UniteBoston

Bridging Divides Across Christians for the Flourishing of the City

Upcoming UniteBoston Events: Save the Date!

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UniteBoston nurtures relational connections throughout Boston’s Christian community. Save the date for these upcoming events that we’re planning for the year!

  • December 8: “UniteBoston: Let’s Do it!” party, Paulist Center downtown, 6:30 to 8:30pm. We’ll have a live band, food, and fun activities. Please plan to attend!
  • January 18-25: Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, with worship gatherings reflecting the diversity of the body of Christ throughout Boston. Do you know any churches who would like to host for this? We’re beginning to recruit for this…
  • May 6: BostonServe, where we are coordinating collaborative service projects and encouraging every church to serve together in their neighborhood
  • May 21-29: Taize Pilgrimage of Trust gathering in St. Louis focused around racial reconciliation; A large group of Boston people are going; some of us will be doing a running relay to get there!
Finally, in November we’re going to be giving away Amazon gift cards to people who tell their friends to sign up for the UB newsletter. Stay tuned for more info about that!
Thanks for your commitment to Jesus and His Church throughout the city. Please email kelly@uniteboston.com if you have any questions or feedback for us. God is up to great things in Boston!

UniteBoston was featured in the Koinonia Newsletter!

We have big news – we were just featured on the Paulist Fathers “Koinonia” newsletter! The text is posted below, or you can check it out by clicking on the link here

 

UniteBoston: Recognizing the Family of God

UniteBoston Reps Team

By Kelly Steinhaus

August 2, 2016
Kelly Steinhaus
Kelly Steinhaus

“These are my brothers and sisters!”

I hear this sentiment expressed repeatedly from individuals attending events affiliated with our up-and-coming ecumenical organization in Boston called UniteBoston. UniteBoston’s mission is to build relational connections throughout the diversity of Boston’s Christian community. There are many differences separating Christians, but with UniteBoston we focus on the shared faith practices that bring us together: worship, prayer, and missional service to the city.

While we are a large network now, with strong relationships in the Catholic, Evangelical, Mainline Protestant, and Orthodox communities, starting a non-profit organization was never our intent. Rather, a group of young people and I noticed that there were so many great things happening around churches in the city, but little infrastructure to connect the events that were taking place with the people that might be interested in attending.

To address this, in September 2010, we started sending out weekly “UniteBoston” email newsletters with information about the various Christian events taking place in the city. Within a couple of months, over 1,000 people had added themselves to the newsletter! Additionally, a lot of local interest was emerging, and a leadership team began to form. Soon, the newsletter became overloaded with information submitted from the community, so we raised funds and built a website.

UniteBoston Fall meeting on Boston Common

UniteBoston Fall meeting on Boston Common

Over the next few years, UniteBoston continued to grow, eventually becoming a 501c3 non-profit in July 2012. In addition to our weekly Christian events newsletter, UniteBoston hosts monthly “meetup” events to build community and encourage people to go beyond their denominational walls to discover all that God is doing in Boston. During Lent last year, we coordinated a “Holy Week Pilgrimage,” which highlighted various worship services that were already taking place in the city. Two young men attended an Orthodox service for the first time on Good Friday, and were astounded by how they resonated with the liturgy.

Additionally, UniteBoston loves to see Christians come together to serve the city. We have a team of “UniteBoston Reps” who are working to build relationships with pastors and city leaders within specific neighborhoods in Boston. The UB Reps meet monthly as a collaborative “think tank” of God’s work in the city, and they mobilize churches together to discern a collaborative shared missional project for their neighborhood communities. We had our first BostonServe day last October, and we’re gearing up for a CityServe day on May 6, 2017 in conjunction with Catholics and Lutherans throughout New England who are coming together to commemorate the 500thanniversary of the Reformation. Truly, God is up to great things in Boston!

Throughout these initial years of our ministry, I have begun to discover something significant about ecumenism: While the Internet can be a powerful tool to bring Christians together, the real work of Christian unity comes down to relationships, which cultivate agape love between brothers and sisters in Christ. It was not until I sat down with brothers and sisters from other denominations and ethnic groups that God began to reveal my underlying biases and partiality towards my own tradition’s worship practices. Through my new friendships, God began to break down my boxes of how I understood Christ’s Church and God’s work in the world. This continues to be true for our leaders and participants in UniteBoston’s events – we’re discovering that Christ’s family is much bigger than we initially imagined!

In coming together across our differences, God does an incredible work in our hearts. We begin to identify ourselves primarily not as Catholic or Lutheran, for example, but as pilgrims on a journey following Jesus Christ. Our denominational distinctions matter, and they matter profoundly – but our differences come to be understood not as barriers for others to enter into my one “right” understanding of God, but rather as beautiful displays of the multifaceted heart of God. I am beginning to see that unity is a process by which the church is brought to maturity (Eph 4:13).

In light of the recent racially-charged events plaguing our nation, I lament with the families that have been affected with this violence and the reality of racial discrimination and injustice within our communities. Jesus models loving those who are difficult to love, and Jesus’ call to love our neighbor must be stronger than our innate tendency to fear and hate those who are different than us.

People in the world are searching for a vision of hope and transcendence beyond what they see. What they are looking for is found in the Church, as Christ’s work on the cross has fully destroyed the dividing walls of hostility (Eph 2:14.) Indeed, we are called to embody this ministry of reconciliation (2 Cor 5:19). However, if people look at the Church and only see us in tension with one another, then how can they believe that our message is about love? Ultimately, it’s as we embody Christ’s message of reconciliation that we will regain our ability to act in healing ways in situations that the world is wrestling with.

In addition to directing UniteBoston, Kelly Steinhaus is also studying urban ministry at Boston’s campus of Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. She lives in Brookline and enjoys outdoor activities such as hiking and bicycling.

Updates from the Institute for Christian Unity

Scott Brill is a good friend of ours at the Institute for Christian Unity – Here is an exciting update from them about what they have planned for the upcoming year!

“The world needs to know Jesus. We must proclaim Him without any pause, together. The division among Christians is the fruit of our sin, and it is a scandal and our greatest impediment for the mission for which the Lord has called us: announcing the Good News of the Gospel.”

So said Pope Francis in a letter he sent to a gathering of Evangelicals & Catholics this past September – at which I had the privilege of representing the Institute for Christian Unity. For me, Francis’ words capture the essence of our work and the passion which drives me to keep going at this in the face of many challenges. It resonates deeply with our vision: “To raise up a new generation of ‘prophetic ecumenists’ who seek to both confront and heal disunity in the Body of Christ and live as a sign of love for that Body, so that the world would know the good news of Jesus” And I hope it stirs something in you as well.

Over the past year, that vision and passion has motivated me to teach about reconciliation across historic church divides in a number of settings and to create networks between Catholics and Evangelicals through smaller gatherings like the one mentioned above. I also spent a week in April out of my comfort zone at the National Workshop for Christian Unity, helping my good friend and mentor John Armstrong establish the first-ever participation of Evangelicals at that conference.

That vision and passion has motivated my co-Director Vito Nicastro to spend months of hard work behind the scenes to bring about a remarkable joint letter from Cardinal O’Malley and Bishop Hazelwood of the ELCA that even got a shoutout in the Boston Globe. It has motivated our Fellow Matt Crane to create a unique community grass-roots ecumenical forum in the Boston area. Over the past calendar year they have thoughtfully engaged a number of powerful topics including racism, human sexuality, the role of women in the church and the current refugee crisis – all in a space of mutual respect and love. And all of us have been involved in mentoring several young undergraduates and seminarians, all of whom are discovering their own call to prophetic ecumenism.

Though each of us has another full-time ministry, our goal for next year is to continue to expand the impact of the Institute. Some of the ways we’d like to do that include:
• Working with Vision New England to develop more missional partnerships between Evangelicals and Catholics.
• Hosting a multi-day Christian unity gathering in the greater Boston area in the fall of 2016.
• Following up the joint letter by creating structures for Lutherans, Catholics and other Christians to come together for study, prayer and service
• Expanding the WEE Forum to more communities

Warmly in Christ,

Scott Brill
Founding Fellow and Co-Director

Healing the Land: Strategic Prayer for Boston

Over the past six years, Christ Otto and a team from his ministry Belonging House have been doing strategic prayer in Boston. They have seen a series of dramatic answers to prayer in the South End and in the area near the Massachusetts State House.

Today’s blog post is an excerpt from Christ’s report on these prayer initiatives called “Healing the Land.” The following points are the foundation of transforming prayer in cities and regions.
1. Listen to the Lord and Do what He tells you.
Effective prayer is a dialogue, and He who knows all is your best guide for each situation. We begin with scripture. Taking time for silence, waiting on God, and journaling has been helpful. I have found that God’s simple direction is better than a thousand strategic planning meetings.

2. Teamwork is essential.
The biggest breakthroughs have happened when someone gave me an insight I never considered. No one has all the answers and working in a team has helped us all hear God more clearly. The most helpful insights have come from people who live outside of Boston. Their fresh perspective often brought the breakthrough.

3. This is a ministry of healing and reconciliation.
Most of what we have done is address the specific things that release curses on the land–the shedding of innocent blood, sexual immorality, breaking of covenants, moving of boundary stones, and the breaking of relationships. When these sins are confessed and forgiven we can then invite God to heal the brokenness. You will notice that we did not hold large “reconciliation events.” Although we often had one person who represented the parties involved, we did not focus on trying to get parties together to have an event. All of the prayer has been strategic and precise, and often in almost secret.

4. There are no magic bullets.
One interesting aspect of this ministry has been hosting groups from outside Boston to pray in the city. Many times these visitors have come with the attitude that they have the “answer” and that if we would apply their “method” things would be done “right.” Most of the gimmicks have produced little or no lasting fruit. We have found that the long, low, humble road of obedience has been the game changer.

5. Being weird is not intercession.
My ministry Belonging House and the people I work with have a supernatural worldview. Sometimes we have had to depend on the simple direction of the Holy Spirit. Because I work with many groups I have seen how some have felt they needed shofars, flags, victory shouts, swords, or complicated “rituals” while they pray. Right up front, we have done all of these things at different times, but they are not the center. Sometimes prophetic acts are part of what we are doing as an expression of what God has already done.

6. The Cross of Jesus makes everything possible.
It is the finished work of the cross and applying of the Blood of Christ to the sin of the past that real change happens. As we openly confess sin, and our current agreement with it, and apply the forgiveness of the gospel, shifts begin to happen.

7. Listen to the Land.
We pray with our eyes open. We have taken time to learn the real history of where we are– and that means going into the library and doing research. It means getting to know the streets and terrain. It means knowing where and when things happened. Some of the delays in this process were because I did not do the right research in the beginning, and I trusted local “folklore” and polemical versions of history rather than accurate sources. Listening to the land has also involved noticing things like wildlife behavior, odd topography, and the wind. For example, we have noted dramatic gusts of wind during important breakthrough moments.

8. Praise and worship are our chief weapons.
Many times we have asked those with us not to enter into “intercession.” Most of this kind of prayer only reinforces the negative beliefs and judgements about a place or a situation. Praising God shifts the atmosphere in a given place and opens up our ability to pray and hear God. Entering into praise also gets us in tune with heaven, and God’s perspective. In praise we are able to pray from a place of triumph.

9. Authority comes from honor.
God directed me to spend almost two years giving honor to the people who prayed for me to come into New England, even though neither they nor I understood this at the time. I also sought permission to be on the land from the first nations people. By honoring and receiving this blessing, I have walked in a base level of authority that many ministries lack. Rebellion is the root of witchcraft. A culture of honor breaks this.

10. A large part of this ministry has been about “going low.”
We have taken the directions of Jesus to take the lower place at the banquet seriously. In praying on Beacon Hill, we chose to not take the road of political activism, and we have chosen not to build a ministry. We have simply walked and prayed. This story is a report of the outcome.

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Christ Otto has recently published a book entitled An Army Arising and is also available to lead prayer tours of Boston and to share how prayer and creativity is transforming New England. Learn more about Christ’s ministry at belonginghouse.org


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