel?

Some people reflected on how being a minority was a new experience, and how valuable it would be to worship with co-ethnics if they were in the minority all week long. However, we were surprised by how easily and deeply we bonded with people we were so different from. There was a shared desire to maintain a close connection with many of these churches and continue building friendships.

Our plans for next year are still taking shape, but monthly visits are likely! We hope to focus our visits on other churches in its neighborhood of Jamaica Plain, to connect more deeply with our local churches and support what God is doing in our community.

River of Life Church is now confident that its small size isn’t a hindrance to connecting with the rich cultural and denominational diversity displayed in worship services across Boston on Sunday morning. What does your church want to learn and experience in the broader Body of Christ in Boston?

[1] Median US church size is 75. National Congregations Study, Duke University, 2007, p. 2, http://www.soc.duke.edu/natcong/Docs/NCSII_report_final.pdf