1summer 2005

Gordon-Conwel l Theological Seminary

SUMMER 2005 VOL.35 NO.1

Seeking the Peace of the CityMinistry in the

Urban Context

2 summer 2005

Board of TrusteesMr. Joel B. AarsvoldMrs. Linda Schultz AndersonMr. Richard A. Armstrong, ChairDr. George F. BennettRev. Richard P. Camp, Jr.Mr. Thomas J. ColatostiMr. Charles W. ColsonDr. Leighton FordMrs. Joyce A. GodwinDr. William F. GrahamDr. Michael E. HaynesMr. Herbert P. Hess, TreasurerDr. John A. Huffman, Jr.Dr. Walter C. Kaiser, Jr.Mr. Caleb Loring IIIMrs. Anne Graham LotzDr. Christopher A. LyonsMrs. Joanna S. MocklerFred L. Potter, Esq.Shirley A. Redd, M.D.Rev. Samuel Rodriguez, Jr. David M. Rogers, Esq.Mr. John SchoenherrRev. Ken ShigematsuMrs. Virginia M. SnoddyMr. John G. Talcott, Jr.Joseph W. Viola, M.D., SecretaryJ. Christy Wilson III, Esq.Dr. John H. WomackWilliam C. Wood, M.D., Vice Chair

Emeriti MembersAllan C. Emery, Jr.Roland S. HinzRobert J. LamontRichard D. PhippenSamuel J. Schultz

Paul E. TomsRobert E. Cooley, President Emeritus

Editorial Advisory CommitteeDr. Sidney L. BradleyDr. Barry H. CoreyDr. Walter C. Kaiser, Jr.Dr. Alvin PadillaRev. C. Ronald RileyDr. Haddon W. RobinsonDr. Kenneth L. SwetlandMrs. Nina L. WaltersMr. David Zagunis

PresidentDr. Walter C. Kaiser, Jr.

Chief Development OfficerHoward Freeman

Director of Communicationsand Editor of Contact Anne B. Doll

Assistant Director of Communicationsand Assistant Editor of Contact Michael L. Colaneri

Graphic DesignerNicole Rim

PhotographyMatthew DollNicole Rim

Christian Values and a Seven-Mile RunPaul Burton

A Vision for the City: The Jeremiah Paradigm for the CityEldin Villafañe

The Urban Church: A 1st Century A.D. ModelKen Shigematsu

Pastoring in the CityAnne B. Doll

Urban and Suburban Churches: Partnering to ServeCraig W. McMullen

Is Christ in Community?Michael L. Colaneri

A Theology of the City: Is it Time for Another St. Augustine and a Roland Allen to Set the Case for the City Once Again?Walter C. Kaiser, Jr.

Contexualized Urban Theological Education: The Center for Urban Ministerial Education’s Guiding PhilosophyEldin Villafañe

Urban Youth Ministry and a Theological EducationDean Borgman

The Center for Urban Ministerial Education: An Historical OverviewAlvin Padilla

Shepherds in the City?Tim S. Laniak

There’s Gold in the City!Gregg Detwiler

Seminary News

Opening The WordWilliam Spencer

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Inquiries regarding may be addressed to: Editor, Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, 130 Essex Street, S. Hamilton, MA 01982 Tel: 978.468.7111 www.gordonconwell.edu

GORDON-CONWELL THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY DOES NOT DISCRIMINATE ON THE BASIS OF RACE,GENDER,NATIONAL OR ETHNIC ORIGIN, AGE, HANDICAP OR VETERAN STATUS.

contentsTHE MINISTRY MAGAZINE OF GORDON-CONWELL THEOLOGICAL SEMINARYSUMMER 2005 VOL.35 NO.1

Building Healthy Neighborhoods, page 22

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ON THE FRONT LINES

With eyes half shut and the moon still out, the campers slowly put on their sweat suits, and lace up their New Bal-ance sneakers for a jog. They know it won’t kill them; it will only make them better. “Remember, young men, take it slow. This is not a race,” Paul Burton exclaims. “Remember to pace yourself up those hills and keep pumping your arms, and before you know it the run will be over. You can do it!” After a quick stretch and some encouraging words, the campers begin their journey that will help “re-shape” their lives. Every summer more than 100 young boys ages 11-17 come out to a small, remote town called Hubbardston, located in central Massachusetts. Most of the kids come from some of the tough-est inner-city neighborhoods around. And to understand why they are here is to know of a man who started with “nothing,” and still managed to build his dream... Ron Burton was a skinny, poor kid from Springfield, Ohio, who figured out early in life that it didn’t take size or status to outrun every kid in his town. He wasn’t born with much talent.

In fact, Burton wasn’t born with much, but two parents who loved him and a grandmother who transformed his life. When Ron Burton was a young boy, all the neighborhood kids used to tease him because he was so poor and had no athletic skills. Burton was given the nickname “Nothing.” “I used to cry every single day because of the way I was treated,” Burton would say. In fact, the only place he would go where he was treated nicely was his grandmother’s church. Ron’s mother, Mary, died when he was just a teenager, and his father grew ill. The only person Ron could truly count on was his grandmother, Shayne, who was a devout Gospel preacher. Shayne shared with Ron the saving Gospel message of Jesus Christ all throughout his early years. “I got connected to Christ at a very early age, which brought me incredible peace,” he would later say. “The only problem I had now was I wanted to stop the laughter.” Growing up in the State of Ohio in the 1940’s, football was the only sport people paid attention to. Ron loved the game of football, but he really had no abilities to play it well. For

Christian Valuesand a Seven-Mile Run

It’s 4 a.m. and the alarm clock rings. More than 100 young boys are about to start their day with a rude

awakening: a seven-mile run. “Let’s go; let’s go; let’s go,” Ron Burton, Jr. sings out at the top of his voice.

“Time to get up! It’s another salubrious day. Get your sweats on; put your feet on the floor; let’s go.”

Paul Burton, ‘02

4 summer 2005

All of the kids come

to the camp for five

weeks straight,

and they leave with

a sense of hope

and determination to

make something of

their lives. The entire

camp is run on love.

ON THE FRONT LINES

5summer 2005

many years he was the only kid to whom teams would not give a football uniform. It wasn’t until his eighth-grade year that he was given a uniform, but he never played a down. It wasn’t until the last play of the last game of his eighth-grade year that his coach called Ron’s name. “And I want everybody to know that my coach did not call my name because all of a sudden he developed a fondness toward me,” Ron would recount. “It was only because all the other players ahead of me got hurt. I was the only player left on the bench.” Ron got in the game and ran for 12 yards. A first down. “It was prob-ably the most important 12 yards of my life.” That’s because after the game, another coach came up to Ron and told him that in order to get better at football, he had to learn how to train. What that coach didn’t realize is that he was talking to a young kid who was willing to pay any price to get better and stop the laughter. The very next day, Ron Burton got up at 4:00 a.m. and began his seven-mile run. By the time he was a senior in high school, Burton was an All-American. He received 47 scholarship offers to all the major football schools. He chose to attend Northwestern University. In 1959, while at NU, Ron became All-American and was a Hiesman Trophy finalist. In 1960, he was the first round draft pick for the NFL and played six successful seasons with the Boston Patriots. Burton later went to work for John Hancock Insurance and became a wealthy executive. Ron succeeded off the field in every way. He became a national mo-tivational speaker and did public outreach. In 1990, Ron was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame. In 1985, he opened the Ron Burton Training Village, a non-profit Christian sports camp for young boys. Burton had a dream to start a camp where kids would come free of charge to train and obtain personal growth for success in every facet of life. The athletic, spiritual and academic focus of the RBTV is designed to help each youngster achieve his personal best. Achievement is important at RBTV. The real aims are mental, physical and spiritual development: values Ron’s grandmother taught him. The camp’s motto, “Love, Peace, Patience, Humil-ity,” is found on all the clothes kids receive. RBTV employs Christian values as the foundation upon which character is built. There are SAT prep courses, Bible study classes, all aimed at helping young kids reach their dreams. The theme of the camp is “Me Third”: God first, others second, and me third. The RBTV teaches the youngsters never to drink, swear or partake in any form of substance abuse. All of the kids come to the camp for five weeks straight, and they leave with a sense of hope and determination to make something of their lives. The entire camp is run on love. Above the cafeteria door, a wooden sign that says “Love One Another” is posted for all the campers to see every day. Ron Burton passed away in 2003 of bone cancer. His four sons and daughter are now in charge of keeping their father’s legacy alive. This year marked the 20th anniversary of the Ron Burton Training Village. Since its inception, more than 2000 young men have been impacted by its message.

Building Bright FuturesMost of the kids who attend the RBTV come from broken homes and very difficult situations, like the three young men you’re about to meet. Nineteen-year-old Ben Riggan says he never knew his father growing up. And when he came to the camp at age 11, Ben admits, he was a quiet, angry kid. “I pretty much came to RBTV with nothing and left with a fam-ily. I don’t know how to explain much better than that.” Ben attended the RBTV for eight consecutive years and be-came one the camp’s top leaders. Many colleges and universi-ties have taken a great interest in the RBTV. Bentley College, Stonehill College and Northern Michigan have all created their own full scholarship programs for the top campers who gradu-ate from the village. West Point and the Air Force Academy also recruit kids straight out of the village. Ben Riggan is cur-rently a sophomore at Stonehill College on a full Ron Burton Training Village scholarship. George and Charles Toulson of Delaware entered the camp together in 1987. Their mother heard Ron Burton speak at a banquet one day and decided to send her two young boys to the camp. Charles and George attended the camp for six straight years, and both graduated with high honors. George went on to attend Yale University and Charles attended Duke University. “I would have to say the greatest feeling was the sense of accomplishment after every summer,” George says. “At such an early age, I was instilled with such a hard work ethic. And not only as it pertained to sports, but also in life, education and even in my relationships with people. By the end of the summer, just being able to get through that, you come out with the attitude, that, like wow, I can do anything.” George is now a financial advisor for Vanguard Insurance. After graduating from Duke University, Charles’ life-long dream was to become a doctor. Today, Dr. Charles Toulson is an orthopaedic surgeon at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Mary-land. “When I first came to the camp I was this skinny little kid with very little talent,” Dr. Toulson says humbly. “But now I know there is nothing I cannot accomplish by the grace of God. I know that since 11 years old, I’d gotten up at four in the morning. I ran seven miles a day. I did competitive sports. And those are the things that helped get me through medical school and tests and even helped me become a good resident physician in the hospital.” Those are just a few of many stories about kids who have come out of the Ron Burton Training Village, their lives changed, and headed for success.

Paul Burton, ’02, is a reporter on the news team of ABC6 in Providence, RI. A former athlete, he was an All Big Ten punter at Northwestern University, a part of two Big 10 championships and played in the 1996 Rose Bowl and 1997 Citrus Bowl. After a brief stint with the Seattle Seahawks, he hung up his cleats and picked up a microphone to begin his career as a journalist. Burton received BA in Communica-tions and Masters in Journalism degrees from Northwestern, a Master of Arts in Urban Ministry from Gordon-Conwell, and is currently pursuing a D.Min. degree in the seminary’s The Preacher and the Message tract. He also directs the Ron

Burton Training Village.

ON THE FRONT LINES

6 summer 2005

Our Cities – Our Nations Our cities are not what they were 50 years ago, 25 years ago, or even 10 years ago. Our cities are multiethnic, multi-cultural, and increasingly multilingual. They are increasingly divided between the “haves” and “have-nots” and between people of color and white. While Marshall McLuhan spoke of a “global village” to highlight the critical communication and interdependency of contemporary life, we need to further qualify it to read an “ global village.” The apparent contradiction of urban/village underscores the reality of the global process of people/ethnic movements from village to major urban centers. This worldwide phenomenon is also, given our immigration pat-terns, the experience of cities in the USA. Be it Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Chicago or Los Angeles, each is undergo-ing this globalization process: a multiethnic and multicultural reality increasingly defining its ethos. Ben Wattenberg, the author and demographer, speaks of our cities and our nation as experiencing “the dawning of the first universal nation.” The notion of the United States as a “universal nation” is not new since historically the great American experiment has represented this very aspiration. It is important to note that this internal development is consistent with the external “global mission” of America found in its cultural narratives—stories that shape American images of self and world.1

A Second City Our cities can be further described in the words of Charles Dickens as (“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times”), for there is a “second city” in all our urban areas. This “second city” is the apt classifica-tion of the former governor of New York, Mario Cuomo, at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government a few years ago (February 23, 1999). His eloquent speech, labeled “prophetic” by the secular media, underlined the plight of those living in the “second city.” A “second city” is one that increasingly must live with a second-hand education, second-hand housing, second-hand security, second-hand health services and second-hand clothing. A “second city” is one that increasingly must live with the deterioration, the breakdown, of its moral and spiritual foundation. I am concerned for the city—particularly that inner city reality, the “second city.” And I am deeply concerned with a Church that needs a holistic vision for the city.

A Biblical Paradigm In view of the phenomenon of urbanization and globaliza-tion, and the problems and promises that go along with it, I need to raise a few critical questions: What is the role of the people of God in the city? What is the vision of my church for the city?

AVision for the City: The Jeremiah Paradigm for the City Eldin Villafañe, Ph.D.

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A very wise man of long ago, a man that knew a little of the complexities of the city, said: “Where there is no vision, the people perish” (Proverbs 29:18). The NIV reads as follows: “Where there is no revelation, the people cast off restraint.” The absence of vision (or revelation) results in a “social melt-down,” a moral and spiritual disintegration. Individuals and institutions—including the Church—that are to model and live out a vision are often themselves visionless. A vision, whether we apply it to an individual or an institution, gives direction, focuses energies, informs content and character, and sets the framework for “seeing” and “valuing” life’s true meaning and goals. It shapes the image of self and world. Through the years, many books and persons have inspired and challenged my work in urban ministry. Yet, time and again, I have been driven by God’s Spirit to find fresh inspi-ration in the words of the prophet Jeremiah: “And seek the peace [ ] of the city... and pray to the Lord for it; for in its peace [ ] you will have peace [ ]” (29: 7). Jeremiah’s words are instructive here. They present a new challenge to God’s people in a new reality. You are familiar with the histori-cal background of Jer-emiah 29—the people of God are captive, exiled in Babylon. From Jeru-salem, Jeremiah writes a radical letter! It ad-dresses their question, our question: What is the role of the people of God in the city? Or, to bring it closer to home: What is the role of the Church (God’s people) in the city today? Jeremiah’s answer—I call it “The Jeremiah Paradigm for the City”—is an overarching, holistic vision for the city, one that can inspire our work in urban ministry. Jeremiah’s answer, particularly verses 4-7, involves three fundamental theological elements critical to any theology of ur-ban ministry. Said differently, Jeremiah’s paradigm stems from: (1) a theology of context, (2) a theology of mission/ministry, and (3) a theology of prayer (or spirituality). Corresponding to it are three key words: presence, peace and prayer. It’s important to underline here that recent New Testament scholarship has affirmed the significance of this passage of Jer-emiah for the early church and for us today. Bruce W. Winter in his

posits as his major thesis that of all letters in the New Testament, it is 1 Peter that considers the theme of the welfare of the city in detail (particularly 1 Peter 2:11-3:17). He further states that 1 Peter’s call to “seek the welfare of the city” is based on Jeremiah 29 as the key theological paradigm to “do good and seek peace” (3:11)—a text that informs these first century Christians of the to be engaged in the

—the city!2

A Theology of Context Jeremiah 29: 4-6 speaks to the Church of our relation-

ship to the city, to culture and society. Jeremiah’s words to those exiled in “wicked” Babylon are still relevant. Against the false prophets who might call for “assimilation,” “revolution” or “es-capism,” Jeremiah called for “critical engagement”—for presence!

I am helped by the etymology of the word church (). In ancient Greece it referred to the congregation or as-

sembly of the “called out ones” to discuss the situation of the . The Church gathers to worship and to equip itself to

impact the . It does not live for itself, but for the king-dom (rule, sovereignty, lordship) of God. The Church cannot be indifferent to the human needs in the city—be they physi-cal, political, economic or spiritual. It does not hide; neither does it integrate falsely in society. The people of God do not compromise its identity. It knows that it must be present the city, and the city; yet it also knows that it is not the city. The Church is present as salt and light (Matthew 5: 13-16) in all the affairs of the . Moreover, a key word/concept that clarifies the Church’s presence in the city is contextualization. Contextualization is the of all faithful and effective urban ministry. It may be best defined by the biblical paradigm of incarna-tion (John 1:14; Philippians 2: 5-11) While urban ministry is to serve the whole city—the neighborhoods as well as the greater

metropolitan area—it begins with and con-textually expresses a commitment to and sol-idarity with those with whom Jesus did. In the language of Leonardo Boff or Gustavo Gutier-rez, it manifests “a preferential option for the poor”—for those

who live in the “second city.” Urban ministry is challenged to humbly express an “urban .” It must struggle to empty itself of the prerogatives, prestige and power so highly valued by the world, and pitch its tent among the poor and marginal-ized communities in our cities.3

A Theology of Mission/Ministry Jeremiah 29:7 “Seek the peace of the city,” speaks to

the Church of our mission in the city. The word and con-cept “peace” { } best sums up for me the mission and ministry of the Church. Scripture presents to us at least three dimensions of , three dimensions of peace that we are encouraged to seek. They can be summarized as: peace with God (Romans 5:1), the peace of God (Philippians 4:7) and (seek) the peace of the city (Jeremiah 29:7). In the Old Testament, speaks of wholeness, sound-ness, completeness, health, harmony, integrity, prosperity, rec-onciliation, welfare, justice and salvation—both personal and social.4 The Church is an instrument, a servant, of peace in the city. It preaches and lives out the of God. The essence of the gospel is . In Christ, peace (

, in the New Testament is a word richly informed by the Old Testament word ) has come (Luke 1:79, 2:14); by him it is given/bestowed (Mark 5: 34; Luke 7: 50) and his dis-ciples are its messengers (Luke 24: 45f). The Church needs to be reminded, in the words of Peter at the house of Cornelius (Acts 10:36): “You know the message God sent... telling the

through Jesus Christ, who is Lord of all.” We are exhorted by Paul in Ephesians 6:15, and I like the way the New Revised Standard Version renders it, “As shoes for

The people of God do not compromise its

identity. It knows that it must be present

in the city, with and for the city;

yet it also knows that it is not of the city.

8 summer 2005

your feet, put on whatever will make you ready to proclaim the gospel of peace.” The Church must be an embodiment and an agent of

in our cities—particularly in those places of brokenness and hopelessness, the “second city.” Expressed in the classical missiological categories of the Church’s mission, it means:

—speaks of a church that proclaims by word and deed the Good News of peace through Jesus Christ; —speaks of a church that lives in fellowship and in authentic community, one that has experience and models for society “the peace of God that transcends all understanding” (Philippians 4:7);

—speaks of a church, and of Christian ministry or service of to a hurting and broken humanity—an agent of recon-

ciliation, welfare and justice; and —speaks of a church that celebrates and worships the Prince of Peace!

A Theology of Prayer (Spirituality) Jeremiah 29: 7b, “and pray to the Lord for it,” speaks

to the Church of the spirituality needed to struggle and live

in the city. A true urban spirituality knows the critical impor-tance of prayer. Prayer is a radical and revolutionary act. Karl Barth states it well: “To clasp the hand in prayer is the begin-ning of an uprising against the disorder of the world.” Read carefully the words of my colleague, Peter Kuzmič, Paul E. and Eva B. Toms Distinguished Professor of World Missions and European Studies, on the theme of prayer:

5

A true urban spirituality knows that the struggle requires the nurturing and “caring of the soul.” Spiritual power encoun-ters are indeed present in the . Equipped with the whole armor of God, we go out to confront the “principalities and powers.” In the last part of this text, Jeremiah states a great truth (and a seemingly ironic appeal to “enlightened self-interest”) when he encourages them and us “for in its peace [that of “wicked” Babylon] you [the people of God] will have peace” (7b). Our challenge is clear. We should pray and seek the peace of the city, if not for “Babylon’s” health, at least for the Church’s health!

1See, Roger G. Betsworth, (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox, 1990), pp. 107-37; see also “Toward

the First Universal Nation,” , March 16, 1991, p. 22.

2Bruce W. Winter, ((First-Century Christians in the Graeco-Roman World) (Grand Rapids,

Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company), 1994.

3See, Eldin Villafañe, (Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing House, 1995).

4See among the many works, Perry B. Yoder, : (Newton, Kansas: Faith and Life Press, 1987); Walter Bruegger-

mann, (New York: United Church Press, 1982); and Robert Banks, “Peace” in Carl F.H. Henry, ed.

(Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1973), pp. 494-495.

5Peter Kuzmic, “Prayer: The Church’s Strength” in , Vol. 36, No. 2, February 1994, pp. 5-6.

Eldin Villafañe, Ph.D., Professor of Christian Social Ethics, was founding director of Gordon-Conwell’s 29-year-old Boston Urban Ministry campus, the Center for Urban Ministerial Edu-cation (CUME), which annually serves nearly 400 multilingual and multicultural students. He has also served as Minister of Education at Iglesia Cristiana Juan 3:16 in the Bronx, New York, then the largest Hispanic church in the nation. From 1996 to 2000, he was also Executive Director, The Contex-tualized Urban Theological Education Enablement Program (CUTEEP), a PEW Charitable Trust funded national re-granting

program. He has been named one of the nation’s 10 most influential Hispanic reli-gious leaders and scholars. Among his books are The Liberating Spirit: Toward An Hispanic-American Pentecostal Social Ethic; Seek the Peace of the City: Reflections on Urban Ministry; and A Prayer for the City: Further Reflections on Urban Ministry.

“The Church must be an embodiment and an agent of Shalom in our cities—

particularly in those places of brokenness and hopelessness, the ‘second city.’”

9summer 2005

the urban church: A 1st Century A.D. Model

uilding a church isn’t like starting a McDonalds’ franchise. With McDonalds, you achieve success by replicating the

same taste all over the world. Whether you’re in Boston, Budapest or Beijing, a Big Mac should taste pretty much the same. If it tastes different, look around you; you may be in Burger King! When it comes to building a church, however, we can’t sim-ply download the franchise game plan for the “perfect church.” We can, however, learn from other models. Evangelicals of-ten look to large, contemporary, suburban churches as “model churches.” City pastors, however, may be better off looking back at ancient urban models. Our postmodern cities, as schol-ars have noted, have many similarities to the first century cities featured in the New Testament. Antioch, for example, was a city we might recognize. It had people from all over the world: Europe, the Middle East, Af-rica, India and East Asia. Antioch was a port city and a center for trade and commerce. Antioch also housed a great library and fostered scholarship. The city was religiously pluralistic and pleasure seeking. Given Antioch’s urban ethos and the Holy Spirit’s trans-forming work there through the people of God, the church at Antioch serves as a powerful model for those of us called to urban ministry.

International OutreachUp until the “Antioch Era” of the early church, the Gospel of Jesus Christ had been communicated almost exclusively to Jewish people. In Acts 11:19, we read that followers of Jesus who had been scattered throughout Asia Minor had been tell-ing the message of Jesus “only to Jews.” But, in Acts 11:20, we read that some people from Cyprus and Cyrene went to Antioch and began communicating the news of Jesus with “Greeks also...” A theological cornerstone for those of us involved in urban ministry is the conviction that the Gospel of Jesus Christ is for all people.

This may sound obvious, but it is significant for us in a time when persuasive voices in the church growth movement have emphasized the need to target homogenous units of people (often people just like the leaders). The reasoning goes that people will be more receptive to the Gospel if they don’t have to cross ethnic or economic lines to come to Christ. So target a specific ethnic group or socio-economic group like young professionals or a specific generational group, like Gen X or Y, so people won’t have to cross social barriers to come to Jesus. A church that focuses on a razor thin demographic slice may expedite “numerical growth,” but also contradicts the reconciling power of the Gospel! The church at Antioch was passionate about reaching people of different ethnic backgrounds with the Gospel and, as a result, people were not only reconciled to God, but with each other. Urban missiologist Ray Bakke points out that Antioch was a city that had both an exterior wall and interior walls that separated the various ethnic groups: Greeks, Syrians, Jewish, Latin and African. As people were reconciled to God, they began to cross the interior walls of the city and experienced reconciliation with people who had been their cultural enemies. Following the lead of the church in Antioch, part of our vision at Tenth Avenue Church in Vancouver is to serve as a community where people of all backgrounds (racially, cultur-ally, socio-economically and religiously) can discover a rela-tionship with God through Jesus Christ. As people experience reconciliation with God, we see them connect with people very different from themselves. Urban churches that follow Antioch’s lead will be passion-ate about a Gospel for all that leads to reconciliation with God and others.

Spiritual and Social OutreachWe also see that the church at Antioch met both the “spiri-tual” and “social” needs of people. The church at Antioch (Acts 11: 27-30) was a place where a hunger offering was taken to bring relief for people who had

Rev. Ken Shigematsu, ‘95

B

10 summer 2005

been victims of a famine in Judea. This may have been the first disaster relief offering in the history of the Christian church. Each member of the church gave according to his or her abil-ity. This love offering was then hand delivered by Barnabas and Paul to those in need (vs. 29). The Emperor Julian in the first century wrote to a pagan priest asking him to explain why the Christian way was grow-ing so quickly, given that they had no political clout and little money. The priest explained that Greeks helped Greeks, Ro-mans helped Romans, Africans helped Africans, but Christians helped everyone. Philip Jenkins, author of , points out that the reason churches in the 2/3rds world are growing is because the churches are preaching the Gospel and feeding people, providing health care, and teaching people the skills they need to survive in a rapidly developing society. The conservative branch of the Protestant church has typi-cally been committed to helping people make sure that their sins have been forgiven and that they are leading morally upright lives. The liberal wing of the church has often been committed to justice for the poor and social issues. Like the church of Antioch, urban ministry leaders won’t want to wear either a conservative or liberal straight-jacket! We will be committed to offering a Gospel that faithfully inte-grates both the spiritual and social sides of the Gospel. Even a church like Tenth Avenue, which is not large by U.S. standards, can be involved in evangelism and feeding the hungry and housing the poor, helping to provide a safe house for recovering addicts, and deploying resources to Asia and other disaster stricken areas of the world.

A Sending ChurchThe church of Antioch was prepared to not only send financial resources, but also human resources. In Acts 13, we read that as the church was worshipping the Lord, praying and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, “Set apart Saul and Barnabas... for the work I have for them.”

Like the church at Antioch, God calls us to come to atten-tion before him in worship, prayer and fasting, ready to hear God’s voice and prepared to be sent by the Holy Spirit. Planning and strategy are important, but we must always be open to altering our course in response to the movements of the Holy Spirit. Several years ago, Cathy Ito, a member of our church in Vancouver, began to ask herself, “Is it just a coincidence that I am a physiotherapist, or does God have some larger purpose for me?” She began to pray for guidance and some time later she had a dream of Sudan. She didn’t know where Sudan was on a map, but looked it up on an atlas. She went to Missions Fest (a Vancouver-based missions conference) and picked up information on the international Leprosy Mission. She ap-plied and went to England for an interview. At the end of her interview Cathy asked her interviewer, “Where might you send me?” “To Sudan,” the interviewer said. Cathy told me she would be glad to stay in Vancouver, but was ready to go Af-rica if God made it clear she was to go. After more prayer and confirmation, Cathy ended up serving as a medical missionary to the lepers of Sudan. The term “Christian” was first used to describe the followers of Jesus in Antioch. It was a word that described followers of Jesus who were part of a multiethnic community, reaching out to the spiritually and socially needy, and a church ready to send out its best members in response to the Holy Spirit. That defini-tion of Christian—as an international, holistic, Spirit-led move-ment—also serves as a worthy vision for our urban churches.

“like the church at antioch, god calls us to come

to attention before him in worship,

prayer and fasting, ready to hear god’s voice and

prepared to be sent by the holy spirit.”

The Rev. Ken Shigematsu is Senior Pastor of Tenth Avenue Alliance Church in Vancouver, B.C., an inner city church ministering to those in need, immigrants, and business and cultural leaders. A Gordon-Conwell Trustee since 2001, he was a keynote speaker at the seminary’s inaugural national preaching conference in 2002. He is also on the faculty of the Sandy Ford Fellowship, a scholarship program for semi-narians who show promise in evangelism. He received an M.Div. from Gordon-Conwell in 1995.

11summer 2005

ome days, in his role as senior pastor of the 1000-member Lion of Judah Church, a predominantly Latino inner city

congregation in Roxbury, Massachusetts, Dr. Roberto Miranda consults his “manual,” the Bible, and wonders, “Where is there in Scripture provision for this? “Since we are very evangelistically oriented, we bring a lot of people into the church, and some of the things that I deal with are like the doctor dealing with diseases that are very rare...I leaf through every text that I know. It calls for refining every day my understanding of Scripture,” biblical principles such as grace versus holiness, keeping intention and many more. Much like the ministry challenges the Apostle Paul con-fronted in his First Century pagan context, Miranda explains that the city, “because of its dysfunctionality, the diversity of people that you find there, the brokenness many times of the cultures that come into play in the city, requires a complexity of ministry, a finesse in ministry that is really very demanding.” At Lion of Judah, that complexity of ministry is often defined by the most basic human needs: three families living in a two-bedroom apartment; undocumented individuals having difficulty getting jobs and scrambling to survive; non-English speakers who require help going to the hospital or an office; Central and Latin Americans working to send money home and suffering extreme loneliness, depression, guilt and sexual pressures spawned by loneliness. Ministry is also defined by the needs of first generation be-lievers who had never been touched by the Gospel: alcoholics, drug addicts, and individuals from broken, single families. “In order to respond to all those needs,” Roberto explains, “you really need to conduct a different kind of ministry.” Born in the Dominican Republic, Roberto moved with his family to Brooklyn, New York, when he was 10 years old. Following graduation from Andover prep school in Massachu-

setts, he earned a degree in international affairs at Princeton University and a Ph.D. at Harvard. In 1982, his fledgling Lion of Judah Church began meeting at Boston’s Emmanuel Gospel Center, which has served as an incubator for many of the city’s churches. Six months later, the congregation moved to a church building in Cambridgeport in-herited from a dying Conservative Baptist Anglo congregation. There, the church continued to flourish, attracting Latinos from throughout the greater Boston area. Then in 1993, Roberto recounts, the Lord called the congre-gation to leave their comfortable, rent-free, ideal environment and move across the Charles River to inner city Roxbury. “Even though the Lord had allowed the church to grow well, we felt we could be so much more effective by coming where the large portion of the community found itself.” The church bought and rehabbed a four-story warehouse “with a lot of volunteer labor and sacrificial giving on the part of the congre-gation,” and moved to the new facility in 1997. In the years since, he says, “God has just transformed the mentality of our congregation, our concept of ministry, our concept of the city, our understanding of the calling of the Church to the city and even to the general culture as a whole.” To meet its continuing growth, the church will soon construct a new sanctuary on its parking lot “able to hold a larger number of people and serve as a good, solid foundation for ministry in the city.” Ecclesiastically, the church has dual affiliations with the Conservative Baptist and American Baptist Churches of the USA denominations. “We like to say we’re kind of schizophren-ic,” he quips, “but we are a charismatic church. That’s one of the distinctives of our church. We place a lot of importance on the gifts of the Spirit, of being a Spirit-led church, on allowing play for strong prayer, spiritual warfare, intense worship.” Likewise, he says, “...we would like to model the highest

Lion of Judah Church

Roxbury, Massachusetts

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The call to pastor in urban settings brings with it unique opportuni-ties and considerable challenges. The following articles provide a snapshot of how four pastors are advancing the Gospel in major multicultural cities. Articles are written by Anne B. Doll, Director of Communications, Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary.

12 summer 2005

values of the Word of God....A lot of charismatic churches, one of the inner critiques I would offer about ourselves, is that we are very much into the experiences of the Spirit, into the intensity, the power of the Spirit, but often, not as much in grounding ourselves in the Word of God...I always want to keep that tension in our church between the Spirit and the Word, because the Word is the foundation.” Programmatically, in addition to its strong emphasis on evangelism, the church strives for excellence in community involvement, administration, and training members and leaders to be effective servants of Jesus Christ through an extensive education program on Sundays and throughout the week. “Community involvement is crucial,” he points out. “We feel we are called as a congregation and as people of God to go back into the world to do our part—to be salt and light

to the community, to show the love of God...and [to use] the giftings of God to attack the problems that beset our com-munities, so that we have the wisdom of God and the answers that contribute to the solutions.” To that end, one of the church’s major initiatives is the High-er Education Resource Center (HERC), a non-profit, faith-based organization with its own budget and staff that annually

receives several hundred thousand dol-

lars in government and philanthropic funding for educational initiatives. These include a mentoring program, computer literacy classes, SAT and MCAT training, college and career counseling, a yearly college fair, training for parents and Eng-lish as a Second Language. “All of these different ministries are related to showing the love of God in a different way, exposing unbelievers to a church that identifies with them and the needs of the commu-nity beyond the strictly religious and spiritual,” Roberto says. “We’ve been effective in bringing a lot of those people into the church [by] showing the merciful side of the church through those ministries.” One of the church’s most satisfying ministries extends sup-port to families from Latin America whose severely burned or disfigured children are undergoing reconstructive surgery at Shriners Hospital. “God has done a wonderful job of allow-ing us to evangelize these families, support them while they are here, connect them with a community that loves them and loves their children, and then stay in touch with them when they go back to Latin America. It’s an amazing, beautiful min-istry that allows us to communicate the love of God in a way that is so graphic, so dramatic.”

The church is currently renovating an adjacent five-story build-ing for use as a community ministry center. “We do work in counseling for families and we hope to expand into what will be a major center for counseling to the community that is faith-based, with professional Christian counselors who will offer services to anybody, regardless of religious background.” In addition, through a $700,000 grant from the Lilly Foun-dation, the church, in cooperation with Emmanuel Gospel Center, has also created the Institutes for Pastoral Excellence, a ministry to train Latino pastors. Over a two-year period, these typically self-taught pastors are exposed to aspects of minis-try ranging from administration to biblical education in the Church, counseling, systems thinking and community involve-ment. “These are ways we hope to strengthen the capacity of pastors to be effective, and to encourage them on a lifelong journey of learning and self development.” “I don’t think we have designed any of the ministries we now have,” Dr. Miranda observes. “God has brought us into them and it’s the way we want it to be—a very organic kind of experience.” Lion of Judah is presently engaged in an intense process of evaluating and strengthening its entire administrative infra-structure, toward the goal of becoming an efficient, functional institution better able to minister the Gospel effectively. “The more people you have, the more diversity...the more ambitious you are for community involvement, this forces you to develop your infrastructure,” he points out. “Otherwise, you are just broken by the burden of increased demands... “It’s not easy,” he adds. “That is why so many churches and ministers don’t go through that process, because it de-mands a lot of self questioning, re-visioning and sometimes even conflict...But it is utterly necessary for us to go to another level of ministry...Many evangelical churches have the fireplace but no fire and the house freezes. Many charismatic churches have the fire but no fireplace, and we end up burning down the house. The challenge is to bring those two together.” What does he see as the urban church’s contributions to the life of the city? “The urban church—its potential—lies in providing to the community a Gospel that while addressing spiritual, eternal needs, also shows that it has utility for the temporal, social needs,” he responds. “It’s other worldly, but it’s also for this world. I think the urban church is called to bring these two together, to take eternal truth and translate it into temporal, effective truth as well... “How do we do that? Reconciliation is a key element. I think God wants to use the Latino Church, just as he wants to use all these other ethnic groups in the community, to be a blessing to the Anglo community. We have been blessed by the Anglo European community through all the missionaries that were sent to Latin America and the Third World. Now it’s time for us to give back. “I believe that God is raising the ethnic church in America to share some of the fire that they themselves generated genera-tions ago in our own countries—a wonderfully ironic but very beautifully symmetrical kind of process that God is bringing together. We want to be a church of reconciliation. God has given us a lot of gifts and we want to share them.”

For more information, visit www.leondejuda.org.

Dr. Roberto Miranda has been pastor of Lion of Judah for more than 20 years.

13summer 2005

he Rev. John M. Borders III is wrestling with an enviable dilemma: how to refashion a church that in 16 weeks

burgeoned from 1000 members to the 2400 to 2800 people who show up for its Sunday services and tap into its other ministries. His former 200-member youth program has nearly tripled. John pastors Morning Star Baptist Church of Mattapan, Massachusetts, located in the heart of Boston’s urban commu-nity. Its congregation is predominantly African American and Caribbean American. Theologically, it is what John describes as a “dynamic Baptist Church,” one that “is aflame with the presence of God.” “We believe in the gifts and operation of the Holy Spirit,” he says. “We believe in the supernatural presence of God in a person’s life and in the community of the church, and we also believe...in faith grounded in reason. It shouldn’t be a reckless faith. It should be built by people using their minds to ask the questions and see God answer them.” Morning Star’s explosive growth occurred immediately after the church opened a new $11 million building in late 2004, a towering facility that touches the sidewalk of a busy Mattapan thoroughfare. Its sanctuary seats 1,000. “I thought that the growth would be quick because of the novelty of the new edifice; I didn’t know it would be this quick,” John comments. “We took in 45 members on Easter Sunday. We took in 80 people during the three weeks prior

to that. And we’ve seen that kind of growth every week since we’ve been here.” Because of its vastly expanded membership, John says that programmatically, the church is in a state of transition. “We had a sanctuary that seated at most 300 people. We had reached the point where we had three services. The whole ex-perience (of growth) meant that we had to change the way we do ministry: the level of professionalism required in running this building, the level of organization it takes...We need three times the amount of people to do everything we did in the old building. “Thinking in terms of a larger responsibility to the people, a larger responsibility to the community, more people coming to be saved, needing discipleship, families needing more care, more social services—all those things were what God had to prepare me for over the years.” John describes Morning Star’s vision as the biblical vision for the church as Jesus and Paul articulated it, coupled with a mission to be an instrument of revival in the City of Boston. Certain components, he says, reflect the church’s identity as a congregation. ”One is worship; I call it flaming worship. We believe in praise and worship and expressions to God that come out of hearts on fire for the Lord. Another is fellowship. Morn-ing Star is very conscious not to lose the Southern hospitality characteristic of the church. Another is discipleship. With the

Morning Star Baptist ChurchMattapan, Massachusetts

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church growing in such numbers, we’re working night and day to develop a discipleship program where we move people from being new members to growing disciples of Jesus Christ.” Youth ministry figures prominently in the life of Morning Star. The church had already been serving 200 children and teens in its former facility through programs ranging from Sun-day school to tutorial services, help with college counseling and trips to prospective colleges, liturgical dance, an annual retreat and fellowship. Currently it is increasing its budget, allocat-ing more space and time for youth activities, and expand-ing its Christian Education team from a staff of less than 10 supplemented by volun-teers, to one that will include 60 people. Service also defines Morn-ing Star, with members in-volved in numerous outreach ministries: the Long Island Shelter for the Homeless, the Italian Home for Children, the AIDS wing of Lemuel Shattuck Hospital, and resources and sup-port for natural disasters locally and globally. Service also en-compasses support for individual crises that, according to John, “happen a lot in urban ministry—the crises that take place in people’s lives. We try to address those things quickly.” Likewise, members are taught to give, not only to sustain the expenses of a large church community and facility, but to support benevolence—provided in food, clothing and other physical needs of people in the church and community. This holistic approach to advancing the Gospel in the city by meeting people’s spiritual and physical needs represents, in John’s view, “a paradigm shift in church growth. “Evangelism used to be door-to-door witnessing, or one-

to-one witnessing the message of Jesus Christ,” he explains. “That paradigm is almost outdated. The new paradigm is providing social services. You extend social services by way of outreach. You bring people into the context of the Christian community and give them the message of Jesus Christ while you’re giving them a plate of food or a coat to put on. That’s the new paradigm of evangelism in the inner city.” Once in the church, individuals are led to salvation, dis-cipled and equipped, and they, in turn, begin to serve as well.

As John explains, “the thing that is always happening in any church...people come in and their lives are improved. They know someone who has a job, so they find work. They find social services; they gain hope and their lives are improved; and they wind up joining in the work force, or reaching higher in

the work force, and they turn around and help other people. “What I’ve noticed frequently though at Morning Star is that God is sending graduate students to the church on a level I’ve never seen before. I’m seeing students from Harvard Medi-cal School, Harvard Law School, some from Boston Univer-sity, from Tufts, many students from Berkeley and Simmons College, who are attending the church while they’re in school. Many of them live out of state and they’ve found Morn-ing Star to be...a home-like feeling reminding them of their churches at home. “The numbers are growing all the time, so we wind up seeing more young doctors and lawyers in the church get-ting involved. And that’s one of the things that is different about this generation. It is a generation of faith. They believe

Evangelism used to be door-to-door witnessing,

or one-to-one witnessing the message of Jesus

Christ. That paradigm is almost outdated.

The new paradigm is providing social services.

15summer 2005

in the Lord. They’ve been scared. They’ve been educated to fear the parasitic and destructive elements of the community that would lead to drugs, teenage pregnancies, problems of violence, and division and gang involvement. “Although those things exist, there’s a generation of people now who just seem to know the perils of those things. Instead, they’re getting an education; they’re getting support from their family; and they’re remaining faithful to the Church.” To John, the Church’s role in the city is many things. “First, it’s the same role and mission that Jesus gave the Church before: to bring glory and honor to his name and be a means of salvation. The African American Church is still the meeting house for people in the community. We are still

the haven for social service programs. We’re still the psychologist’s of-fice. We’re still the headquarters for political activism. But the climate, the atmosphere, just has a bit more tension in it, and it demands a little more action and imagination to get things done.”

Read more about Morning Star Baptist Church at www.msbc-bos.org.

In the early 1990s, Boston experienced a siege of gang-related youth violence that was claiming young lives nearly daily, and culmi-nated in what was later dubbed “the Boston Miracle.”

Rev. John Borders’ Morning Star Baptist Church in inner city Mat-tapan found itself in the vortex of that crisis—the church where a violent event lit the fuse for massive community intervention.

“Essentially what happened was this,” he recounts. “I was perform-ing a funeral at Morning Star for a young murder victim who was not in a gang. He was just an innocent bystander shot out of a window. Gang members from all over the city attended the funeral in our small building. Rivalries broke out in the parking lot of the church. They started fighting; then they started shooting. Some of the gang members ran inside Morning Star after the person they were inten-tionally trying to kill. This young man was stabbed eight times. I thought he was dead.”

When John sprang from the pulpit, intending to fall on the young man to prevent further harm, the 15 assailants fled and were met at the door by police. That night, the event made national news. “A news reporter in Boston who is now on CBS said to me, ‘You’ve got to do something.’ So I called a press conference for the next day, asking preachers and community leaders to come out and stand with me to discuss this and to pray. At that time, 50 ministers came out.

“We had the support of Senator Ted Kennedy, Archbishop Cardinal Law, and judicatorial heads from every major religion. We stood together and talked about a strategy to resolve the gang problem in the City of Boston. But we also knew that the eyes of the world were on us to address now the gang problem in the United States of America—because when violence had come into the Church, we had gone too far. We had lost our sanity.”

Shortly thereafter, the group met again, and this time 300 pastors showed up at Morning Star. During the next six months, the group hammered out an urban agenda to solve the problem that John says “involved street workers, the court system, prisons systems and how police do arrests, what families needed to do at home, and what churches needed to do to be more responsible. Out of that was born the Ten Point Coalition that gained national recognition.”

How did the term “the Boston Miracle” come to be? John explains that during that time, “the whole city heard about what happened at Morning Star, and the whole city went into prayer for John Borders and Morning Star Baptist Church. Every time I turned on the television or the radio, there were people praying for Morning Star and John Borders. It went on for weeks.

“Two years later, me not knowing why God had allowed this, I was listening to Dan Rather on CBS Radio talking about the Boston Miracle and stating that this all started at a small church in Mattapan—and that the murder rate among teenagers had gone down to zero. And that existed for two solid years!” Gang violence is on the rise again in Boston, and recently John performed another funeral, this time for a young man who was shot on a bus at point blank range.

“When I performed the funeral in our new edifice, we had more people than I have ever seen at any funeral we have had—probably 700 to 800 people, mostly teenagers and youth from the communities surrounding the church. There was more tension and anger in that funeral than I have seen since 1992. And it told me something—that there’s a generation now that does not remember what happened in the Boston Miracle, and that the violence we saw back then could potentially emerge again because those who were involved are now older. There’s another generation coming up.

“But when I delivered the message, 300 of them stood up to ask Christ into their life as Lord and Savior.”

In th

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Rev. John M. Borders III is a former member of the seminary’s Boston Board of Advisors.

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eventeen years ago, Rev. Dr. Pete Scazzero (‘85) launched his multiethnic, multicultural New Life Fellowship in Elm-

hurst, Queens, New York, by sharing the Gospel on the streets then inviting people to a Bible study—a tact he describes as “very aggressive evangelism.” From a church that began with Pete and his wife, Geri, their little daughter, and a handful of others, New Life has mush-roomed to 800 to 1000 individuals who attend its two Sunday services and participate in its cell groups and other ministries. Its goal is still evangelistic: to glorify God by leading people to a personal relationship with Christ. Its commitment to dem-onstrate the love of Christ across racial, cultural, economic and gender barriers finds fertile soil at its very doorstep. Located on one of the busiest street in Queens in a neigh-borhood of people from 123 nations, the church membership reflects this diversity: African Americans, Latinos, people from every Asian country, Palestinians, Jewish believers, Russians, Poles, Turks—55 nations in all. Community development and racial reconciliation expert John Perkins has called New Life “the most reconciled, diverse church in the nation.” Pete calls it “a real taste of the Kingdom, of Revelation, and very wonderful. “We are very much into equipping and being a quality church in the midst of the city that truly models the spirituality that embraces emotional health. Reconciliation for us is part of the Gospel, so everyone deals with their issues of racism and tensions between cultures and races.” Long before Pete began evangelizing on the streets of Queens, he and Geri had a vision to start an urban church planting movement in the U.S. and around the world. At Rutgers University, Pete had helped plant new Christian groups for InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, in the process becoming heavily involved in cross cultural ministry. After receiving an M.Div. degree from Gordon-Conwell, the two set off for a year in Costa Rica to learn Spanish. The church planting vision has born fruit in 12 New Life Fellowships, six in the U.S., two in the Philippines and one each in Columbia, Ecuador, the Dominican Republic and Chile. One of their U.S. church plants, a Spanish congregation just

down the street from Pete’s English congregation, has 1500 members and its own staff. All the overseas churches were planted by former church members, reflecting New Life’s mis-sion strategy to develop people from different countries who return home to serve Christ. Community outreach plays a key role at New Life. When Asian nurses in the church developed a heart for overseas medi-cal missions, church leaders considered the long flight times to other countries, and the nurses’ limited vacations. Then they looked around at the mission field in their own back yard. Now, the nurses provide care and prayer to their multiethnic neighbors under tents set up in community parks for church-sponsored health fairs. Under a separate arm, New Life Community Development Corporation, a permanent medical clinic is currently under construction, and corporation officials have applied for designa-tion as a Federally Qualified Health Center. If successful, the new facility can receive insurance reimbursement, and medical students agreeing to serve there after graduation can receive financial assistance for their schooling. Community development services, which flow from what Pete describes as a commitment “to coupling the preaching of the Gospel with a commitment to social justice,” also extend to a legal clinic for the poor, teaching English as a Second Language, an after school program, a food pantry and a music recording ministry, the Beats and Blessings Academy, to get at-risk youth off the streets. There, youth can write and record their own rap music, gain training in music production and perform their music in various venues. Some of these kids end up in the church’s 100-plus youth group—a diverse assortment of Bloods and Crypts gang members, individuals coming out of prison and the “church kids,” like two of Pete’s four daughters. Leading this team is the Director of Youth Ministry who is a professional rap artist, and a youth pastor who’s a former drug dealer. Pete says this husband-wife team has built “a phenomenal ministry” in which young people are “very committed and very on fire... “The thing about our setting is that either you’re going to be

New Life Fellowship Elmhurst, Queens, New York

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New Life Fellowship Elmhurst, Queens, New York

for Christ or you’re not. You’re not going to have this ‘churchy group.’ These kids are serious, very multicultural, because we’re committed to kids on the streets. So the group has an evangelis-tic thrust.” Figuring in this thrust is a once-a-month event, The Spot, which integrates rap and hip hop music. A few years ago, Pete hit a crisis that was to shape an un-derpinning of ministry at New Life Fellowship. “What happened was that we planted the church in September 1987 and the church was growing, but basically something was wrong. I was tired, stressed and hurried personally. We had a split in one of the Spanish congregations. I was angry and depressed; my wife was unhappy. It looked like we were going to be another urban casualty—another min-istry casualty—because there are casualties everywhere. And it was very hard to be a pastor. Through that whole journey, God met my wife and me in a very extraordinary way and transformed our life.” The crisis that sparked their journey was Geri’s pronounce-ment that she was quitting the church. During the next two years, in a process that seemed initially to Pete like death, he looked honestly at issues that had fueled the crisis, such as fear of confrontation and conflict, inability to set limits and many others. In his wrestling, he ultimately forged a broader theology of discipleship. In his subsequent book, (Zondervan, 2003), Pete recounts: “The sad reality we discov-ered was that Jesus had penetrated only superficially into the depth of our persons—even though we had been Christians for almost 20 years...With all my background in prayer and the Bible, it was quite a shock to realize that whole emotional lay-ers of my life existed that God had not yet touched.” What God did through Pete and Geri’s own journey “spilled out into the church immediately, beginning with our staff team, then our elder board, and eventually the rest of our leadership.

For the first time, I understood what it meant to minister out of who you are, not what you do. My discovery was contagious. We went from being ‘human doings’ to ‘human beings.’ The result has been a rippling effect, very slowly, through the entire church.” Pete’s contention is that “the overall health of any church or ministry depends on the emotional and spiritual health of its leadership.” His book, which won the Gold Medallion Award for the best book on Christian Ministry for 2004, looks theologically at issues that impede emotional and spiritual

health, such as grieving, limits, loving well and more. He is presently writing a new book,

, that integrates the contemplative into emotional health. Pete says that leading a church in the 21st Century is a challenge—in rural Kansas

or a major metropolitan city—adding, “Sometimes I think New York City is easier because people are so broken, so there is more openness to the Gospel... “What’s the greatest gift we can give the City of New York and the planting of churches both here and overseas? It is the living Jesus. I am committed to meeting practical needs, of course, but I am not primarily a social worker. My commitment is that people would know and love Christ, out of which they would become the men and women God has called them to be and serve him and serve other people. “So I am about Christ Jesus—the Living Lord. That’s why I’m here.”

For additional information, visit www.newlifefellowship.org

My commitment is that people would know and

love Christ, out of which they would become the

men and women God has called them to be and

serve him and serve other people.

Dr. Pete Scazzero planted New Life Fellowship in 1987.

18 summer 2005

ev. Dr. Soong-Chan Rah’s greatest satisfactions as an urban pastor occur in those moments when he sees individuals in

his church grasp “God’s heart for justice and compassion,” and make life-changing decisions as a result. When this takes place, “it’s very satisfying that the Gospel is really transforming lives, not only on a personal level, but in how it is directed externally,” says the senior pastor of Cam-bridge Community Fellowship Church, and a Gordon-Conwell alumnus (M.Div.’94, D.Min.‘05). Transforming understanding of, and responses to, issues of social justice and reconciliation have been key values of Pastor Rah’s Evangelical Covenant church since its founding in 1996 in the Central Square area of Cambridge, Massachusetts. Lo-cated in the shadow of Harvard and MIT, its 300 members are primarily college and graduate students, and younger adults. While most are Asians, 15 to 20 different ethnic groups are represented as well. “A big part of our vision is to be a church concerned about God’s heart for compassion, mercy and justice in the urban context,” he explains. “Related to that is a concern that God is calling all people to him, and a part of that is reconciliation along racial and ethnic lines.”

The church’s vision for transformation plays out in inten-tional initiatives, a process, as Pastor Rah describes it, that begins with educational awareness, and progresses toward the ultimate goal of lifestyle and values transformation—where in-dividuals live, what that community should look like, the type of career they choose, and how they will live out their lives in the city. Pastor Rah says that because many in the congregation have lived in the suburbs, their worldview is not necessarily a concern for the city. “We are trying to transform their values based upon Scrip-ture—that Scripture talks about concern for the poor, about reconciliation among races, and concern for those who are disenfranchised and marginalized in our society...And as we progress through this, we also want individuals to have theo-logical knowledge of what it means to be an individual who has a concern for God’s justice, and how to live that out. The way we’ve done that is to give individuals practical opportuni-ties to serve the community in some form.” Service can take place through the church’s own minis-tries, or through existing community programs with which the church partners. Much of its own outreach is to youth in the community, including a church planting effort that birthed

Cambridge Community Fellowship ChurchCambridge, Massachusetts

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VOICE ministry, an outreach to Vietnamese gang and at-risk youth in Dorchester. For youngsters, the church holds Vacation Bible Schools and Children’s Church. Members can also serve senior citizens through their church’s ongoing outreach to the Vernon Hall Nursing Home. In addition, through the church’s relationship with Lion of Judah Church, members are helping start a mentoring program for teens at that church’s Higher Educational Resource Center (HERC), and have also supported through volunteer service the initiatives for at-risk youth of the Boston Ten-Point Coalition, Boston Youth Organizing Project, the Ella J. Baker House, and PREP, an inner city Christian community computer center. Political activism also figures in the church’s vision for social justice and reconciliation, and the church’s Health Care Caucus helps members put feet to their faith. Caucus members are currently working in partnership with the Greater Boston Interfaith Organization to identify healthcare needs within their own church and the city. Pastor Rah says his church has been actively involved with a number of different churches and synagogues as a moral voice of the community, calling for legislation to provide healthcare for the city’s uninsured. In Massachusetts, a half million people are without health insurance, and most are from communities of color. “We’re involved because we feel that God’s call for justice—to feed the hungry and care for those who are hurting—really needs to be practical and real, and backed up with action...We want to live out justice and not just speak about justice.” The church also spon-sors OnRamp, a residen-tial experience in inner city Dorchester to help re-cent college graduates become more involved in the urban com-munity. Five to six young adults live for a year in intentional community, receive discipleship training by resident directors, and learn urban outreach and practical measures for expressing justice in the city. Church leaders are hoping that of the five current OnRamp participants, four will remain and continue to minister in the city. Cambridge Community Fellowship Church wants, as well, to be a racially and ethnically reconciled church and to see members transformed in their understanding and responses to this dimen-sion of the Gospel. “One of the things that’s happened—and I believe it is a God thing—is that God is bringing the different nations right here to the United States,” Pastor Rah explains. “I think for us to live in this community is in some way honoring what God is doing, because God is trying to build unity. “How sad it would be if the secular world is able to recon-cile different races and ethnicities, and the church is unable to do that. In fact, the Church is actually one of the worst orga-nizations about doing that. That’s a pretty strong indictment...that we remain as segregated and separated as we are, because Christ gives us images of a united, reconciled body, and it’s in the Scripture that we are challenged to examine and live this out in the Church. So we feel that as Christ reconciled himself to us, and God reconciled himself to us, another expression of our call is how we are reconciled one to another.” Transforming worldviews on reconciliation occurs, in part, simply in the living out of it. In a recent

article about multiracial churches, “Harder Than Anyone Can Imagine,” (April 2005), Pastor Rah commented that his 3-year-old daughter, now at the age where she is beginning to distin-guish different ethnicities, “thinks it’s normal to have a Haitian auntie, a Jamaican uncle, a Caucasian big sister, to have half of her friends be biracial. That is the kind of environment that I want for my kids, and this is a part of what the Church is all about.” It is a Church, he adds, where “despite differences that can-not be downplayed because they’re part of what we were cre-ated for, we can still live in unity, still live as family members part of the same body.” He admits, however, that building a racially reconciled com-munity can be difficult. “There’s actually a spiritual resistance in that we’re confronting spiritual warfare at the front lines of faith,” he explains. “We going against the issue of race which has divided this nation for centuries—the stronghold of racial segregation—and obviously there is going to be spiritual resistance... “In addition, it’s so much easier to live with folks who are similar to you. Life is a lot easier if all you do is hang out with people like yourself, people with similar socioeconomic and educational backgrounds. Life gets more complicated when you have to cross cultures, when you have to cross socioeconomic barriers. It can feel like more of a struggle because there’s a lot more you’re up against.” For Pastor Rah, modeling the Gospel is pivotal in reach-ing Postmoderns, especially college students who, he says, are

looking for an authentic witness. “They’ve heard the Word; they know the facts of Christianity, but they really want to see that lived out...That’s

why the urban ministry component is so critical in terms of student outreach...We want to show in the decisions we make, how we treat our neighbors, how we have compassion for the poor, and how we advocate for justice that we are trying to live out what God’s call for us is. That’s much more evangelis-tic...than just to go knocking [on doors].” Pastor Rah says not everyone follows the developmental path toward worldview transformation; but sometimes a life is transformed—like that of a young man in the congregation. As with many of the college students in the church who come from affluent, upper middle or middle class suburbs, this student came from a suburb in the Midwest. “He had not been exposed to a whole lot of the Gospel that is directed outward, and was very much coming out of a pietistic, personal faith tradition,” Pastor Rah relates. “But after being a part of our church, he began to really see God’s heart for the poor. So he changed his major from engineering to urban studies, because he felt God was calling him to minister in the city. “Then God began to place on his heart a particular passion for the poor overseas. And so right after he graduated from a very prestigious university in Cambridge, he was on a plane to a very poor third world country. He now lives in the slums of that country and ministers to the poor in his neighborhood.”

CCFC was founded in 1996. Read more about Cambridge Community Fellowship Church at www.ccfconline.org.

Transforming worldviews on reconciliation

occurs, in part, simply in the living out of it.

20 summer 2005

Over 40 years ago, Rev. Dr. Michael E. Haynes, a young African American pastor of the

historic Twelfth Baptist Church in Boston’s inner-city neighborhood of Roxbury, met

Rev. Dr. Donald S. Ewing, Senior Pastor of the suburban Trinitarian Congregational Church

of Wayland, Massachusetts. This day began a lifelong friendship that became a major

foundation for many urban and suburban partnerships.

Dr. Douglas Hall, President of the Emmanuel Gospel Center, and Urban Ministries Professor for Gordon-Con-well Theological Seminary, recalls how he arranged for these two pastors to meet. “Trinitarian Congregational Church had expressed interest in urban ministry and we had been working with them in some collaborative efforts, particularly with children. At one point Dr. Haynes, who had heard Dr. Ewing in his radio program, expressed a very real interest in meeting him. Knowing the two men, I doubted that this would amount to too much, because they seemed so politically distant, but I did arrange for them to meet. (I didn’t go to the meeting myself.) To my great surprise, this produced one of the most enduring relationships between an urban and a suburban church that I have ever known. It was all based on the very close relationship they developed between each other.” These men were as different in their philosophies as they were black and white, yet their love for the Lord and each other forged an authentic relationship that brought their respective congregations together, as they shared as mutual advisors over evening meals in each other’s homes. They became like family members to each other, presid-ing over each other’s children’s weddings. Rev. Haynes became an honorary pastor of the Wayland congregation and Twelfth Baptist Church named one of its church halls after Dr. Ewing. Through this relationship, the two con-gregations moved beyond the traditional pulpit and choir exchanges towards building significant partnerships where each church was challenged to share equally with each other their resources of people and finances. Their ministerial staffs shared regular dinner discussions where the urban youth ministers and seminarians found a new home to share their gifts, and Wayland’s executives helped build technical capacity structures for the Roxbury church. At this time I came to this historic black Baptist Church as a seminarian participating in Gordon-Conwell’s Urban Ministry program. As a white male from Seattle, Washington, little did I see how my life would be influenced by the friendship of Haynes and Ewing. After seven years of serving on the ministerial staff, Dr. Haynes appointed me to be his Minister of Children and Youth over one of Boston’s largest youth ministries. One of my first projects was to plan a youth retreat with families with little finances and a limited budget. Remembering that the Wayland congregation owned its lake front retreat center in New Hampshire, I called my youth ministry counterpart in the

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Craig W. McMullen, M.Div. ‘85, D.Min, ‘01Partnering to Serve

21summer 2005

suburbs and proposed a joint youth retreat at the lake front facility. He accepted the idea! Out of this retreat, entitled “Coming Together,” and other youth gatherings over the next 10 years, more than 60 urban/suburban partnerships between various youth groups throughout New England were estab-lished through the Coming Together Christian Youth Leader-ship Movement. The Emmanuel Gospel Center’s research has confirmed what these young people discovered was the key to such partnerships—relationships! “The key to anything multi-cultural is, first, relationships, relationships, relationships. And, second, the suburban community needs to serve the urban community, and not lead.” During the 1984 Billy Graham Crusade in Boston, a number of churches, who did not want to participate in the crusade if it had no way of reaching out to social needs, asked the Em-manuel Gospel Center (EGC) to design a social component for the evangelistic effort. If EGC did this, they would participate in the Crusade. In response to this request, EGC developed an urban/suburban partnership program that became known as “Love in Action.” The primary work EGC did was train suburban people to sensitively interview urban social ministries for inclusion in a directory of social service opportunities that EGC published, with the intention of making it available to churches involved in the crusade. The booklet was distributed during that event, but no significant connections were made for its use until Grace Chapel of Lexington, Massachusetts, through Rev. Mary Ann Mitchener (’87) incorporated the ap-proach in Grace Chapel’s Bridge Builders program. Through her ministry, more than a dozen Boston churches and minis-tries received volunteers and support from Grace Chapel. One of Rev. Mitchener’s most successful urban partner-ships developed through her relationship with activist Rev. Dr. Bruce Wall. Mitchener’s introduction to Wall’s campaign against urban violence and drugs came when he invited her to participate in the “Yes We Can” movement marches against street violence. Their relationship grew into partnerships that extended beyond Boston and its suburbs when they combined youth groups on a mission trip to Haiti. This trip exposed suburban prejudices held against Haitians, yet highlighted the effectiveness of a bi-racial team. This important principle was applied in 1995, when Mary Ann and Rev. Wall co-led four teams to help rebuild five arson stricken churches in Tennes-see. Mitchener’s workers provided the construction expertise and Wall’s team members provided the needed community outreach and evangelism. Also during this period, several couples from Gordon Col-lege with whom I had begun a relationship through my teach-ing, had established the Boston Project Ministries, Inc. This in-ner-city Dorchester organization trains and coordinates urban and suburban volunteers for compassionate service in Boston through home repairs, neighborhood development, building a children’s park and staffing a homework center, collecting and distributing furniture donations and coordinating partnerships for outreach to the homeless. In 1999, an MIT University dot com computer tech named Andrew Sears from the Cambridge Vineyard Christian Fellow-ship, connected with Rev. Angel Halstead of Bruce Wall Ministries to establish their first PREP community computer center in Boston’s inner-city neighborhood of Dorchester. Here, hundreds of people receive computer training in an effort

to close the digital divide. Today, this one center has multi-plied into the Association of Christian Community Computer Centers (AC4). There are over 500 centers in this association, and in 2003, they served 108,865 participants in technology programs with budgets totaling more than $16.5 million. Today, Dr. Doug Hall’s Emmanuel Gospel Center (EGC) in Boston is engaged in applied research, exploring the barriers that have limited urban/suburban partnerships. One of the major barriers identified is that the urban church is seen by the suburban church as a needy place, not as an asset. As mod-eled by Haynes and Ewing, reciprocity is crucial for effective partnerships. EGC research into mental models shows what people are thinking: “In collaborations and partnerships [as an urban church], you have to fit into someone else’s structure. In urban-suburban partnerships, [it’s customary to ask] who’s the dominant one in the partnership, because [you think] the sub-urban church is big, has money, and has no needs, so you don’t come to the table as an asset, but as a mission. Have you ever heard anyone say, ‘Let’s do a missions trip into the suburbs?” Each of these examples models reciprocal relationships as the foundation key for effective partnerships. Emmanuel Gos-pel Center’s research on ministry facilitation supports this prin-ciple. “There are no short cuts to building relationships, trying to get out and be with key people, get their feedback, learn what they’re doing. Trying to start with their vision so that it’s not something we’re creating, but something that’s relevant and productive for them...The easiest way to mobilize a team is pragmatically: from an activity to a relationship and partner-ship. But it is more effective and transformational to start with relationship and then develop activities and partnerships.” Michelle Mitsumori, research coordinator on ministry fa-cilitation for a ministry of the Emmanuel Gospel Center called “CityServe,” stated that as a church resource center, EGC was continually faced with people who had received an invitation to serve in the city, yet had no one who could facilitate this work. One of their research interviewers said that the number one barrier to effective partnerships between urban and sub-urban churches is busyness. “Who’s busier – the senior pastor at a large suburban church with a full-time staff, or a bi-voca-tional urban pastor who has a smaller congregation and has to answer his own phones?” Today, I join with the many people mentioned in this arti-cle who are thankful that Dr. Michael E. Haynes and Dr. Don-ald S. Ewing reached out across the barriers of busyness and cultural differences to commit to an authentic and reciprocal relationship that paved the way for so many significant urban and suburban partnerships. Boston and its suburbs are much closer to the Kingdom of God because of their friendship.

Craig W. McMullen, D.Min., was the first Anglo American ordained by Twelfth Baptist Church, an historic African Ameri-can church in Roxbury, MA. As the church’s Minister to Youth, he established the COMING TOGETHER: Christian Youth Leadership Movement, which brought together more than 60 New England youth groups for a ministry of reconciliation, student leadership development and social action. In 1993, he and Rev. Dr. Bruce Wall were called as an interracial team to co-pastor Dorchester Temple Baptist Church, a multiracial congregation in Boston’s inner city. After earning a D.Min. de-

gree from Gordon-Conwell, he joined the faculty of Gordon College, Wenham, MA, as founding director of Gordon in Boston, a residential semester of urban studies.

22 summer 2005

Rev. Paul Bothwell, ’75, thinks that the church should be “about redeeming the community,” a subject he has been pas-sionate about almost all of his adult life. Bothwell was born to missionary parents in the Republic of Congo, Africa. After moving back to the United States at 15, he eventually graduated from the University of Colorado and then came to Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. After earning his Master of Divinity degree in 1975, Both-well began an urban church plant with Mission to the Americas (MTTA), and helped to found the Jesus Helps Neighborhood Church in 1977 in the Dudley Street section of Boston. After the plant became self-sustaining, he then moved on to other churches and other roles in MTTA. However, it was during this time that Bothwell saw the immense physical, emotional and spiritual dismembering that occurs in the inner city. According to Bothwell, the Dudley street area, in the Rox-bury/North Dorchester section of Boston, was in shambles. “Half the neighborhood was missing,” he recalls. Basic services weren’t being provided, and trash companies were using empty lots as illegal dumping sites. Residents of the neighborhood re-ferred to it as “the Bermuda triangle.” A local attorney toured the neighborhood in 1984 and said it “looked like Beirut.” “The community was devastated at that time,” says Both-well. For a number of reasons, the neighborhood had fallen into intense disrepair and the community was fractured. Even fundamental services were neglected. “We were just trying to force the fire department to come sooner ... or at all. There were so many fires during that time. Houses burning, businesses burning, people burning. And you don’t have to have too many people burning right in front of your face before you realize that you need to do something.”

But when you have so many needs right in front of you, it can be difficult to do more than just stay afloat. “So, you can spend your whole time ‘fire-fighting,’ or dealing with surface level issues, but really need to deal with deeper and more com-plex issues, like why are there so many fires [in the neighbor-hood] and who might be profiting from that?” The neighborhood was given time to think about those is-sues through a grant from the Riley Foundation. During that time, “there was a process of community thinking and planning. We were asking the questions, ‘Where do we want to go, what is it that we want to see here, and how might we possibly get that done?’” The answers to those questions eventually took the form of the Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative (DSNI), an organiza-tion in which Bothwell has been involved from the beginning. Their mission is “To empower Dudley residents to organize, plan for, create and control a vibrant, diverse and high qual-ity neighborhood in collaboration with community partners.” According to Bothwell, it is “a community-controlled umbrella organization that constantly brings people together to bring about change.” Since its inception, DSNI has had a number of significant successes. Its first campaign sought to shut down some of the worst offending illegal trash transfer stations in the area. Through their efforts, the mayor of the city came in and pad-locked two of the lots shut. In 1988, DSNI was granted eminent domain authority over abandoned lots within its boundaries, for acquiring land to build new housing. It is the only community-based non-profit in the U.S. to be given such authority. No one would argue that the DSNI has been a community

Is Christ in CommunityMichael L. Colaneri

Building community is an integral part of the Church. Congregations have un-

derstood the need to foster and build community within their four walls. But is

the Church also called to be an agent of community-building outside the fellow-

ship of believers? Should a local church be a vital member of its community?

23summer 2005

revitalization success. But is that the business of the church?“Yes,” says Bothwell. “The church is and must be Christ incar-nate here in a given place. [Building community] is a demon-stration of the kingdom, a visible manifestation of the kingdom.Now, the work of the kingdom is certainly about church plant-ing, about saving souls, and a lot of other things, too. And, practically, the church should not be in and leading every single effort in the community. That’s crazy. The church does not need to be everything or be involved in everything, but it needs to be what it can be...what no other entity can be – the heart, the soul of the movement.” Bothwell continued,“There was an African proverb I learned while growing up, ‘Together we find the way.’ We need to learn to reconnect with the community that we are a part of, whether here in the city, or the suburbs of Wellesley, or wher-ever the church is located. We are connected to that commu-nity. We use the sidewalks, utilize the trash pickup. We enjoy the streets and the sewer system that works. One very simple way of connecting is by praying for your community. We pray for the people who carry the mail, who pick up the trash, the city councilors, for example – and together we find the way.” He illustrates this with a story. “In the community, one piece of land was recently made into a park devoted primarily to toddlers and young children. Last year was the big celebration for the dedication of this park. It is dedicated to the memory of Trina Persad, a 10-year-old girl who was shot and killed in this neighborhood in gang crossfire. Her mother and younger siblings still live here. So, during the celebration, her younger sister comes running through the crowd crying, with blood dripping out of her mouth and she runs right past me and over to one of the trash

cans. And my heart just stopped, as did everyone else’s. You know, we thought, what could have happened to her today. So I ran over there with a bunch of others, and she has her head over the trash can and turns her head up and looks at us with this big, bloody smile on her face and says, ‘Isn’t this an excit-ing day to lose a tooth?’ “She was so excited. Then she turned her head back to the trash can and then back up at us, eyes sparkling, and said, ‘After today, there’s not going to be any more shooting and killing in this neighborhood, is there?’ You just stand there and your heart drops. Her mother says to the girl, ‘Well, you know, baby, that isn’t going to happen until the kingdom of God comes.’ Then there is another pause, and another woman standing around the trash can, a powerful, courageous, Chris-tian woman in the community, says, ‘You know what, honey, the kingdom of God is here. And we are it.’ “If we are talking about community transformation, and the healing of broken and bleeding communities and devastated urban areas, then we sure best be doing the job.”

Find out more about DSNI at www.dsni.org

A book was written about DSNI called Streets of Hope: The Fall and Rise of an Urban Neighborhood, by Peter Medoff and Holly Sklar. A documentary was created about DSNI called Holding Ground: The Rebirth of Dudley Street, by Mark Lipman and Leah Mahan.

Michael L. Colaneri is Assistant Director of Communications at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary.

24 summer 2005

Is It Time for Another St.Augustine

and a Roland Allen to Set the Case

for the City Once Again?

Walter C. Kaiser, Jr., Ph.D.

A Theology of the City

A

25summer 2005

Walter C. Kaiser, Jr., Ph.D., is President and Colman M. Mockler Distinguished Professor of Old Testament, Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. An internationally recognized Old Testament scholar, Dr. Kaiser continues his classroom teaching and is a popular Bible preacher and teacher at churches and conferences throughout the U.S. and abroad. He formerly served in leadership capacities at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School including the position of academic dean, and has authored over 30 books, among them, Revive Us Again: Biblical Insights for Encouraging Spiritual Renewal, Toward An Old Testament Theology and A History of Israel. He received M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from Brandeis University

Our generation of believers must take the same revolutionary stance that was taken by the Old

Testament prophets of a former day.

26 summer 2005

Introduct ion

Contextual izat ion as Miss io logical and Structural Integr i ty

Eldin Villafañe, Ph.D.

Contextual izat ion as Serv ing a Mult iethnic and Mult icul tura l Const i tuency

New CUME building at 90 Warren Street

27summer 2005

Contextual izat ion and the Urban Curr iculum

28 summer 2005

Urban youth ministry is different from suburban or rural youth

ministry. So is the teaching of urban youth ministry in an urban

setting. So is theology in an urban context.

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29summer 2005

Professor Dean Borgman holds the Charles E. Culpeper Chair of Youth Ministry at Gordon-Conwell—Boston, and is also founder/director of the Center for Youth Studies. He established Young Life in New England and was a streetworker on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, where he also developed Young Life’s Urban Training Institute. He has taught youth ministry courses at Holy Cross Greek Orthodox, Fuller Theological and Ontario Theological Seminaries, Daystar University College in Nairobi, Kenya, and Nairobi Evangelical Graduate School of Theology Among his books are When Kumbaya Is Not Enough: A Practical Theology for Youth Ministry and God at the Mall: Youth Ministry That Meets Kids Where They’re At. He is an Episcopal priest.

The urban experience–that is– really becoming involved

in the life of the inner city–is bound to

challenge previously held conceptions and lifestyles.

30 summer 2005

The Center for Urban Ministerial Education (CUME):

An Historical Overview*

Historical Antecedents

The Beginning of CUME

1969 Gordon-Conwell founded with mandate to engage the city.

1971 Proposal for year of urban theological education

1973-74 First M.Div. courses offered at Emmanuel Gospel Center

Alvin Padilla, Ph.D., ‘84

1976 CUME opens with 30 students at Martin Luther King, Jr. House of Twelfth Baptist Church

1982 MRE degree introduced; enrollment swells to 170

1989 Full M.Div. degree introduced

Architect’s rendering of the new CUME building

31summer 2005

Present Day Impact

A Bright Future

Alvin Padilla, Ph.D., is Dean of Gordon-Conwell—Boston, and Associate Professor of New Testament. In addition to his administrative responsibilities, he teaches New Testament courses and urban ministry to doctoral students. He has also taught at Nyack College and the Spanish Eastern School of Theology in Swan Lake, New York, a school he founded. Dr. Padilla is an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church (USA), and served as a pastor to a Spanish-speaking congregation in New York City. He received an M.Div. from Gordon-Conwell and a Ph.D. from Drew University Graduate School.

1989-90 Enrollment at 300 students

1990 Administrative building acquired in Jamaica Plain

1990-2004 Additional MA and D.Min. degrees introduced.

2004-05 Classes offered to 395 students

2005 New administrative building purchased in Roxbury.

32 summer 2005

Urban ministry is, by definition, focused on those human needs most evident in

cities. We study the subtle and complex dynamics of urbanization and the impact of

this increasingly global phenomenon on individuals and communities. Though some

refer to our world as a global village, it is more accurately a global metropolis. So,

one might ask, is there any place in urban ministry for shepherds?

Dr.

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33summer 2005

COMPASSIONATE

VIGILANT

TRUSTWORTHY

Timothy S. Laniak, Th.D., is Associate Professor of Old Testament, Coordinator of the Urban Ministry Certificate Program, Charlotte Campus, and Mentor of the Christian Leadership D.Min. program. He and his wife have worked with international students and immigrants in the Boston area, lived in Israel, and served as short-term missionaries in Europe and Asia. Since moving to North Carolina, they have begun a public charter school. He has authored Shame and Honor in the Book of Esther and “Esther” in the Ezra-Nehemiah NIBC series. A book on the biblical theology of pastoral leadership is forthcoming from Inter-Varsity-UK. He

received an M.Div. from Gordon-Conwell, pursued doctoral studies at Brandeis University and earned a Th.D. from Harvard Divinity School.

OUR CITIES NEED SUCH COURAGEOUS

SHEPHERDS WHO TIRELESSLY ADVOCATE FOR

THE DISPLACED AND DISENFRANCHISED, BUT

WITHOUT PROVIDING FOR ANYONE IMMUNITY

FROM THE STANDARDS OF BIBLICAL JUSTICE.

34 summer 2005

There’sGold in theCity

“There is gold for the Lord in the cities of the world…The city is a gold mine. It has prominent ethnic (vertical)

veins. It has prominent sociological (horizontal) veins. And it has other veins that run at will in all directions…

But there is yet another level of complexity…The city is also an organism constantly on the move.”

Gold Overlooked

Why the Gold was Overlooked

Gregg Detwiler, D. Min., ‘01

35summer 2005

Heal Our Eyes to See

Seeing Gold in BostonGregg W. Detwiler, D.Min., ’01, began his ministry as a national home missionary with the Assemblies of God following his graduation from Assemblies of God Theological Seminary. He served for 13 years as a missionary church planter and lead pastor of Boston Worship Center in Boston’s historic North End, and for three years as the Diaspora Ministry and Missions Pastor at Mount Hope Christian Center in Burlington, Massachusetts. In 2001, the Emmanuel Gospel Center and the Southern New England District of the Assemblies of God appointed him as a missionary to Boston’s multicultural communities. He has

published articles in Discipleship Journal and other periodicals. He holds a D. Min. degree in Ministry in Complex Urban Settings from Gordon-Conwell.