Christianty's Unprecedented Growth in Boston

Jarvis Ward and I are visiting Christian leaders today in Boston to consider the possibility of holding the 2008 City Impact Roundtable (CIR) in Boston. The City Impact Roundtable is a peer-to-peer learning group for those facilitating collaboration between Christians in cities and communities for greater kingdom impact. It has been meeting in national and regional settings since 1998. Jarvis serves as the National Facilitator for City and Community Ministries with the Mission America Coalition (MAC). I serve as the Convener of the CIR through the spring of 2008. He and I have partnered to serve Christian leaders in cities and communities for the past 9 years.

Over breakfast we met with Doug and Judy Hall. Doug serves as the President of the Emmanuel Gospel Center and as a professor at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. Doug is a proponent of systems thinking, which attempts to look at the complex factors which influence life in metropoitan areas and work with them in ways that will result in kingdom growth.

Doug and his team at EGC havc been careful to promote church planting efforts to bring the incarnational message of God's love and grace to all. In the last five years, (January, 2001 - July ,2006) the number of new church plants have grown dramatically within Boston's city limits from 475 churches to 575 churches. Most of this growth has occured within immigrant communities. This church planting growth came about because the conditions have been right with missionaries coming from foriegn nations to establish churches among the many ethnic peoples in Boston. Another contributing factor has been the encouragement of groups like the EGC in this area.

Linear cityreaching efforts have yet to see these kinds of results. A linear effort prescribes a step-by-step process to reach the end of fulfilling the Great Commission in a city. Systems thinking concentrates on understanding the way the church and culture currently exists and functions. By understanding and addressing a few carefully selected variables, great results can occur. To understand which variables are most important, a great deal of research needs to be done in a local area to understand the complex organisms of church and culture. Doug and Judy have determined that the longest lasting impact will be felt by the existence of more churches in the urban context. This is why church planting has become so important in Boston for them.

In 1993 they discovered Boston's Quiet Revival which documented the growth of the church from 300 congregations to over 400. This further growth to 575 congregations shows a growth rate of one new church plant every 46 days over a period of 35 years. Their recent newsletter states, "Considering the steady growth in the numbers of new church, we find ourselves in the longest period of sustained growth of Christianity in Boston's history." For more information visit http://www.egc.org/about/Newsletters.

New Coaching Group emerging for Church-based Cityreaching Leaders

September 6-8, 2006 -- Charlottesville, VA

This past Wednesday through Friday, thirty leaders met with their focus on advancing the cause of city transformation with the local church. Aproximately half were trainers and coaches with years of experience in both community and church transformation work. The other half were folks employed by their churches to work on city transformation in cities across the nation. Participants came from Seattle, Phoenix, Fresno, Boulder, Tucson, Atlanta, Minneapolis, Knoxville, Miami, Boulder, Little Rock, Los Angeles, Rockford, and Waco.

The event was called "Equipping Churches for Community Transformation." It was hosted jointly by Andy Rittenhouse of Knoxville's First Baptist Church and Amy Sherman of the Charlottesville based Sagamore Institute. The purpose of the meeting was to "...explore if there is something that should be done collaboratively to better and more strategically equip churches for passionate, effective and holistic community transformation!"

Community transformation was defined by Gary Edmonds in a pre-conference white paper as “a deeply rooted change in people’s spiritual, social, economic, physical, behavioral, and political conditions growing out of an encounter with the Triune God and resulting in their growing enjoyment of wholeness of life under the will and ordinances of God.” During this time together, these leaders reviewed a number of opportunities for advancing community transformation. After review, they took a forward look at what could accelerate this movement. The number one idea that arose was a team of coaches who would make themselves available to church leaders seeking to advance community transformation.

This is still in a very formative stage. A task force has been formed to firm up how this coaching team will be formed and what services will be offered to local church leaders. The task force is composed of Andy Rittenhouse, Amy Sherman, Gary Edmonds, Skip Long, Jay Van Groningan, Phil Olson, Heidi Unruh, Eric Swanson, and myself. We will be reporting back to the participants from this forum by mid-October.

This meeting could have significant implications for the upcoming 2007 City Impact Roundtable in El Paso. I see training and coaching as key to the future success of community transformation movements in our nation.