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Nurturing Relational Connections Across Boston's Christian Community

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Dec 17 2019

Short Film Seeking to interview Christian converts from Atheism

We are local filmmakers passionate and curious about sharing the stories of people who have converted from Atheism to Christianity. Our hope is that these testimonies can encourage The Body of Christ and serve as a powerful reminder of the brilliance of Christ’s salvation. We would like to start conducting local one-on-one, on-camera interviews in February 2020. If this is your story, please connect with us by emailing convertsshortfilm@gmail.com

-Jordan Knott and Nathan Burgett

Psalm 51:12-  (NIV) Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me.

 

Written by Andrew Walker · Tagged: testimony

Dec 28 2018

UniteBoston’s Top Ten Photos of 2018

From a huge summer worship night to our neighborhood coordinator team tripling in size, UniteBoston has built and grown in big ways this year! Thanks for joining into our community and for all the ways you contribute to building bridges across Christians towards greater gospel movement in Boston!

Here are our top ten photos from this year

January 2018 – Leaders from various church traditions at the 2018 Week of Prayer for Christian Unity Fellowship Dinner

 

February 2018 – UniteBoston Meetup before the Hillsong concert

 

April 2018 – UniteBoston Neighborhood Dinner in Dorchester

 

August 2018 – Neighborhood Dinner at Adam’s house in East Boston

 

August 2018 – UniteBoston volunteers gather for a photo before the summer worship night. Photo Credit: Koo Chung

 

August 2018 – Worshipping Jesus right in the heart of the city of Boston during the 2018 worship night. Photo Credit: Elijah Mickelson

 

August 2018 – UB Worship Team at the summer worship night. Photo Credit: Koo Chung

 

October 2018 – UniteBoston volunteer thank you celebration party

 

October 2018 – Kelly Fassett, UniteBoston’s Team Leader, speaking at Q Commons on “Hospitality in a Polarized World”

 

November 2018 – UB Worship Team Member Caleb McCoy shares about the joy of collaboration at the 4th Annual UniteBoston Fundraising Party

 

November 2018 – First UB Neighborhood Dinner in West Roxbury, hosted by Sally Jackson from the Church of the Cross

Written by uniteboston · Categorized: Blog · Tagged: 2018, boston, christian, christianity, ecumenism, massachusetts, new england, photos, pictures, testimony, top ten, uniteboston, unity

Dec 31 2014

Praise Report: UniteBoston is Changing LIves in Boston!

          

UniteBoston’s Top 5 Highlights

from 2014!

Thanks for being a part of this mission to better unite the Christian community in Boston through shared experiences.  

We are connecting all to Jesus, His people, and His causes to transform all of Boston. 

In John 17, Jesus prayed: “May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me." 

We believe that UniteBoston is being used to help answer Jesus’ prayer. Here’s why:

More than 63 churches working together with 10 Days Boston!


We coordinated the 4th annual 10 Days Boston, involving more than 63 different churches from 4 major Christian streams in ten consecutive nights of prayer and worship throughout the body of Christ.

 

Testimonies of God changing lives


”I had a personal transformaion in my understanding of people from the Catholic and Orthodox traditions, and I now understand how important it is to form friendships based around Jesus, not on our differences.“ – Sung Yun Lee

 

"I always love to worship with people who are not like myself. There’s a richness and beautiful harmony present when different groups come together.” – Kaci Norman 

 

 

  John Armstrong, Director of ACT 3 Ministry, visited Boston in November. John speaks highly     of UniteBoston’s ministry in his blog here

 

In 2014, we initiated UniteBoston Reps!

 

UniteBoston launched six UB Reps last February, who build relational connections among neighborhoods. Pastors are exploring the possibility of the UB Reps of the UB Reps coordinating a city-wide day of service for every Christian in Boston!

 
The next UB Rep cohort will begin in January. If you’d like to learn more about being a UniteBoston Rep for your neighborhood, simply reply to this email!
 
Other opportunities to volunteer with UniteBoston are listed here.
 

81 Meetings with Ministry Leaders!

In 2014, the UniteBoston team had 81 one-on-one meetings with ministry leaders in the city. It’s awesome to hear what God is doing from His people!

461 Christian events & 22,018 Website Visits!

During 2014, there were 461 different Christian events posted to the UniteBoston calendar and 22,018 visits to our website – an increase of 27% from last year!

Thank you for sharing your events with the Christian community in Greater Boston – New connections are forming because of you!

Want to further unity in the city? Forward this newsletter!

We encourage you to forward this newsletter to

10 friends.

There are so many people throughout the Christian community who have never heard of UniteBoston and would be blessed to hear about how God is working throughout the city.

We dream of Boston transformed by the gospel of Jesus Christ.

We know that this transformation will not take place through any one church or denomination, but through all of us working together for the kingdom of God.

It’s not easy, but it’s possible. Would you join us by remembering us in your year-end giving? 

UniteBoston Team Leader

        

Written by jasonjclement · Categorized: Blog · Tagged: god in my city, jesusatwork, testimony, uniteboston

Aug 01 2014

Crossroads of Peace in Boston’s Back Bay

For the past five months, the UniteBoston Reps have been engaging in various activities to listen and learn from their communities. These past four weeks, each rep will be writing a brief blog to share their findings with the Greater Boston Christian community. This week, Andrew Walker, UB Rep in the Back Bay, shares his insights.

We dream of having every community in Boston connected with a UB Rep! UB Rep Cohorts begin in October and finish in May. If you’re interested in being a UB Rep in your community, email Kelly Steinhaus, kelly@uniteboston.com

————
When I think of Back Bay, two symbols come to mind that help me capture the character of this neighborhood: a pen and a wagon wheel. The pen represents learning and the pursuits that require a high level of literacy. Most of the activities that are evident in the Back Bay, from commerce to the various trades and occupations require learning and literacy as basic preconditions.

The wagon wheel brings to mind travel; and the Back Bay is certainly a hub of travel with Back Bay Station serving as a major gateway bringing people into the city and sending them to destinations within the region and beyond. Numerous hotels and restaurants provide hospitality for these travelers as well as those calling this home. And a healthy selection of shops along Boylston and Newbury Street attract shoppers from near and far.

For the most part, the resident population in Back Bay are those who can afford the high real estate prices, which consists of people with professional or highly technical training who hold jobs in the near vicinity. Among them are many families, as well as many with no close family ties.

The churches in the Back Bay are mostly examples of “traditional mainstream” denominations. Their congregations draw from the immediate neighborhoods, but also among them are some who come from surrounding schools as well some who commute to church, just as they commute to work sites in the Back Bay. But there are also a few more recent church planting efforts. The CityLife Presbyterian Church and Renewal Church are two examples of growing fellowships whose leaders speak with great excitement about praying and working for renewal in the city guided by the Spirit of Christ. They seem to be reaching mostly students and young working folks.

So one might gain an impression of the Back Bay being a crossroads offering comfortable domesticity as well as lively commercial and entertainment activity. But there is also in the Back Bay a confrontation with a less comfortable contrast: In 2013 the celebration of cosmopolitan expansiveness that is so much a part of the Boston Marathon and so appropriate to the character of the Back Bay was shattered by the explosion of two bombs. We witnessed and marveled at heroic interventions by so many first responders. In the following weeks admirable efforts were launched in aid of the casualties and their families. All of Boston’s citizens rightly drew encouragement from these acts and efforts. And then, four months later a young man was shot to death on Boylston Str., just across from Trinity Church. This event was not completely over looked by local media, but it got nowhere near the attention of the Marathon Bombing. That young man’s mother has asked us to consider, was the loss of her son any less tragic? Similarly, leaders in other Boston neighborhoods have asked us to consider, of the more than 300 shootings in other parts of the city, over the past ten years, are they any less tragic that they are deserving of so much less attention?

As I consider the question that we are all addressing, what’s God doing among us, this contrast weighs heavily on my heart. But I am not without encouragement.

At First Lutheran Church in Boston, my home congregation on Berkeley Street, I was invited this spring to present 3 sessions of instruction in Biblical Peacemaking during Sunday Morning Adult Bible study. I was pleasantly surprised at how well received it was. Three sessions grew into five sessions and there were more participants at the last session than at the first. I was especially delighted to observe that the sessions included allot of discussion and many thoughtful and penetrative questions were raised and debated. Perhaps most encouraging was the readiness of participants to consider the consequences of avoidance of difficult questions; how the patterns of avoidance hinder discussion when important issues like budget need to be addressed.

Participants in the congregation at First Lutheran are in many ways similar to the folks in the immediate neighborhood. Some are families, some are single, many are students. And we are blessed by much cultural diversity. Career interests are similar. Economic goals are similar. So I don’t consider it too much of a stretch of imagination to suppose that the thoughtful interest in Biblical Peacemaking I was surprised by at First Lutheran might imply that a similar interest exists in the larger community.

God is working among us and we’ll see the benefits when we listen to Him and to one another.

Written by jasonjclement · Categorized: Blog · Tagged: back bay, boston marathon, community exeg, community transformation, godinthebrokenness, jesus in the city, newbury street, peace, peacemaking, shalom, testimony, uniteboston

May 26 2014

Visions in Dark Places

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

Written by jasonjclement · Categorized: Blog · Tagged: boston, christian unity, cityonahill, godisgood, jesusinthecity, testimony, uniteboston

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