Bridging Divides Across Christians for the Flourishing of the City
On April 28-30, a conference called Satancon took place in Boston, which was to be the largest gathering of Satanists in history. At the same time, multiple Christian groups, including YWAM and Revive Boston, rallied together to host united evangelism and outreach. UniteBoston posted a call to pray for Boston on our social media, that as this group entered our city, they would encounter the transforming love of Jesus. There are so many testimonies coming out of this weekend, and this call to prayer was shared on Facebook 2,300 times! What the enemy meant for evil, God will turn it around for good!
Aaron Reeves has been serving with YWAM Boston for over a decade – Click below to hear him describe how God transformed hearts this weekend.
In case you didn’t know, this weekend (April 28-30) Boston hosted the largest Satanic Temple gathering in the world. As people who believe Boston is a beacon to the nations with the Hope of Christ, we could not remain silent or idle during this time! In January, as soon as we found out this event was planned, we began to ask the Lord how He wanted us to respond. He led us to partner with a ministry called “Revive Boston” – who were planning a 3 day worship and prayer conference over the same weekend as “Satan-Con” taking place. Our hope was to use this moment to wake up the church in our region and mobilize them into reaching the lost of our city!
As the weeks and days until the event drew nearer, God gave us incredible favor with the city and with our plans to accomplish what has turned out to be largest evangelism training and outreach Boston has seen in 20 years (maybe even more!). It was also the fulfillment of a dream that our director, Jeremy, has had for over a decade – to see worship, prayer and evangelism in every square in Boston! This is exactly what happened. Through the favor of the Lord we were able to secure 8 outreach locations, with permits, across a mile and a half stretch of downtown Boston. We planned to not only have evangelism at each of these locations, but a Prayer Station and worship team as well.
On Saturday, April 29, our entire staff and student body headed down into the city to train believers in evangelism. At this point, we didn’t know who would come to the training, and honestly we thought maybe 60-70 people would come. You should have seen my face as we opened the doors at 9 am and people flooded in, and by 10 am 240 people were in attendance of the training!
At 12:30 we organized all attendees into 8 different groups and set off to our outreach locations to share the Gospel, worship and minister in prayer to anyone and everyone we could.
I was the head organizer of this outreach and had the opportunity/responsibility to make sure each team got to its place, that their equipment for worship and prayer was set up, and they were in a good spot for ministry. This meant I got to walk/run all over downtown Boston all afternoon, checking in on teams and hearing story after story of how God was moving in real time on the streets of our city. Of course, I would stop and minister along the way, but walking through the city heart of our city on Saturday – you couldn’t make it 3 minutes without hearing worship, getting prayed for, or hearing the Gospel message! It was incredible! And all of this on the day that “Satan-con” was happening. God always wins!
We gathered everyone back at our meeting place at 4 pm to share testimonies and celebrate what God accomplished on the outreach. For over an hour people of all ages came and shared how God had used them, some leading a person to Christ for the first time, others seeing people healed, and even some interaction and ministry to satanists attending Satan-Con. Here are the final stats of this training & outreach:
240+ attended the training, ages 8 to 82 years old. Over 20 nationalities were represented. By the time we went on outreach, over 300 people joined us as we ministered to across 8 specific locations in downtown Boston. In 2 hours we saw 98 people get saved, and thousands ministered to and prayed for!
All Glory to Jesus for this historic day for our city and the Kingdom of God in Boston. This is why we do what we do!
Thank you for your continued prayer and support of our family and mission. We would not be able to accomplish things like this weekend without your partnership in prayer and finances. This weekend was a victory shared by all in the Kingdom – and we’re just getting started!
Carol’s Testimony: “Had a grand time going out with Revive Boston & Ywam Boston learning how to witness and evangelize to the people of Boston! I had one young man rededicate his life back to Christ! It was awesome! He was super sweet and it was well received. It’s always been my hearts desire to do this type of work, to GO OUT and share Christ and his redemptive freedom with people! So I felt really blessed to be a part of this great commission & to be alongside these two beautiful ladies who love God and share the same burden for souls. Besides the 300 in our group, I noticed SO many groups of Christian’s out and about, planting seeds of Christ’s love, praying for people and sharing the gospel. It was REALLY beautiful and definitely the will of God! Thank you, Father for all the many souls saved this weekend! Lets keep the fire burning!”
-Carol Blanchard
Today, we are featuring Dan Elliott as our guest blogger. Dan serves as the Promotions Manager for K-LOVE Boston and describes that his goal and his mission are simple: to help his audiences take one step closer to Christ. Dan holds a Master’s Degree in Ministry and is currently pursuing his Doctorate in Ministry with a focus on Advanced Expository preaching. Read below to hear Dan’s testimony of how he has seen God change lives and how KLOVE can partner with you to celebrate God’s great work in our region.
I love stories.
Stories that have a great beginning, middle, and end. I love stories that are as captivating as they are encouraging, ones that can take our attention forever and make the hours fly by. Where a great hero defeats evil and saves the people. And, when asked, I’m sure many of us can tell these kinds of great stories in our own lives. Stories of both pain and fulfilled promise, stories of devastating lows and incredible highs, and stories that are amazing examples of how good God is.
Great storytellers know how to engage people with what they’re doing and how to take the audience with them into the story. My story is an example of just that. I’ve grown up in church, have seen God do great things in the lives of people and have gotten to watch many stories changed for the better by Jesus. As a former Pastor, I have gotten to connect with people from all walks of life and see how the presence of God in their lives has made all the difference. As a traveling speaker, I’ve seen many people and their stories from a variety of places and have gotten to have a front row seat to the story that God is writing through His church here in New England. This story is one of unity and community, where God glorifies Himself through the collaboration that we can all have in working out His plan.
I have also known significant pain, that has resulted in two books being written by my family. We have seen abuse, injury, and autism, as well as good times, hard times, and everything in between. I have seen God meet us in the middle of that pain and show how skilled of a storyteller He is. In fact, there is not a greater storyteller than Jesus, and the stroke of His pen changes the world.
As we look at scripture, we can see God working both in our lives individually and in the lives of all of us together. Isaiah 43: 19-21 says this:
“Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert. The wild beasts will honor me, the jackals and the ostriches, for I give water in the wilderness, rivers in the desert, to give drink to my chosen people, the people whom I formed for myself that they might declare my praise.”
We can see God writing the story of His people and His work that culminated in both His resurrection and the creation of His church. Isaiah was writing this about future generations to come and to set the stage for one of God’s greatest stories, The Church. And the best part is, He isn’t done writing stories through His church, His eternal partner in His work for a renewed world. His love for the world is shown by His love for the church, because through the church the world will see Him.
At K-LOVE, we see the value of the local church, and we exist to push it forward. We want to partner with churches in telling the stories of how God is moving in their midst to do great things for His glory. God is doing so many amazing things throughout New England, and we know that the church at large here could truly benefit from hearing some of these things and seeing themselves encouraged. God is moving here, and we love sharing the stories of it. One of our favorite stories is of the time God used our radio station to prevent someone from taking their own life. While on their way to a bridge, they were moving through the radio dial, and they providentially came across our station. Through the message of the songs that they heard they realized that there was hope available, even when life seemed hopeless through a relationship with Jesus. Once they came to this conclusion, they got involved in a local church and the rest is history: this person began a relationship with Christ and never looked back.
Personally, I love hearing these stories of how God is changing lives through His church and doing great things. If you would like us to be a part of your church’s story, we’d love to talk about how we can help. We have a variety of platforms that we could feature your church or organization on including our text club, Instagram page, and our website events page. We don’t ask for anything financially, rather we see it as an opportunity to partner alongside your church to tell others about the story that God is telling through you. We love stories and can’t wait to tell others about God’s work in the middle of yours.
For more information about how we can help please shoot us an email at boston@klove.com or reach out to us on Instagram @kloveboston.
It was, indeed, a Christian celebration of liberation filled with preaching, music, singing/rapping, poetry, testimony and prayer! Let’s take a photographic scroll down memory lane as we use this Friday to flash back to the first inaugural Juneteenth Jubilee Observance! Thanks again to Rev. Kevin Peterson for the vision and The Table, Restoration City Church, New Democracy Coalition and UniteBoston for the partnership in making this happen!
Photos courtesy of Josh Wilson, Devlin Scott, Davie Hernandez, Kelly Fassett and Fons Cervera.