uniteboston – UniteBoston

Jun 12 2026

Illuminate Photoblog: A Celebration of Christian Unity, Reconciliation, and Hope in Boston

On May 29, 80 people gathered for UniteBoston’s “Illuminate” Fundraising Celebration and Community Gathering. In a season where profound division, polarization, injustice and violence can feel overwhelming, we came together to declare that “the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness cannot overcome it” (John 1:5). At UniteBoston, we are committed to equipping Christians to be bridge-builders and agents of reconciliation, justice, peace, and repair. This gathering called Christians in Greater Boston to embody the light of Christ boldly and beautifully for the flourishing of our city.

Voices of the Movement

The gathering featured a rich tapestry of local leaders and storytellers who bore witness to God’s work of reconciliation, justice, and peacemaking.

Rev. Gina Tillotson-Cordy (Pastor of First Church of the Nazarene in Lynn) shared a moving testimony from her time in the Beloved Community Lab. She spoke of the hard, holy work of sixteen diverse pastors meeting monthly to learn and practice unity, justice, and reconciliation in their own contexts – and the vital truth of seeing everyone we meet as beloved children of God.

Rev. Dr. Melinda Priest (UB Board Member and Lead Pastor of Awaken City Church) highlighted the importance of Convene. She shared a powerful blueprint for city-wide renewal based on her research interviewing 39 Greater Boston faith leaders. Her research shows that regular, cross-sector convening strengthens the Christian witness, fuels innovative resource sharing, and contributes to the multiplication of disciples, leaders, and churches.

Loving Big: Keynote Address by Rozella Haydée White

The centerpiece of the evening was an inspiring keynote address by public theologian, author, and coach Rozella Haydée White. Drawing from her foundational work on The Power of Revolutionary Relationships to Transform the World, Rozella challenged attendees to look past sentimental, anemic forms of love to practice a love that is Christ-like, life-giving, justice-seeking, and restorative.

“UniteBoston’s mission rests on a profound theological truth – relationships change us. When we sit across the table from one another, hear one another’s stories, and choose curiosity over assumptions and judgment, light begins to emerge. I believe the future of the Christian church will not be in how loud we argue but by how deeply we love… May we illuminate. May we bring light to hard places. May we create clarity in confusion. And may Boston encounter in us not only a more brighter church but also a more loving one, for the witness of the gospel and the glory of God.”

Following her address, Revs. Kelly and Devlin joined Rozella for a dynamic, interactive fireside chat, utilizing live polling from the audience to address the real-life tensions and questions surfacing in the room.

Growth and Sustainability

A central milestone celebrated during the evening was a monumental structural shift for the organization: for the first time in its 16-year history, UniteBoston is operating with two full-time staff members. This growth allows Executive Director Rev. Kelly Fassett and Managing Director Rev. Devlin Scott to step out of day-to-day administrative bottlenecks and focus strictly on scaling regional programmatic innovations and institutional strategy.

Your investment directly fuels these core avenues of citywide transformation:

The Beloved Community Lab: Moving from a pilot framework to offering direct training, coaching, and workshops for local congregations to cultivate peacemaking habits.
The Boston Sankofa Journey: Centering and preserving the legacy of historic Black Christian leaders on a public digital archive, and inviting individuals into a personal “story-collecting movement” to foster historical truth-telling.
Collaborative Outreach: Convening platforms like Boston Flourish and the Boston Immigrant Resource Dashboard (BIRD) to build a connected system of care and resource-sharing, so all might flourish in our city.

The Glow-Pass: Keeping the Momentum Alive

Throughout the evening, Christian leaders, pastors, and community members from diverse traditions gathered to celebrate what God is doing across Greater Boston through collaboration, reconciliation, and relationship. This closing moment captures the heart of UniteBoston’s mission: that the light of Christ shines brightest when we walk together.

Through the immense generosity of our attendees and sponsors, we have raised $28,673 towards our fundraising goal! We are still pushing to hit our next critical campaign milestone of $30,000. Will you help us close the remaining gap to fund the buses, staff time, resources, and shared tables that keep our bridge-building movement running?

👉 Partner with Us: Click Here to Give to the Illuminate Campaign

A heartfelt thank you to our event sponsors who made this beautiful evening possible!

Thank you to everyone who joined us for Illuminate and who continues to support UniteBoston’s work of nurturing unity among diverse Christians for the flourishing of Greater Boston. We are grateful to have you in our community!

May 15 2026

In a Time of Division, the Church Must Shine

Are Christians simply mimicking the divisions of our culture, or are we offering a counter-cultural witness?

In this week’s UB Newsletter, we are featuring an inspiring sermon from UB’s Executive Director Rev. Kelly Fassett on Ephesians 2:14-22. Originally delivered at the 2026 American Baptist Churches of Massachusetts (TABCOM) Annual Gathering, Rev. Kelly Fassett highlights how we can represent the gospel by moving past our internal divisions to become true agents of the hope and peace of Christ.

We invite you to read the full reflection below and listen to the complete sermon on Youtube, “Removing Walls of Hostility to Preach Peace.”

P.S. You can explore more photos and key talks from the 2026 TABCOM Annual Gathering here.

P.P.S. Don’t forget to mark your calendars—we would love to see you at our “Illuminate” fundraising celebration and community gathering on May 29!

In a Time of Division, the Church Must Shine: Tearing Down the Walls of Hostility

By Rev. Kelly Fassett, Executive Director of UniteBoston

We live in an age of fractures. Look around, and you can’t avoid seeing how our world is siloed by political affiliation, ideologies, and digital algorithms. The world is experts at erecting walls—walls of suspicion, walls of fear, walls of indifference—which only contribute to our growing polarization and underlying postures of hostility.

But what about the Church? For those of us who call Jesus “Lord,” the time has come to ask: Are we mimicking the divisions of our culture, or are we offering a radical, counter-cultural witness?

This is the core question that drives the mission of UniteBoston. My own journey as a bridge-builder began years ago. I arrived in Boston in 2008 as a young woman with dreams of joining an elite rowing team on the Charles River. One morning, however, I woke up with a complete lack of desire to row. I asked God, “Why am I here in Boston if I’m not here to row?” And I sensed God’s voice more clearly than anything else I had known before: “Kelly, you are here to unite My bride.”

Woah! What does that mean? This moment led me into a beautiful, messy, and challenging experiment that became UniteBoston. I became passionate about not only orthodoxy but orthopraxy – right belief and right practice – that in our divided world, us Christians need to not just “talk the talk” but “walk the walk” and put our commitment to neighbor-love into practice in the places where we live, work and play.

The urgency I feel today is captured powerfully in one of my favorite passages of scripture: Ephesians chapter 2. In our current, deeply polarized context, this letter feels as though it was written for our exact moment. In my preparation for this sermon, one verse, in particular, continued to stand out:

“Jesus came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near.” (Ephesians 2:17)

This simple statement is a profound theological challenge. Are we, the modern-day “household of God,” preaching that same peace to those near and far from the Church today?

The Scandal of Our Disunity

We must take a hard, honest look in the mirror. When we analyze the witness of the Church today, the results can be sobering. The research confirms what many of us feel on a daily basis.

In the Great DeChurching, Jim Davis and Michael Graham tracked 40 million Americans who stopped attending church in the last 25 years. They found that hyper-politicization, inability to listen, and an emphasis on culture wars are among the top reasons people leave. Additionally, Barna research has shown that 87% of people view Christians as “judgmental,” and 85% see us as “hypocritical.” It is clear that there is a widening “witness gap,” where the grace of the gospel is drowned out by internal hostility, division, and fighting.

The primary criticism isn’t about our doctrine; it’s about our posture. It isn’t just about what we believe, but how we believe it. The world is watching, and what they see is often a “hostility” that looks identical to the divisions outside the Church.

I say this as a practical theologian: we cannot just talk the talk; we must walk the walk. To become the agents of peace Christ calls us to be, we must commit to three practical and difficult steps: grieving our disunity, finding our walls, and extending a hand of fellowship.

1. Grieve the Scandal of Disunity

When we think of ecclesiastical “scandals,” we usually imagine financial theft, abuses of power, or sexual misconduct. While these are truly grievous, Scripture suggests that our divisions, hatred, and hostility are just as offensive to God and are equally effective at distorting the core message of the Gospel (Eph 4:3).

The root of this sin is a posture our UniteBoston team calls “righteous hubris.” This is the insidious, often subconscious belief that “me and my people are the ones truly following Jesus, and those people (whoever they are) need to become like me to really be Christian.”

This hubris is not new. Ephesians 2 addresses this exact dynamic between two groups of people defined by a history of animosity: Jews and Gentiles. Gentiles often despised the Jewish people for their “otherness,” while the Jewish people saw themselves as the exclusive possessors of the only path to God. They considered the Gentiles “far away” spiritually, devoid of access to God, and inherently unclean.

Archeologists have actually found a physical stone barrier that used to separate Gentiles from the holy parts of the temple. The wall stood five feet tall and bore a terrifying inscription: “Let no one of any other nation come within this fence around the Holy Place. Whoever is caught doing so will himself be responsible for his death.” This was a literal wall of hospitality that promised death to those who were “far away.”

Temple Warning Inscription. Copyright CBN Israel

This makes Paul’s message in Ephesians 2 truly radical. He looks at this historic, violent divide and makes an astonishing claim: because of Jesus Christ, there is an exchange, a transfer from hostility to fellowship.

To the Gentiles, God says, “You who were once far away are now brought near because of Christ.” (v. 13)
“For [Christ] himself is our peace, who has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, by setting aside in his flesh the law with its commands and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself one new humanity out of the two, making peace, and in one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility.” (v. 14-16)

This is ground-breaking! It means that “they” (whoever your “they” is) are actually part of our same family.

The hostility between Jews and Gentiles? Banished at the foot of the cross.
The hostility between Democrat and Republican? Eliminated by the cross.
The hatred between Liberal and Conservative? TORN DOWN by the cross.

When we preach peace to those who are near and far, we must remember that there is no longer a “closer to God” group and a “further from God” group defined by culture or politics. The cross is the great leveler. And why is it the leveler? Verse 12 is vital: because we were ALL enemies of God. Every single one of us was separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship, without hope, and without God. But now—only because of God’s grace—we are chosen. At the foot of the cross, we are all just God’s children in need of grace.

The Greek word Paul uses for “reconcile” in verse 16 is apokatallassō, and it implies this radical exchange—a transfer from hostility to intrinsic oneness. It’s not just a cease-fire; it is a declaration of belovedness that we must extend to all who are created in God’s image.

2. Find Your Wall of Hostility

If Jesus modeled this radical fellowship across dividing lines—purposefully choosing both Matthew the tax collector (who worked for the empire) and Simon the Zealot (who wanted to overthrow the empire) as his disciples—then we must do the same. We cannot model the kingdom of God monoculturally or monopolitically.

Yet, somehow, over the years, we always seem to lose our way. History is cluttered with the fragmentation of Christianity, from the Great Schism to the bloody slaughters of the Anabaptists. We might not be killing each other physically in Boston today, but we are too often ostracizing, publicly calling out without relationship, and acting out in destructive ways.

This issue of “righteous hubris” was made painfully clear to me last summer when I traveled to Northern Ireland to study peacebuilding. I learned about the Troubles, where hostility between Catholics and Protestants became so profound that in 30 years, 3,700 people were killed. I stood before “peace walls” that were 20 feet tall and extended for 21 miles. People told me that as they built the walls higher to “keep the peace,” others just threw larger stones and bombs over the top.

But I also met a pastor named Steven, a youth worker who knew the walls had to come down. He told me, “I knew the youth had to grow up together because it’s hard to throw stones at someone you know.” He partnered with Tracy, a Protestant leader, and it took them eight years to build enough trust to start a joint youth group. But by God’s grace, transformation took place. This neighborhood that once saw 30 youths jailed annually now sees only one youth jailed every four years. Violence was replaced by community.

Pastor Steven said something that I will never forget: “We have to eliminate the word ‘themens’ from our language.” This is Irish slang for “them,” a word that conveys profound suspicion and a posture of inner hostility. He told me, “When you talk about ‘themens,’ remember you’ve got three fingers pointing back at yourself. It’s not something that happens out there, but ‘in here.’”

There Are No Walls in Heaven: What Peacemakers in Belfast Taught Me

This is our work. We must go back to the imagery of Ephesians 2 and find our own walls that are keeping some “in” and some “out.”

To “preach peace to those far away,” you must first be willing to consider the people you see as “far away.” Yet, the tricky things about walls is that they are often invisible.

You can ask yourself: Which groups do you avoid? Who feels threatened? Who makes you uncomfortable? Which particular group do you cringe at the thought of praising? Is there a people group where you feel the world would be better off if there were less of “those people” around?

I invite you to dig deeper and get curious about where this comes from. Howard Thurman once said, “Often the degree to which we oppose a thing marks the degree to which we do not understand it. Sometimes we use our opposition to an idea to cover up our own ignorance.” Some of us are carrying hurts and trauma that need the healing balm of the Holy Spirit, not the projection of our hostility onto others.

I invite you to pause and give God a moment to reveal your wall. What precious thing are you trying to protect with that wall? What “themens” are on the other side? What might be their story, their hopes and dreams?

3. Extend Your Hand of Fellowship (With Curiosity)

Once we find our wall and our “themens,” the answer is simple, ancient, and difficult: Beloved Community.

In the early Church, cities were divided into ethnic enclaves, with physical walls keeping groups separate. But in Antioch, they did something radical: they crossed those walls to worship, eat, and fellowship together. Historians believe it was this behavior—not their dogma—that made them notice they were “little Christs.”

UniteBoston is carrying out a holy experiment called the “Beloved Community Lab.” We have been in a multi-year process of listening to stories of unity and disunity in the Church, and have landed on some clear understandings and practices to help all of us live out God’s call for unity, justice, and reconciliation in the places where we live, work, and play. We currently have 16 group of incredible pastors from many backgrounds who are journeying together to do the hard, deep work of beloved community.

We are learning that this unity isn’t just about a “kumbaya” moment that papers over our differences or focuses on what we have in common. The unity we are called to runs through our divisions, not around them.

To build a strong bridge, our hearts must stay tender. We need to ‘tend to the wounds’ of our estrangement. Bridge-building can feel like finding the right tools and skillsets. Tending to wounds requires us to lean in close to someone who is hurting and ask, “What happened? What hurts? How can I help?”

By God’s grace, we are seeing the Holy Spirit shift postures of hostility into humility, hospitality, and curiosity.

We are seeing Black pastors challenge White siblings to stand with them in the face of the injustices they are facing in our city.
We are seeing Conservatives help everyone remember Scripture and stay centered on Jesus.
We are seeing dreams emerge of collaborations across churches that would never be possible if we stayed in our isolated silos.
People are saying, “I don’t get how it all works out—but I’m really starting to love and care for these kin in Christ and want their good over my own.”

This are signposts of Beloved Community. We’re not there yet, but in a season of profound polarization, our ability to gather across differences bears witness to Jesus’ prayer for oneness (Jn. 17:23), serving as a living sign of the Gospel and a powerful testimony to Christ’s reconciling work in the world.

Tending to the Wounds Through Curiosity

Our final tip for bridge-builders is this: When the going gets tough, get curious. Turn to wonder. Ask: What is going on inside of me causing this reaction? and Where is Jesus here? What is the gift I need to receive from this other person?

We are inviting all who are stirring with a desire to see this kind of unity and reconciliation to join us. We are beginning to offer training and coaching for pastors and congregations in the practices of the Beloved Community Lab.

What should Christians be known by? Scripture’s answer is simple: Love (Jn 13:35).

Love has always been the mark of the Christian church and our greatest apologetic.

May this be true of us today as we embody the radical grace of the gospel by grieving the disunity, finding our walls of ‘themens,’ and extending a hand of fellowship that turns hostility into curiosity, and preaching peace to all.

My closing blessing for you is a prayer by Fr Gerry Reynolds. Fr. Gerry led a movement called the Unity Pilgrims who traveled between Catholic and Protestant churches in Northern Ireland. He wrote this prayer for the Unity Pilgrims:

Lord Jesus,
who on the eve of your death,
prayed that all your disciples may be one
as you in the Father and the Father in you,
make us feel intense sorrow over the infidelity of our disunity.
Give us the honesty to recognize,
and the courage to reject,
whatever indifference towards one another,
or mutual distrust,
or even enmity,
lie hidden within us.
Enable us to meet one another in you.
And let your prayer for the unity of Christians,
be ever in our hearts and on our lips,
unity such as you desire and by the means that you will.
Make us find the way that leads to unity in you,
who are perfect charity
through being obedient to the Spirit of love and truth.
Amen.

P.S. UniteBoston recently released a missional letter to clarify our calling as an organization, offer clarity about the values that hold our community together and what you can expect as you journey with us. Check it out below!

May 01 2026

Awakening Boston: The Vision and Heart of Pray.Boston

At UniteBoston, we love seeing churches pray and serve together, which is why we are grateful to feature Pray.Boston, a new citywide movement of prayer to see the city of Boston awakened to life with Jesus.

In this week’s blog, Yasmin Lountchenko (Pray Ministry Lead at Grace City Church) shares her vision for building “altars of prayer” where believers from all backgrounds intercede for our city’s flourishing. Click below to read how a humble prayer room has grown into a collaborative space for people to contend for God’s Kingdom “on earth as it is in heaven.”

By Yasmin Lountchenko

I used to walk through downtown Boston, and I would see the city seal but not think anything of it. Last summer, I was on a prayer walk in the Boston Common, and felt the need to look up the significance of the seal. Inscribed on the seal is the motto of our city, which is “SICUT PATRIBUS. SIT DEUS NOBIS”.

This translates to “God be with us as he was with our fathers.” Our city motto comes from King Solomon’s prayer when he dedicates the temple as a place to host God’s presence. This has largely shaped how we pray at Pray.Boston — like Solomon, we are praying that God’s presence would be known here in a tangible way.

My name is Yasmin Loutchenko, and I am serving as the Prayer Ministry Lead of Grace City Church and Pray.Boston. I moved to Boston for undergrad in 2020, and quickly got involved at Grace City Church. It was at Grace City that I was discipled in prayer and grew in love for the city of Boston. Throughout my time at Boston University, I felt God invite me to pray for awakening in Boston, which eventually led to Pray.Boston being formed out of Grace City.

Pray.Boston is a movement of prayer to see the city of Boston awakened to life with Jesus. We are calling our city to seek God, love him wholeheartedly, and contend for a move of His Spirit in our time. We exist as a citywide ministry for Boston, aiming to be a resource and a gift to the church in Boston.

We see prayer as the primary means through which God advances his kingdom on Earth. All throughout Scripture and awakening history, we see God move when his people gather to pray. The Northeast has witnessed significant moves of God, and our own city has a rich spiritual history. Boston was founded to be a “city on a hill,” a vision articulated by John Winthrop, later reinforced by Harvard as a center for training ministers, and dramatically renewed during the First Great Awakening. We have heard of all that God has done in our region, and we believe that God is raising up a praying community of people who are calling on him to do it again in our time and in our city.

In 2019, the Prayer Room started at Grace City Church – it was small and humble, but characterized by a deep dependence on the Spirit and confidence that the Lord responds to those who seek him. Even before Grace City officially launched, prayer was central to the leadership of the church, and the prayer room was born out of the belief that in order for us to faithfully steward our calling as a church, it needed to first come out of a place of total dependence on God. We needed God to do in his power, what we couldn’t in our own strength, so we met consistently every week, asking God to move in Boston and across New England.

As we continued to meet for prayer, God placed Pray.Boston on our hearts. We wanted to remain faithful with what God had entrusted us with, while seeking God’s heart for Pray.Boston. Over time, the Prayer Room grew and we started to welcome people from different churches and backgrounds. It was a space for people to encounter the presence of God and contend for God’spurposes in our city and world.

In August 2025, we sensed a clear release from the Lord to formally establish Pray.Boston—formalizing what had already been unfolding. With this step, our vision expanded: not only to cultivate a culture of prayer within Grace City, but across Boston. Since then, we have increased capacity in the Prayer Room, launched Prayer Labs to equip churches to build cultures of prayer in their own contexts, and begun forming meaningful relationships with pastors, leaders, and congregations throughout Boston.

We know that Jesus’s heart is not for one individual congregation, but for his entire body. And while we may have different expressions of our faith, we believe that communion with Christ and one another unites us and fulfills Christ’s desire for his bride. This is why we also started to host Citywide Prayer. Citywide Prayer is hosted bimonthly on Wednesday morning as a space for ministry leaders across the city of Boston to gather in united prayer as we seek God to move in and beyond our city.

Through Pray.Boston, we are witnessing people catch a vision of the inbreaking kingdom through prayer. One of our involved team members went from not really understanding prayer, to now regularly serving in the Pray.Boston Prayer Room, and now even starting a prayer meeting at his workplace. The Prayer Room is not built around any one personality, church, or method, but around the person and ministry of Jesus. Jesus instructs us to pray for the kingdom to come on earth as it is in Heaven, and the kingdom picture we see in Scripture is the gathering of a vast multitude from every nation, tribe, people, and language before the Lamb who is enthroned at the center (Rev. 7:9).

Our desire is to see each heart, home, and church collectively agree that the Lord is welcome and wanted in our city, knowing that God’s awakening work is greater than any one church. God is raising up a praying community in our city that serves as a promise to our city that there is a new and better way that is centered on Christ.

Rev. Devlin Scott & Rev. Kelly Fassett (UniteBoston) along with Pastor Brian Owen & Yasmin Lountchenko (Pray.Boston)

Join in! All are invited to join this praying community and commit to seeking revival and awakening in our city. The Prayer Room is open every Wednesday at 7:00 AM and 8:00 AM at 874 Beacon St., with an Evening Prayer Room hosted on the last Thursday of each month at 6:00 PM. Pastors and ministry leaders are also encouraged to attend Citywide Prayer on May 6 from 9:30-10:45am at 874 Beacon St. For additional events and resources, visit pray.boston.

Mar 27 2026

Solidarity is Sacred: Good Friday Public Worship & Action for Immigration Justice

“During Holy Week, Christians remember Jesus’ death as a confrontation with – and triumph over – the powers of empire. Jesus’s crucifixion was God’s ultimate act of solidarity with persecuted people — an act that calls us into radical solidarity with the crucified people of today.”

As a key practice this Holy Week, we invite the Boston Christian community to join Solidarity is Sacred, a movement devoted to reclaiming the story of Good Friday to stand in solidarity with our immigrant friends and neighbors.

Read more below as the organizers share the theological heartbeat of this initiative, which transforms the Stations of the Cross into a powerful public witness for Christ-centered sanctuary and justice.

By Sarah Hansman, Stef Grossano, and Katy Fazio

In March 2025, just blocks from First Church in Somerville – where one of our authors is the pastoral resident – plain clothes, masked men grabbed a Tufts graduate student off of the street in broad daylight and put her into the back of a car. For hours, the young woman’s attorney could not figure out where she had been taken. The student, later identified as Rümeysa Öztürk, had her visa revoked and was shipped thousands of miles away to a Louisiana detention center – all because of a student journalism piece Ozturk had written for the Tufts Daily. Members of First Church Somerville knew Ozturk and her friends. Fear and anger set in. Immigration enforcement tactics were changing and many wondered who would be next. The next 12 months revealed a campaign of cruelty towards immigrants that we continue to live through today.

Immigration enforcement tactics have long threatened the safety of our neighbors. But in this moment of authoritarian breakthrough, state violence is intensifying, causing fear and outrage in our communities. We have seen a record number of deaths in US detention centers (including Emmanuel Damas on March 2, a Haitian man living in our Boston), a near total ban on asylum, and the continued separation of families.

We are the co-coordinators of a grassroots, ecumenical coalition of people of faith responding to this moment. Our response to this moment comes out of our shared humanity, in recognition of the fundamental dignity in each person that has for too long been violated. Our distinct voice, however, is a Christian one. Our strength comes from drawing upon who we are and what we believe, which breaks through with striking clarity on Good Friday.

We are a coalition of Christians from various faith traditions and experiences. Sarah is a doctoral student in theological ethics, a hospital chaplain, prison minister, and Catholic woman committed to bridging the worlds of the worlds of theology, ministry, and community organizing. Stef believes in the creative power of human beings and the Holy Spirit to bend the moral arc of the universe towards justice. She has tried to flex that creativity and Spirit as an organizer, a prison educator, a facilitator, a legal worker, and now as the queer pastoral resident at First Church Somerville, UCC. Katy is a children’s minister, mom of two, and a gardener- all roles that require hope for the future and the pursuit of peace. This is the second year we are coordinating this action, because we believe that Good Friday is a unique moment for us to join together, as people of faith, to remember the memory of Jesus’ crucifixion and how it calls us to be in solidarity with the crucified peoples of the present.

Christians follow a God who was murdered by the state so that no one else would be subjected to such cruelty. The moment we forget this story is the moment we forget our call to solidarity as followers of Christ. If the cross is a spiritual instrument, it must be a mirror challenging us to never allow what happened to Jesus to happen to anyone else.

Last year, we joined together on Good Friday for Sanctuary is Sacred, a public worship and action, to call out persecution and scapegoating and demand that our state government protect our immigrant neighbors and refuse cooperation with ICE. We made it clear that the Jesus who was himself scapegoated calls on our politicians, and each of us, to pick up their cross and walk with the oppressed.

This year, we return stronger for Solidarity is Sacred: Public Worship & Action for Immigration Justice. We refuse to be scared into silence by the disappearance of our neighbors and the deployment of ICE into US cities. We refuse to fall prey to scapegoating narratives that seek to turn us against each other, self-interest that feigns ignorance, or despair that believes that there is “nothing we can do.” We believe public worship and nonviolent collective action matters and so we come to Good Friday with three main goals.

1. By publicly praying the Stations of the Cross, we hope to provide a theological framing and spiritual grounding for this political moment that moves us closer to solidarity with our immigrant neighbors and to God’s call to set the captive free and to break every yoke.

The Via Crucis, or Stations of the Cross, is not only a reenactment of distant history, but as a living prayer through the streets of our own time. This longstanding Christian practice traces the path of Jesus’ suffering and execution at the hands of empire. We will join together in front of the JFK Building in downtown Boston, the location of the Boston Department of Homeland Security Office, to pray five out of the fourteen Stations of the Cross and stand in solidarity with crucified peoples of our time. The stations we will observe include: Jesus is condemned to die, Jesus meets his mother, Jesus falls for a third time, Simone of Cyrene helps Jesus carry the cross, and Jesus dies on the cross.

As we mark the moments along Jesus’ final path——each station reveals Christ present in the crucified peoples of today: in the bodies of those detained and deported without due process, the grieving mother torn from her child, the imprisoned denied medical assistance, the refugee turned away at the border.

To pray the Stations is to see the world as it truly is—to name suffering, to confront injustice, and to refuse to look away. In a world that still builds crosses, we walk the stations to say: this is not the end. Even as we confront the forces of death—racism, poverty, xenophobia, colonialism, environmental destruction—we do so with the conviction that love is stronger, and that resurrection is real.

This walk is a prayer, a protest, and a public witness. We ask not only what happened to Jesus, but also what is happening to our neighbors, and what is being asked of us. We pray to be awakened. We pray to be changed as people and leaders.

2. To bear public witness to our Christian faith and values.

We refuse to cede the public square to White Christian nationalism. Too often, Christianity has been distorted for political gain and against our most vulnerable communities, including our migrant siblings. Our Catholic Vice President has wrongly used the ‘ordo amoris’ to justify the Trump administration’s nationalist agenda and Christian Speaker of the House Mike Johnson has used isolated and faulty Bible interpretation to defend Trump’s immigration policy. We are mindful that the story of Good Friday itself has been used across for centuries to foment violence and prejudice against our Jewish siblings and is a part of the legacy of antisemitism today.

We repent for and reject any weaponization of Christianity. We feel called to provide a counternarrative that witnesses to another way of being Christian. Migration is at the heart of the Christian story. From the Exodus, to the story of Ruth and Naomi, to the Holy Family, scripture tells us of people on the move. And Jesus’s death on a cross declares where God chooses to dwell—not with the powerful, but with the broken, the cast off, the dispossessed.

3. To create opportunities for local, interfaith relationship-building and platform existing ways to take action.

We learned from Minneapolis that voices of faith matter and so does knowing your neighbor. Scripture teaches us: love your neighbor as yourself (Matt 22:39). But before we love our neighbor, we have to know our neighbor. Who is my neighbor (Luke 10:29)? Massachusetts has a robust network of immigration justice organizations and coalitions to say no to state violence and yes to local and state networks that protect our communities. Rather than ask with despair, “how can I, one person, make a difference?” We join together as neighbors, in solidarity, to see how much power we have, and provide pathways to take action going forward.

Will you join us?

We will begin at the JFK Building, home of the Boston office of the Department of Homeland Security to pray the Stations of the Cross. After the liturgical portion of our event, we will march together, up to the State House, to hear from our final speakers. These leaders in the immigration justice movement will share how you can take further action to be in solidarity with our immigrant neighbors today. Come weary, come hopeful, come yearning, come energized, come lamenting, and bring your communities with you.

We have an incredible group of co-sponsors behind this effort. Massachusetts Communities Action Network (MCAN), MA TPS Committee, Pax Christi Massachusetts, Southern New England Conference of the United Church of Christ (SNEUCC), Catholics in Communion, UniteBoston, Episcopal City Mission, Center for Public Theology & Migration, and First Church Somerville, UCC

📅 Good Friday, April 3rd, 4PM

📍 Downtown Boston

🔗 RSVP here: https://bit.ly/goodfriday2026

Mar 20 2026

Five Choirs, One God: United Gospel Experience Tour Creates Christian Community Through Music

The tour brings collegiate gospel choirs together to perform praise songs for audiences across New England.

A powerful new movement is emerging in our region as five New England collegiate choirs join forces, proclaiming the message of freedom and hope we have in Jesus Christ. Read the full story by Boston College student journalist Ella Chang to go behind the scenes before our final Gospel Experience tour stop at Morningstar Baptist on April 18!

P.S. Please help us spread the word by spreading the word to local pastors and congregations through our invite letter!

By Ella Chang

UMass Lowell’s New Purpose Gospel Choir performs at the third stop of UGET.

UMass Lowell’s New Purpose Gospel Choir shuffles onstage in an orderly line. They’re met with polite applause…and pounding footsteps.

Two college-aged women appear in the shadowy recesses of the auditorium. They charge awkwardly down the aisle, one valiantly battling a long, flowy dress that’s doing its best to trip her. Miraculously, they arrive at the front of the room unscathed, skidding to a stop mere feet from the stage.

As New Purpose sings, the women explode into a head-bobbing, hip-swinging frenzy. They clap along to an upbeat rendition of Joshua’s Troop’s “Everybody Clap Your Hands”. For Ricky Dillard’s “Amazing” – a soulful ballad – they plop down in front row seats, rocking side to side.

These women are members of the University of Hartford Gospel Choir, one of three guest choirs at tonight’s concert. Their group came to support New Purpose at the Lowell stop of the 2025-26 United Gospel Experience Tour (UGET).

UGET is an annual concert series featuring choirs from five schools: Providence College, Gordon College, the University of Hartford, UMass Lowell, and Trinity College (who couldn’t make it to the UMass Lowell show). Together, the choirs perform gospel music at locations across New England.

UGET’s goal is simple: unite collegiate gospel choirs to spread the faith and hope of Jesus Christ through music.

“It’s not just about going on tour,” Angel Nooks, UGET’s executive assistant, said, “but helping to bring unity across campuses; helping to bring unity within the body of Christ.”

Historically, gospel music has been a powerful source of unity in the Black church. It began as a means of encouragement and resistance for enslaved Africans. Centuries later, it served as the soundtrack of the Civil Rights Movement.

Dr. Craig Ramsey addresses the crowd.

Today, the gospel genre remains rooted in community. For Dr. Craig Ramsey, UGET’s tour director, church gospel choirs provided a way to connect with other Christians from a young age.

“It was about giving kids opportunities to work together, to come together, to serve together, to worship together,” he said.

But in his 14 years as a collegiate choir director, Ramsey noticed that, unlike the choirs of his childhood, collegiate gospel groups seemed isolated. They rarely collaborated with other choirs and mostly stayed within their own campuses. This meant they faced various challenges – from leadership turnover to lack of funding – alone.

“I saw that these gospel choirs were not being encouraged,” Ramsey said. Gradually, an idea formed: “What if we went on tour, and we just supported one another?”

Initially, a collegiate gospel tour was a pie-in-the-sky dream. Then UniteBoston – an organization dedicated to bridging divides among Christians – stepped in. They helped apply for grants and organize the tour, while Ramsey recruited choirs. In November 2024, UGET was born.

The first tour gave the choirs a taste of the intercampus community they’d been missing.

“The experience of collaborating with the other schools was really amazing,” Dyna Louis, New Purpose’s president, said, “being able to see these students in one place with one goal and one thing in mind, which is to worship Jesus Christ.”

Front right: Dyna Louis, president of New Purpose.

Now, in UGET’s second season, the students are even more excited to perform.

“You just come with greater anticipation,” Louis said. “You now come with the mindset of, ‘What is God going to do? How is God going to move?’”

Keeping the focus on God has always been UGET’s goal. It’s especially important now, Ramsey says, as Christians split along political lines rather than embracing their shared faith.

“We are allowing what’s going on in our country to divide us,” Ramsey said. “If we can get back under that umbrella of Jesus Christ, we can build from there and walk together. And I think we’ll find that there is more that brings us together than divides us.”

UGET’s second season isn’t quite finished – its last stop will be at Boston’s MorningStar Baptist Church on April 18. But already, Ramsey is looking to the future.

“We’re trying to build in the New England area and beyond,” he said. “What would it look like if every gospel choir that felt forgotten or didn’t feel like they had support came under the umbrella of the United Gospel Experience Tour?”

Four choirs sing together at the finale of UGET’s UMass Lowell concert.

It would probably look something like the finale of the UMass Lowell concert, where the four choirs merge together. Singers from different groups and different universities form one great whole: UMass next to UHart, Providence next to Gordon.

With infectious energy, they belt out classic hymns (“This is the Day”); traditional gospel (Malcolm Williams’ “The Blood Still Works”); and more modern tracks (Judith Christie McAllister’s “Hallelujah You’re Worthy”). They move as one unit; they sing as one triumphant voice, raising songs of victory and praise.

There’s no better symbol of UGET’s mission.

“What you do by yourself, that’s great,” Ramsey said. “What we do together is so much better.”