Members of Mosaic Boston, a new church in Boston

Rev. Ralph Kee, Facilitator of the Greater Boston Church Planting Collaborative, says that he knows of 21 new church plants in the greater Boston area just in the past six months or so. And more are in the planning stages.

Over half of these new churches have been started by people coming out of existing churches in the Boston area. One such group is called “Mosaic Boston,” which meets at the YMCA on Huntington Avenue. The pastor, Joseph Kim, had been a youth pastor at the Highrock Church in Somerville, and had developed a real heart for ministry in the city. Because of its growth and focus primarily on families, Highrock has moved to Arlington.

So Pastor Kim, along with a core group of ten others, decided to see if it was possible to do a church plant “on the cheap,” without a lot of startup money or denominational connections. They wanted to build a church that emphasized community and relationships rather than programs. Pastor Kim says that part of their motivation came from their sense that God really is doing something special in Boston, and they want to be part of it.

Through consultation with EGC, they discovered that while there are a lot of churches that minister to students, Boston also has the second largest young adult population in the country, and that group does not seem to be the focus of as much intentional ministry. Mosaic Boston hopes to be one presence in the city that reaches out to post college-age people, young adults and young marrieds. But they do not want to limit themselves to one narrow group.

Pastor Kim says, “The word ‘mosaic’ encapsulates what we are about as a ministry: ‘a broken fragmented humanity which can become a work of beauty under the artful hands of God.’ Even though right now we are predominantly Asian-American, our vision is of a multi-ethnic, multi-cultural church. Yet we are also aware that the biggest prophetic issue in the church is not racial but socio-economic. Those are more difficult lines to cross.” They want to be a church that is “eclectic” and “convergent,” bringing things together that are usually separate. For example: “We hope to combine a Bible-teaching, doctrinally oriented church with a more experiential and charismatic one. We place a high value on the Word, but also on its creative expression.”

Pastor Kim is not only praying for such creative growth in this new church, but also that as they grow, they will be able to reach out and establish other daughter churches in the area.

At the same time that local churches are reproducing themselves, people are being drawn from all over the country to come to Boston and plant churches. Hank Wilson, along with his family and a couple of friends, came to the city earlier this year from Illinois, to be the Lead Pastor of a group called Boston Partnership. “We believe God has a new plan for the people of this amazing city. [Our] dream is to plant a church in the heart of Boston where people can find their way back to God.”

Steve Holt, whose church planting ministry is Harvest Boston, agrees. “We love Boston, and we too sense that God is doing something amazing in that city.” Steve is finishing a master’s degree in missions at Abilene Christian University in Texas, and he and his wife Chrissy will be moving to Boston this summer to pursue their goal of developing “vibrant families of Jesus Christ within close reach—culturally and geographically—of every Bostonian in every neighborhood.” Both Hank and Steve chose Boston in part because their research had shown that New England is the “least churched” area of the country, and thus ripe for church planting.

Jua Robinson tells the same story. Originally from Cleveland, he has been preparing with Fellowship Associates in Little Rock, Arkansas, in a program that trains seminary graduates to be church planters. Two years ago, he and his wife, Regina, began praying about their desire to invest their lives in an area of the country that was in need of the gospel. They also were attracted to the Northeast because of the large number of people who do not attend church, a number which some researchers have put as high as 95%. Boston became the Robinson’s number one choice because its academic institutions have a widespread influence. So bringing the gospel to the large number of young people being educated here has the potential to impact on the rest of the country.

At the same time, Jua wants to be intentional about establishing and building neighborhood relationships in a church that bridges ethnic and cultural lines. Joseph Kim, Hank Wilson, Steve Holt, and Jua Robinson are only a few of the many Christians called to church planting who have consulted with EGC and other Boston-area church leaders to learn more about the city and find guidance in their plans for working in this particular vineyard. Churches have been or are being started in the Fenway, Back Bay, Jamaica Plain, Downtown, East Boston, Mattapan, Cambridge, Somerville, Quincy, Methuen, and Foxboro. Three are on college campuses. A few use a language other than English. All are part of the ongoing “Quiet Revival” that continues to grow and spread in surprising ways as God is doing a new thing in Boston.