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EGC<br />
INSIDE … … … … … …<br />
A bi-monthly report from the <strong>Emmanuel</strong> <strong>Gospel</strong> <strong>Center</strong><br />
www.egc.org<br />
617-262-4567<br />
September-October 2005 Vol 12 No 5<br />
When I Survey The Wondrous Church<br />
by Steve Daman, Communication Director<br />
Every few years, EGC makes<br />
a concerted effort to contact<br />
every church in Boston<br />
and Cambridge to<br />
update our database of church information.<br />
And every time we do,<br />
we are surprised by what we learn.<br />
Why do we do it? We are convinced<br />
that healthy churches are God’s primary<br />
strategy to bring the life of Jesus Christ<br />
to people in the city and everyw<strong>here</strong>.<br />
T<strong>here</strong>fore, when we help a church that<br />
honors Jesus to grow stronger and to<br />
meet its goals, we are helping the Kingdom<br />
of God to grow stronger and bear<br />
more fruit. All our programs are designed<br />
to do that, but we can’t serve the churches<br />
well unless we know w<strong>here</strong> they are and<br />
understand what they are doing.<br />
Perhaps, to some, taking a survey<br />
seems unspiritual (didn’t King David get<br />
into trouble for that once?) or just too<br />
analytical to be of any use. But Solomon<br />
said, “Know the condition of your<br />
flocks.” The Israelites took a survey of<br />
the promised land to plan the allotment<br />
for each tribe. Nehemiah traveled around<br />
the city wall at night to survey the damage<br />
and plan for rebuilding. Jesus said,<br />
“What builder would build a tower without<br />
counting the bricks, or what king<br />
would go to war without assessing the<br />
troops?”<br />
Since 1976, Rudy Mitchell has<br />
served as an urban missionary at EGC<br />
with a ministry akin to counting bricks,<br />
assessing troops, walking the walls, and<br />
surveying the land. The data<br />
he gathers on churches and<br />
communities in Boston<br />
shape what we do at the<br />
<strong>Center</strong>, because they inform<br />
us about the needs and<br />
trends of the church system<br />
in the city. The needs and<br />
trends show us what God<br />
is doing.<br />
“The Boston Church Directory<br />
work is central to<br />
the <strong>Center</strong>’s mission,” explains<br />
Jeff Bass, EGC’s<br />
executive director. “We<br />
need to have accurate information<br />
about the Boston<br />
church community<br />
and how it is changing.<br />
This helps us allocate our<br />
own resources effectively<br />
and give good counsel to<br />
others. Some of what we<br />
learn confirms our intuition,<br />
but often we find<br />
things that no one anticipated, and our<br />
understanding of how God is working<br />
around us grows and adjusts accordingly.”<br />
The last survey was completed in<br />
2001. One of the data points gleaned<br />
from that survey was that Boston and<br />
Cambridge welcomed 17 new churches<br />
each year, on average, for the last half of<br />
the 1990s. Has that trend continued? If<br />
so, w<strong>here</strong> are the newest churches, and<br />
who is planting them? How does the<br />
changing ebb and flow of ethnic<br />
Rudy Mitchell & Brian Corcoran<br />
groups in the city parallel the<br />
start of new churches and<br />
the closing of others? What<br />
communities have too few<br />
churches? W<strong>here</strong> are churches<br />
growing and why are they<br />
growing? If we can understand<br />
some of these things,<br />
then we can be prepared to<br />
help fan the flames that<br />
God has ignited across<br />
our city. We can work<br />
with church leaders to<br />
help them make strategic<br />
decisions that will<br />
strengthen the entire<br />
church community.<br />
Brian Corcoran<br />
works as a research associate<br />
at the <strong>Center</strong>. With<br />
a formal education in architecture<br />
and a broad<br />
background in urban<br />
ministry, Brian is doing a<br />
lot of the legwork for the<br />
2005 survey. “I visited 100 churches last<br />
week,” Brian said early in September.<br />
Some churches were open and very active<br />
during the weekdays. Others tend to<br />
come to life evenings and weekends.<br />
“You should see Washington Street in<br />
Dorchester on a warm Wednesday night.<br />
All the doors are open with the music<br />
and preaching echoing down the street.”<br />
With his training in architecture, Brian<br />
is sensitive to street level communication<br />
cont. next page
2005 Survey for The Boston Church Directory<br />
of signs and buildings. “You have to<br />
be part detective to even find some<br />
of these churches,” he says. Many pastors<br />
are bi-vocational, and church contact<br />
can be difficult. “I have learned to<br />
be creative in the way I gather information,”<br />
he says. “Sometimes I go to<br />
the barber shop next door or across<br />
the street to the deli to ask if t<strong>here</strong> is<br />
really a church meeting t<strong>here</strong>. I might<br />
be told, ‘Oh, yeah, people show up<br />
t<strong>here</strong> on Sundays.’<br />
“It’s great when I find an elder or<br />
deacon or pastor in their study, then I<br />
get into great conversations,” he says.<br />
“I find elders and deacons are very<br />
proud of their church, and very communicative<br />
about what’s going on.”<br />
When Brian connects with the pastor,<br />
he sometimes gets what he calls “a<br />
plunge” into their church. “Most of<br />
the people draw you into the fullness<br />
of what they are doing at that moment.<br />
I have been in a pastor’s office<br />
when the phone rings and he starts a<br />
counseling session on the phone. I have<br />
been asked to join in prayer right on<br />
the spot for a youth battling with legal<br />
and family situations. Other times pastors<br />
will ask me for prayer and will tell<br />
me about a lot of the details of the<br />
church, their challenges, and their ministry<br />
to their neighborhood.”<br />
Brian likes what he does. “The best<br />
part of the job is being out in the field<br />
meeting with people in the churches,<br />
surveying the landscape, getting to see<br />
the facilities, seeing the pastors or whoever<br />
is around during the day, just connecting<br />
with churches across the community.”<br />
Brian is also learning a lot<br />
about what God is doing in Boston<br />
by collecting little pieces of data. “As<br />
these pieces are dropping in, I am getting<br />
a big picture of the church,” he<br />
says. “No seminary course is going to<br />
give you an overview of 600 churches<br />
What the data<br />
confirmed in 2001<br />
Formerly homogenously white, the urban<br />
church is more likely to be Black,<br />
Latino, Haitian, and Brazilian.<br />
The early twentieth century traditional<br />
Protestant and European Catholic dominated<br />
reality is fading. New churches<br />
are likely to be Pentecostal, Charismatic<br />
or Holiness churches, and Catholic parishes<br />
are increasingly diverse.<br />
Churches with significant cultural and<br />
racial diversity are growing in number.<br />
Nearly 1/5 of church buildings host services<br />
in more than one language, and<br />
56% of new churches have at least one<br />
non-English service weekly.<br />
48 Haitian congregations in Boston evidence<br />
the continuing growth of the Haitian<br />
churches.<br />
More than 100 congregations use<br />
Spanish in their service.<br />
More than 1 in 3 congregations<br />
share building space with other<br />
congregations, and some<br />
churches are sharing space<br />
with three or more churches of<br />
multiple languages.<br />
like this! It is a rare perspective<br />
to have, the equivalent of going<br />
to the top of the Hancock<br />
Tower to look at Boston, but<br />
blended with a street level perspective<br />
as well.”<br />
Site visits are very important,<br />
but are only one part of a larger<br />
process. This summer we mailed to<br />
every church for which we had an address—that<br />
was about 500 of the 600<br />
churches we believe are out t<strong>here</strong>—a<br />
brief survey form to verify their basic<br />
information, such as pastor’s name,<br />
email, phone and address. We received<br />
back about 200 of those. We followed<br />
that with a much longer form. To date<br />
we have received 42 completed forms.<br />
Hundreds of phone calls, friendly<br />
emails, and a bright yellow postcard<br />
to each church were next, urging<br />
churches to return the form or respond<br />
online. This year, for the first time, because<br />
more churches are going online,<br />
we have a web-based survey form as<br />
an option, crafted by staff member<br />
Michele Mitsumori and available<br />
through our website. As of mid-September,<br />
we have had 29 responses to<br />
the online survey. Site visits have confirmed<br />
the presence and at least the<br />
basic data on about 300 churches.<br />
While the minimal contact information<br />
allows us to see in broad strokes<br />
the numbers and kinds of churches, if<br />
we get back a large number of the<br />
longer forms, we can better understand<br />
some of the trends. Rudy explains,<br />
“Knowing a combination of facts,<br />
such as the church’s ethnicity, neighborhood,<br />
when it was<br />
founded, whether<br />
they are willing to<br />
share their building—all<br />
of these<br />
can be helpful in<br />
knowing if some<br />
neighborhoods<br />
have a need for a<br />
certain type of<br />
church to reach a<br />
particular group.<br />
In the past, our work has stimulated<br />
some church planting. And when we<br />
know information about neighborhoods<br />
and what churches have been<br />
planted t<strong>here</strong> already, this informs<br />
church planters who may be interested<br />
in reaching a particular neighborhood<br />
or ethnic group.”<br />
The data are stored in a database at<br />
EGC, and a profile of each church is<br />
also posted online at our website:<br />
www.egc.org/churches. Both the inhouse<br />
database and the online version are<br />
in need of extreme makeovers.<br />
–2–
2005 Survey for The Boston Church Directory<br />
Two volunteers, Chip<br />
Schopp and Richard<br />
Williams, are helping<br />
EGC with the IT work<br />
for the project. If you<br />
were to eavesdrop on<br />
one of their conversations<br />
in September, you<br />
would have heard<br />
Chip say (and these<br />
are real quotes), “Recently<br />
I discovered that<br />
I can actually update a<br />
MySQL database remotely<br />
on a unix/linux<br />
web server from a local Windows<br />
machine using some .NET code and<br />
the .NET WebClient class. I find the<br />
possibilities exciting, allowing for the<br />
use of Access (or SQLServer or whatever)<br />
as the local data repository with<br />
a direct update capability for that data<br />
required to support the website.”<br />
And you would have heard Richard<br />
respond, “So you mean that the<br />
client application could interact with the<br />
web interface of the BCD to accomplish<br />
updates? This would be an interesting<br />
way to go about it, though it<br />
might require more maintenance than<br />
if the client interacted with the database<br />
‘directly’ through an ODBC or<br />
ADO.NET driver.”<br />
EGC is grateful for our volunteers,<br />
no matter what language they speak.<br />
In addition to the online directory,<br />
we periodically<br />
publish a directory<br />
of all the churches.<br />
Steve Daman,<br />
communication<br />
director, takes the data from the database<br />
and pours it into a book format.<br />
It may sound simple, but prepress production<br />
of the printed version, which<br />
includes photos of all the churches,<br />
takes about 150 hours. In the past, we<br />
Steve Daman & Brian Corcoran<br />
“I have never seen a<br />
directory like this<br />
anyw<strong>here</strong> in the world.”<br />
—Rev. Dr. Elijah Kim<br />
have shipped a free<br />
copy to each church,<br />
while other copies remain<br />
at the <strong>Center</strong> for<br />
sale to those who might<br />
use them for research or<br />
networking. The book<br />
version is packed with<br />
appendices and indices<br />
so users can look up<br />
churches by a variety of<br />
factors—such as denomination,<br />
language,<br />
ethnicity—and do their<br />
own research.<br />
Rev. Dr. Elijah Jong Fil Kim is<br />
on staff at EGC as a research associate.<br />
He has had opportunity to study<br />
churches in Europe, and is familiar with<br />
the church systems in his native Korea.<br />
“The Boston Church Directory gives every<br />
detail of the churches: the times of the<br />
worship services, ethnicity, names of<br />
the senior pastor and staff, the founding<br />
year; this is very useful and creative<br />
information. As I compare directories<br />
I have seen in London, Paris, etc., these<br />
are merely address books.<br />
“Another distinction is that most directories<br />
only list mainline churches, but<br />
The Boston Church Directory is always updating<br />
the ethnic and storefront<br />
churches as well, showing the diversity<br />
of ethnicity of the city. These data help<br />
leaders anticipate the changes of religious<br />
geography of the city—in other<br />
words, what is<br />
happening in the<br />
neighborhoods,<br />
how immigration<br />
is shaping the city,<br />
what new arrivals are coming into the<br />
city—so that we can prepare. No other<br />
city I know prepares for ethnic ministry<br />
like Boston.<br />
“I have never seen a directory like this<br />
anyw<strong>here</strong> in the world,” Dr. Kim says. <br />
How you can help<br />
Sunday drivers. We need people<br />
who could take a list of churches and<br />
verify the info that we have. People could<br />
visit 2 to 4 churches in one neighborhood<br />
on a Sunday, and capture data either<br />
by interviewing a pastor or leader, or<br />
through print materials.<br />
Spanish speakers. One hundred<br />
churches are Spanish-speaking. We<br />
need volunteers who speak Spanish to<br />
help us with phone calls and site visits.<br />
Those who can pray. Because this<br />
is God’s work, we need those who would<br />
commit to pray for the success of the<br />
project, for the workers, and for God to<br />
use every part of this effort for his glory.<br />
Those who can give. We plan to<br />
send copies to every church listed. We<br />
will need to raise $5,000 for printing and<br />
postage. If you would like to give, you may<br />
do so online at our website, or contact<br />
EGC during regular business hours and<br />
ask for Dana Wade.<br />
Photographers. If you enjoy architectural<br />
photography and would like to<br />
take some fresh photos of urban<br />
churches on our list, contact Rudy or<br />
Brian at the <strong>Center</strong>.<br />
Ministry groups. Church groups<br />
can explore a neighborhood, and help<br />
identify all the churches. Perhaps your<br />
church is already considering an outreach<br />
to one part of Boston and would<br />
benefit from this kind of assessment.<br />
Urban pastors in Boston and<br />
Cambridge. If you are an urban pastor,<br />
and if you have already returned your<br />
form, thanks! Perhaps now you could call<br />
your neighboring pastors and encourage<br />
them to get their information in as well!<br />
Or if you attend a local pastors’ gathering,<br />
make sure all the members from<br />
Boston and Cambridge have responded.<br />
Detectives. We need help following<br />
up leads on new churches, clearing up<br />
questions, and doing internet research<br />
to gather more data.<br />
Informants. If you know of new<br />
churches in Boston or churches that had<br />
major changes in the past five years, such<br />
as a move or merger, let us know. <br />
– 3–
1969-2005: Four Decades of Church Surveys<br />
1969: The first survey:<br />
establishing a baseline<br />
In 1969, after five years in Boston<br />
directing EGC, Doug and Judy<br />
Hall were meeting many urban,<br />
ethnic Christians who had a refreshingly<br />
vibrant faith. The vitality of these<br />
believers and their churches was a stark<br />
contrast to what the Halls had experienced<br />
in many mainline, white churches,<br />
not a few of which were dying out,<br />
closing, or moving out of the city. “The<br />
more we met city Christians, the more<br />
we wanted to meet more of them,”<br />
Judy remembers.<br />
After many conversations with their<br />
coworker, Rev. Chet Young, the three<br />
came up with a wild plan. Why not survey<br />
every church in Boston in order to<br />
better understand what God was doing<br />
in their city? Judy was named scribe,<br />
while Chet was appointed driver.<br />
“I’ll never forget that crazy ride,”<br />
Judy wrote years later. “Chet was determined<br />
to drive down every street<br />
in the city so we could find every storefront,<br />
every house with a sign heralding<br />
the presence of a church. I was<br />
sprawled out in the back of our blue<br />
Chevy station wagon on top of a piece<br />
of plywood to which we had glued a<br />
huge Boston street map. One by one<br />
we found churches of all shapes and<br />
sizes—and I marked them on the<br />
map—300 churches in the whole city!<br />
We were especially intrigued, however,<br />
with the storefronts. We found nearly<br />
100—a third of all the churches!<br />
“Later that spring, at Park Street<br />
Church’s annual missions conference,”<br />
Judy continues, “I made a chance remark<br />
to then missionary seminary professor<br />
C. Peter Wagner that we had<br />
found 100 storefronts right <strong>here</strong> in<br />
Boston. ‘Oh,’ he responded enthusiastically,<br />
‘those are your national churches!<br />
That’s what you want to develop!’ And<br />
he was right. Nothing seemed more<br />
important to us than to fan the flames<br />
of vitality we were discovering in urban,<br />
ethnic churches.”<br />
1975: Map and card file<br />
In 1975, Steve Daman, now communication<br />
director, worked as an intern<br />
at the <strong>Center</strong>, and, with staff member<br />
Jordan Greeley, created the second<br />
map and corresponding card file<br />
on all the churches in Boston. They<br />
logged 300 miles in Jordan’s yellow<br />
VW bug, locating 320 churches, and<br />
placing pins with numbered tags on a<br />
map. Nine feet high by five feet wide,<br />
the map, and its<br />
corresponding card<br />
file, was completed<br />
by April that year,<br />
placed in the <strong>Center</strong>’s urban ministry<br />
library, and used for over a decade by<br />
church planters and seminarians to<br />
study the city and its churches.<br />
The following year, EGC hired<br />
Rudy Mitchell as director of research.<br />
1989: Going digital and<br />
publishing a book<br />
By 1988, t<strong>here</strong> was a computer in<br />
the office complete with page layout<br />
software, and a team of dedicated interns<br />
anxious to help out. Steve Daman<br />
had returned to EGC in January as<br />
publications director. By then, Rudy<br />
had a dozen years of research on Boston,<br />
its churches, and its communities<br />
under his belt. Research for this survey<br />
extended into 1989. This time, in addition<br />
to creating a wall map (smaller,<br />
and with color-coded pins to designate<br />
types of churches), EGC produced<br />
a database and, to celebrate its<br />
50th anniversary, published our first directory<br />
of churches in Boston.<br />
1993, 1995, 2001:<br />
Discovering the revival<br />
Subsequent surveys generated a second<br />
printed edition in 1993, an abbreviated<br />
update in 1995, and the third<br />
full edition in 2001. Today the 2005<br />
survey is well underway. This latest effort<br />
marks 37 years since Judy Hall and<br />
Chet Young conducted the first survey,<br />
and 30 years since Jordan Greeley<br />
and Steve Daman did the second.<br />
Back in 1969, the Halls thought that<br />
being able to discover and then find<br />
ways to encourage the 100 storefront,<br />
ethnic churches was a very significant<br />
outcome of that first effort. And it<br />
was, as it definitively shaped the future<br />
ministry of EGC. In retrospect, something<br />
else was also accomplished by<br />
that project. The number of churches<br />
which Judy and Chet found in 1969<br />
established a baseline for comparison<br />
over the next four decades.<br />
Doug Hall recalls how each subsequent<br />
survey added to the <strong>Center</strong>’s<br />
knowledge. “As we completed the<br />
1989 directory and began to compile<br />
the figures on what we had learned,<br />
we were amazed to discover that<br />
something very significant was occurring!<br />
We could scarcely believe what<br />
our figures showed—that the number<br />
of churches had grown by 30% since<br />
that first count twenty years before.<br />
That figure seemed unbelievable, because<br />
it was evident to many that about<br />
one quarter (23%) of the mainline<br />
churches had died in the meantime, and<br />
so most everyone assumed that Christianity<br />
itself was dying in the city, and<br />
not growing. It wasn’t until our second<br />
directory in 1993 that we knew<br />
conclusively that the number of<br />
churches had grown—and not by just<br />
30 percent, but by 50 percent! We had<br />
been part of a revival and did not<br />
know it. We now call it Boston’s Quiet<br />
Revival, and we now see how it has<br />
changed the history of our city.” <br />
—Steve Daman<br />
–4–<br />
Judy, Becky, and Doug Hall with Rev. Chet Young in mid ’60s
Starlight Celebrates Fifteen<br />
Years of Ministry in Boston<br />
Please come celebrate<br />
and bring a friend!<br />
Sat. October 15, 2005<br />
You and your friends are invited to<br />
celebrate with us at 6:30 p.m. on<br />
Saturday, October 15, 2005, at<br />
Tremont Temple Baptist Church in Boston.<br />
Join us for hors d’oeuvres and<br />
homemade desserts, for sharing<br />
memories with our staff and guests,<br />
for honoring our volunteers and worshipping<br />
in music, and for an opportunity<br />
to support Starlight. Former Starlight<br />
directors Claire Sullivan and<br />
Paul Daigle will be t<strong>here</strong>, along with<br />
our current director, Robert Taylor<br />
and his staff. Everyone is invited, but<br />
reservations are required. Please<br />
come, and, if you will, bring a guest<br />
who may not be familiar with Starlight.<br />
For reservations, contact Rachel<br />
Parker at rparker@egc.org or<br />
617-262-4567 x 182.<br />
photos: top, Claire Sullivan on staff<br />
with EGC in 2000; right, volunteers<br />
sorting donated clothes; above, Jim<br />
Magee, formerly homeless, recently<br />
settled in his own apartment<br />
One day in 1990, Claire<br />
Sullivan set out with $4<br />
and a borrowed backpack<br />
filled with peanut butter and jelly sandwiches<br />
to make friends with those living<br />
on Boston Common. As she got<br />
to know these men and women as individuals,<br />
she learned how to serve<br />
them and walk alongside them. Soon,<br />
others from Claire’s church joined her,<br />
going out with her each week with a<br />
van loaded with clothes, food, and<br />
blankets. Worship services were held<br />
under the streetlights on the Common,<br />
and Starlight Ministries was born.<br />
In 1994, Claire joined the<br />
<strong>Emmanuel</strong> <strong>Gospel</strong> <strong>Center</strong>,<br />
and Starlight continued to<br />
grow. Claire has since<br />
moved on to pioneer new<br />
ministries, while this year<br />
Starlight will serve over 700<br />
people who are homeless.<br />
With a full-time staff of five and the<br />
assistance of many volunteers, we continue<br />
the van and street outreach to<br />
adults while we also offer youth outreach,<br />
a drop-in center, counseling, case<br />
management, and more.<br />
Starlight Ministries was built on<br />
the foundation of the love of Jesus<br />
Christ expressed in “the two-handed<br />
<strong>Gospel</strong>,” serving both the physical and<br />
spiritual needs of those who find themselves<br />
homeless. Love transformed<br />
Claire’s life, and that same love compelled<br />
her to go to the streets. Believing<br />
that salvation is found in no one<br />
else, we actively share the love of Jesus<br />
Christ with all we meet. And God faithfully<br />
sends to us those who are seeking<br />
him as we show up on the streets<br />
w<strong>here</strong> they live.<br />
Claire wrote in 1997, “God is wooing<br />
the lost, the broken-hearted, and<br />
the sexually broken<br />
who are out on the<br />
streets, and he has<br />
anointed his church to<br />
reconcile them to himself.<br />
God has equipped<br />
the church with the fruit<br />
of love, the message of the cross, gifts<br />
of healing, prophecy, faith, and the<br />
power of the Holy Spirit to accomplish<br />
his work in Boston.” That is what<br />
we mean when we say our mission is<br />
to take the church to the streets. <br />
If you cannot attend but would like<br />
to make a contribution to Starlight in<br />
honor of the program’s 15th anniversary,<br />
please make your check payable to <strong>Emmanuel</strong><br />
<strong>Gospel</strong> <strong>Center</strong>, write “Starlight anniversary”<br />
in the memo line, and mail it to: <strong>Emmanuel</strong><br />
<strong>Gospel</strong> <strong>Center</strong>, PO Box 180245, Boston<br />
MA 02118-0994. Thank you!<br />
Starlight<br />
<br />
You are invited to join us!<br />
Saturday, October 15, 2005<br />
Tremont Temple Baptist Church<br />
Dessert reception at 6:30 p.m.<br />
Program from 7:30 ~ 9:00 p.m.<br />
15<br />
For reservations, contact Rachel Parker at rparker@egc.org or 617-262-4567 x 182.<br />
TAKING THE CHURCH TO THE STREETS<br />
Celebrating<br />
<br />
15 Years<br />
OF GOD’S FAITHFULNESS<br />
– 5–
The Haitian<br />
La Romana Crusade,<br />
Dominican Republic,<br />
August 14-21, 2005<br />
by Rev. Dr. Soliny Védrine, Director, Haitian Ministries International<br />
Haitian church on the outskirts of La Romana<br />
worship time with city kids in an urban church<br />
It was the 24th crusade I had organized<br />
in various Haitian communities,<br />
yet the first in the Dominican<br />
Republic. The pastor who had<br />
asked me some five years ago to come<br />
and help, Rev. Jean Luc Phanord, perished<br />
in a plane crash, the infamous<br />
Flight 587 in New York in November,<br />
2001. His death was a tragic loss<br />
to the church in La Romana and to the<br />
global Haitian Christian community. In<br />
time, his successor at Iglesia Bautista<br />
Misionera Haitiana, the largest church<br />
in the area, became the national coordinator<br />
for the crusade, and was very<br />
helpful as we planned for the big event.<br />
But suddenly, just one month before<br />
the event, everything seemed to<br />
fall apart. The pastor had some difficulties<br />
with the church and had to leave.<br />
The news of his leaving sent a wave<br />
of panic among all the other national<br />
crusade leaders. I traveled to the Dominican<br />
Republic in July and spent five<br />
days with the leaders, praying with<br />
them, signing contracts and making<br />
deposits, and trusting the Lord for an<br />
unprecedented victory. And God did<br />
give us the victory!<br />
The crusade, held nightly from August<br />
14 to 21, 2005, was well attended<br />
from start to finish, averaging 1500<br />
–6–<br />
every night, with 2000 at the<br />
closing service. T<strong>here</strong> was<br />
good exposition of the Word<br />
of God by experienced Haitian<br />
preachers from five countries<br />
(including some from<br />
Boston), as well as a special<br />
program fully in Spanish entitled<br />
Noche Domicana (Dominican<br />
Night) w<strong>here</strong> the speaker was Rev.<br />
Ezekiel Molina Rosario, the “Billy Graham”<br />
of the country. The coliseum was<br />
packed that night and great Christian<br />
Dominican artists of Haitian ancestry<br />
lifted our souls through their music.<br />
Many came to the Lord that night, including<br />
our Dominican bus driver!<br />
During the day, the team kept busy<br />
with various outreach ministries. We<br />
ministered to Haitians in the bateys,<br />
primitive villages located among the<br />
sugarcane fields w<strong>here</strong> Haitian field<br />
workers live. We visited the Good Samaritan<br />
Hospital, the first Haitian hospital<br />
in the country, hand-constructed<br />
by Americans, Haitians and Dominicans.<br />
The hospital provides quality<br />
health care in a Christian context. We<br />
also ministered at Haitian urban<br />
churches on the outskirts of La<br />
Romana w<strong>here</strong> many very poor<br />
people live.<br />
After the week-long crusade, our<br />
team left La Romana with the following<br />
convictions. T<strong>here</strong> is<br />
a thirst for fellowship across denominational<br />
lines;<br />
a thirst for strength in order to better<br />
spread the <strong>Gospel</strong>;<br />
a thirst for the Word of God<br />
through Bible distribution;<br />
a need for cement block church<br />
buildings, strong enough to withstand<br />
hurricanes, to replace the<br />
huts w<strong>here</strong> the Lord of Heaven,<br />
our Mighty God, is being worshipped;<br />
a need for Christian social workers<br />
who can dig into the various<br />
social needs of the Haitian community,<br />
a community in a longterm<br />
transition.<br />
Though the 2005 Haitian La<br />
Romana Crusade is over, for us, the<br />
work has just begun. <br />
left: church leaders gather;<br />
center: Rev. Laborde singing<br />
at crusade; right: rural<br />
home. For information on<br />
one ministry’s outreach to<br />
the “bateys” around La<br />
Romana, with details on<br />
upcoming service trips, see<br />
www.laromana.org.
And now a word<br />
from the Director<br />
As I write this, I have been back<br />
from my sabbatical for nearly<br />
three months. While the sabbatical<br />
was wonderful and restful, I<br />
am really glad to be back in the<br />
thick of things with the EGC team.<br />
I continue to thank God for the<br />
group of folks he has brought<br />
together <strong>here</strong>, and I am excited<br />
about the <strong>Center</strong>’s work and<br />
direction.<br />
Your prayers make a huge difference<br />
in whether we succeed or fail<br />
(not to put any pressure on you,<br />
but just trying to remember that<br />
much of our real work is done<br />
through prayer). While the<br />
<strong>Center</strong>’s ministries are strong with<br />
people and vision, we are in a<br />
season w<strong>here</strong> finances are tight all<br />
around. Please pray that the Lord<br />
will provide all that is needed for<br />
each of our ministries and for the<br />
<strong>Center</strong>. And please pray for<br />
wisdom for me, the Board, and the<br />
support staff as we navigate<br />
through shallow waters.<br />
Thank you again for your prayers.<br />
May the Lord bless you as you<br />
serve him!<br />
Sincerely,<br />
Jeff Bass<br />
Executive Director<br />
Prayer &<br />
Praise<br />
Tia Holcomb, coordinator for the<br />
Youth Ministry Development Project<br />
(YMDP), asks that we pray for a new<br />
series of training sessions YMDP is<br />
offering for urban youth workers this<br />
year. The first seminar, scheduled for<br />
September 24, is on strategic<br />
planning for youth programs. YMDP<br />
works with 100 volunteer and paid<br />
church-based youth workers in<br />
Boston and Cambridge.<br />
Michele Mitsumori, director of<br />
CityServe, says that the CityServe<br />
website is nearing completion. At<br />
this stage, the website will be an<br />
“opportunity bank,” with the goal of<br />
promoting Christian volunteering by<br />
helping to match Christian volunteers<br />
with opportunities at Christian<br />
churches and ministries in and<br />
around Boston. The online bank will<br />
help urban churches and ministries<br />
identify, develop, and write volunteer<br />
job descriptions as well as build<br />
their capacities to host volunteers<br />
effectively. Pray for God’s timing and<br />
wisdom as this new resource soon<br />
becomes available.<br />
Nika Elugardo, recently named EGC’s<br />
director of<br />
consulting,<br />
reports that the<br />
Applied Evaluation<br />
Systems<br />
(AES) website is<br />
launching this<br />
fall. At the same time, she is sending<br />
out printed information packets to<br />
potential AES clients, churches and<br />
agencies, to advise them of this<br />
program that can help them build<br />
technical expertise and develop<br />
effective ministries. She writes,<br />
“Please pray for wisdom… and that<br />
we can continue to get our consulting<br />
work done for our existing<br />
clients. I think the harvest is<br />
plentiful. Please pray for good<br />
workers from the Lord of the Harvest<br />
and for wisdom to discern who they<br />
are.” Nika hopes to hire both<br />
contract workers and more staff.<br />
Doug and Judy Hall are working on<br />
a writing project this fall while some<br />
capable co-workers oversee the<br />
teaching of their urban ministry<br />
class offered through CUME, Gordon-<br />
Conwell’s <strong>Center</strong> for Urban Ministerial<br />
Education in Boston. Rev. Dr. Gregg<br />
Detwiler, Rev. Dr. Elijah Kim and<br />
Michele Mitsumori will be teaching<br />
seminarians on behalf of the Halls.<br />
Pray for all involved, that students<br />
will be equipped to launch effective<br />
urban churches and ministries, and<br />
that the Halls would be successful in<br />
communicating the principles God<br />
has shown them over the years.<br />
Sandy Haughn, on leave from our<br />
Economic Development ministry as<br />
she battles a stubborn cancer, asks<br />
that we continue to keep her in<br />
prayer. She writes, “I’m starting to<br />
get into experimental treatments,<br />
and it’s all pretty exhausting and<br />
scary. At the moment I feel amazingly<br />
calm, but that’s got to be<br />
because God is with me.”<br />
Taking on a new role, Crystal Dixon<br />
is making an<br />
in-house<br />
transition<br />
from assistant<br />
director of<br />
EGC to fulltime<br />
director<br />
of EGC’s Boston Education Collaborative<br />
(BEC). The BEC works to help<br />
urban residents pursue and acquire<br />
the education they desire. One of<br />
the BEC’s flagship efforts is the New<br />
City Scholars Program through which<br />
urban teens have been able to get<br />
to college, and are now pursuing<br />
their education as a mentored team.<br />
Nine scholars in the program’s third<br />
“cohort” are starting their freshman<br />
year at Gordon College, while two<br />
previous cohorts are returning for<br />
their sophomore and junior years.<br />
Martha Védrine, who has directed<br />
this program, announced that she is<br />
leaving EGC to continue her education<br />
and pursue other ministry.<br />
Please pray for Martha’s transition,<br />
for Crystal as she directs the BEC,<br />
and for the 28 New City Scholars as<br />
they hit the books!<br />
– 7–
<strong>Emmanuel</strong> <strong>Gospel</strong> <strong>Center</strong><br />
2 San Juan Street<br />
PO Box 180245<br />
Boston MA 02118-0994<br />
CHANGE SERVICE REQUESTED<br />
INSIDE EGC<br />
a newsletter of <strong>Emmanuel</strong> <strong>Gospel</strong> <strong>Center</strong><br />
Mission & Programs<br />
The mission of the <strong>Emmanuel</strong> <strong>Gospel</strong> <strong>Center</strong><br />
is to understand and help nurture the vitality<br />
of urban churches in the context of their<br />
broader urban communities, particularly in<br />
Boston’s low-income and immigrant<br />
communities. We believe that churches are<br />
God’s chosen instruments to bring his life and<br />
presence into our communities, so all of our<br />
work is designed to support what God is doing<br />
in and through urban churches. <strong>Emmanuel</strong><br />
<strong>Gospel</strong> <strong>Center</strong> provides resources to help<br />
churches operate effectively at the grassroots<br />
level through programs that evolve in response<br />
to the needs of churches, their communities,<br />
and their networks.<br />
Applied Research & Consulting<br />
Applied Evaluation Systems<br />
<strong>Emmanuel</strong> Research Institute<br />
Boston Education Collaborative<br />
College Success Initiative &<br />
New City Scholars Program<br />
Higher Education<br />
Resource <strong>Center</strong>s<br />
CityServe<br />
Economic Development<br />
Greater Boston Church Planting<br />
Collaborative<br />
Haitian Ministries International<br />
Ministry Development<br />
Multicultural Ministries<br />
Cambodian Ministries<br />
Starlight Ministries (homeless)<br />
Urban Ministry Training<br />
Youth Ministry Development Project<br />
visit us online<br />
www.egc.org<br />
donate online<br />
You can donate to<br />
EGC through PayPal,<br />
either a one-time or<br />
recurring donation,<br />
from your credit<br />
card or your bank<br />
account. Go to our<br />
website and follow<br />
the link on the<br />
homepage. Thanks!<br />
INSIDE THIS ISSUE<br />
15<br />
Come celebrate with us! Starlight Ministries turns 15.<br />
Dessert and celebration October 15, 2005, at Tremont<br />
Temple Baptist Church. See page 5.<br />
New church survey underway. Solomon said, “Know the<br />
condition of your flocks.” In order to serve urban churches,<br />
we periodically gather data to help us understand the<br />
best way to nurture what God is already doing in the<br />
city. You can help! See page 1.<br />
Are you a pastor in Boston or Cambridge? Or do you go to a church t<strong>here</strong>?<br />
Make sure your church’s survey form has been returned to EGC!<br />
INSIDE EGC<br />
is published by the<br />
<strong>Emmanuel</strong> <strong>Gospel</strong> <strong>Center</strong><br />
2 San Juan Street<br />
PO Box 180245<br />
Boston MA 02118<br />
All rights reserved<br />
Steve Daman, editor<br />
Dana Wade, development<br />
617-262-4567<br />
dwade@egc.org<br />
a member of the<br />
Evangelical<br />
Council for<br />
Financial<br />
Accountability