Dorsett Tells Attendees at Inaugural NEXUS 2025 That “God Can Do More Than We Can Ask or Imagine—and God Is Just Getting Started in New England”
Pastors and church leaders at NEXUS Conference celebrate God’s goodness.
Nearly 250 pastors and church leaders from six states and beyond gathered for fellowship, information, worship, inspiration, and a little bit of business at the Baptist Churches of New England’s (BCNE’s) inaugural NEXUS Conference, November 7-8, at First Baptist Church, Marlborough, Massachusetts.
Friday: Messages on Partnerships and Possibilities
BCNE Executive Director Terry Dorsett set the tone for the annual training and motivational event, which until this year was simply known as the annual meeting, when he delivered a thought-provoking and personal sermon that introduced the NEXUS 2025 “Above and Beyond: The God Who Exceeds Our Expectations” theme.
Terry Dorsett pointed out that Lifeway Research reported that “New England is the only region in the United States that had net growth for the last five years in our entire denomination.”
Dorsett preached from Ephesians 3:20-21 (HCSB), which states: “Now to him who is able to do above and beyond all that we ask or think according to the power that works in us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.”
With stories of faithfulness and words of appreciation, Dorsett talked of “how God can do more than we can ask or imagine—and God is just getting started in New England.” He said “God specializes in taking something that looks impossible,” such as a spiritual revival like the 1740’s Great Awakening in New England, which was much discussed at the conference, “and turning it into something amazing. We don’t always see the purpose of God in the moment—but God does.”
Speaking first of personal changes and challenges he has faced, especially with the death of his wife, Kay, on July 31, 2023, he noted that the well-known Bible passage, Romans 8:28, “becomes more real when we are challenged.”
Over time, God began to show the BCNE leader that God’s “good purposes were not done yet. What felt like a loss has actually become an open door for ministry” now that he is single and, as needed, can devote extra time to ministry.
God’s strength is “operating through our weaknesses. God can use our lowest moments as launch pads for his greatest miracles—and that’s something I’ve experienced the last two years.”
“Could it be that the things we perceive as our disabilities, our drawbacks, our handicaps, our challenges, the very things that we think are keeping us from fully serving the Lord,” he asked rhetorically, “could it be that those things that, instead of holding us back, are actually the things God wants to use to allow us to go above and beyond what we could ever ask or imagine in our service to God?”
BCNE Lighthouses of Hope and Bridges to Partnership
Turning again to Scripture, Dorsett said: “We see clearly that Paul never served alone; he always worked with other people. God understood that we need to be partnered together. Partnership is how God multiplies impact, and this year we’ve seen God do that in amazing ways in our little group of churches with our limited size and limited budget and limited everything. We now serve and support 396 churches in the BCNE!”
Each of those churches, he added, “is a lighthouse of hope in a spiritually dark region. That’s something only God can do.” This year, BCNE has also “worked hard to build bridges” with other Evangelicals in New England and in other regions of the United States, with Baptists in Europe, and with like-minded Christians around the world.
New England Baptists set new records in the past year in the number of baptisms, in church membership, and in worship attendance. “We shattered the record from the year before. In fact, he pointed out, Lifeway Research reported that “New England is the only region in the United States that had net growth for the last five years in our entire denomination. God can do above and beyond what we ask or imagine when we partner together. That’s why partnership is so important.”
Dorsett also expressed thanks for the churches that contributed in the previous year to the BCNE and for the 480 people who invested funds with the Baptist Foundation of New England. “We’re doing our best to be good stewards of those mission dollars.”
He also spoke of the ten new endowments the foundation launched, including nine funds that are focused on sustaining BCNE key missionary staff positions. Additional investments, he commented, are needed to make these staff-focused funds sustainable in the decades ahead.
Dorsett then called attention to the network’s focus in recent years, including at NEXUS 2025, on leadership training through multiplication rather than by addition. “God works above and beyond when we equip others for ministry.”
One of the “weaknesses that sometimes churches fall into, is when pastors think ‘I’ve got to do this myself.’ And so we pray all the prayers, we lead all the music, we teach all the classes, and we do it all ourselves.” If you do that,” he told the assembled pastors and church leaders, “your church will never get beyond forty or fifty people, but when we equip other people, then God multiplies our ministry.”
Four Awards for Outstanding Ministry
The first John Scoggins Disaster Relief Awards were given November 7 at the annual meeting part of NEXUS 2025 to Roger Francis, a member of of Nashua Baptist Church, Nashua, New Hampshire, who worked closely with Scoggins on disaster relief, (but did not attend the meeting); and to Alfred Page, a native of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, who is the founding pastor and now pastor emeritus of Hillside Baptist Church, Pembroke. Now retired, Page had been active in disaster relief for the New Hampshire Baptist Association.
The two Disaster Relief awards were given in recognition of their outstanding dedication to BCNE Disaster Relief. Executive Director Terry Dorsett said both leaders were chosen for “bringing hope and restoration to those in need, and we give these awards to you with gratitude.”
Alfred Page (right) received one of the first John Scoggins Disaster Relief Awards from Anne Scoggins and Ed Lucas (left). Terry Dorsett read the plaque. Joshua Presley looked on.
John R. Scoggins, 84, was a longtime member of Nashua Baptist Church. In 2025, he was awarded the Southern Baptists’ national Robert E. Dixon Disaster Relief Award by the North American Mission Board.
Scoggins “faithfully dedicated more than twenty years to educating, training, and serving through the Baptist Churches of New England Disaster Relief ministry,” wrote Ed Lucas, who leads the BCNE Disaster Relief (DR) team. “His tireless efforts touched countless lives devastated by tragedy, including those affected by 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, and disasters throughout New England.” Scoggins died on January 5, 2025. The first BCNE DR awards were given in his place by Anne Scoggins, his wife of sixty-six years.
The 2025 Robert H. Brindle Church Planting Award was given to Jose Nater, pastor of Iglesia Bautista Dios con Nosotros, East Hartford, Connecticut, “in honor of his tireless efforts to plant Hispanic churches across Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts, over the last decade.
The 2025 Raymond C. Allen Award for Excellence in Evangelism and Missions was presented to George Lim, lead pastor of The River Church, Glastonbury, Connecticut. The church, whose story was reported by the New England Baptist News Service in September, counted their highest attendance on Easter 2025.
Lively Worship and a World-Class Orchestra
For the first time, an orchestra opened an annual meeting session on Friday evening before Ty Childers preached the Annual Sermon. The orchestra was comprised of students and alumni of the Berklee College of Music, Boston, which describes itself as the “world’s preeminent college for the study of music.”
Associate Executive Director Joe Souza led the singing while Alef Ben conduced the orchestra on Friday night. For the first time, an orchestra led music at a BCNE annual meeting.
Those who shared their love for performing sacred music at the NEXUS session, including the conductor, Alef Ben, a renowned maestro in Brazil, are members of churches around the region. As Christians and musicians, they enjoy leading worship, but they had never before performed together publicly.
Two Brazilian churches in Greater Boston—Celebration Church in Stoughton and Igreja Batista da Cicade in Lowell—also provided lively and inspiring worship and music at the conference.
From Post-Christian to Pre-Revival
Lierte Soares Jr., a Brazilian who is pastor of New Life Community Church, Georgetown, Massachusetts, was re-elected BCNE president; and David Um, a Korean who is senior pastor of Antioch Baptist Church, Cambridge, Massachusetts, was re-elected vice president. By unanimous votes and by acclamation, both leaders were re-elected to an unprecedented third one-year term of service.
(Left to right) Rick Harrington, Lierte Soares Jr, and David Um
A self-proclaimed “reverse missionary” to New England, Soares preached on the conference theme, “Above and Beyond,” but he revised the theme’s subtitle with a challenge—that New England Baptists ought to be “living the gospel fully in New England.” He said, “God is enough to change everything and, as we see today, [we must] understand God’s call for each church in New England to live above cultural apathy and comfortable Christianity.”
Challenging a common shorthand for the region’s spiritual atmosphere, he added: “Let’s stop calling New England post-Christian. Let’s instead call this a pre-revival season for New England.” He described the “rich legacy” of revivalists Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield, who preached “Great Awakenings” in the region and beyond, and the immigrant churches that comprise the growing majority of BCNE congregations. “If God is doing something [here], it is through our multicultural churches.
Despite cultural apathy for the gospel, he noted, “I have hope for New England, and I have hope for America’s future, not because we’ve overcome every barrier, but because I see God at work... and leaders learning how to walk humbly together, like we’re doing today. It is in that sacred place where honesty meets hope that I believe God is doing something” in the region.
“Dying Spiritually to Yourself Every Single Day of Your Life”
Ty Childers preached the Annual Sermon
Ty Childers, senior pastor of Fairview Baptist Church, Spartanburg, South Carolina, preached an inspiring, traditional-style Annual Sermon on Friday night. The church, a noteworthy supporter of BCNE churches over decades, is “currently the number-one giving church to the New England Mission Offering, Dorsett said when introducing Childers, who is his brother-in-law. A team from Spartanburg accompanied their pastor; they served NEXUS 2025 attendees tirelessly, including with food service and other kitchen duties.
Childers aimed his comments at the “Above and Beyond” theme and quoted Ephesians from the King James Version. “In order to get what it’s saying here in the Scripture, you’ve got to remember that that power is demonstrated through the child of God—that power that worketh in us. If it’s [God] power working in us, it will work through us, but that takes dying spiritually to yourself every single day of your life.”
If Christians, he added, “don’t believe that God is able, then, friend, he’s not going to do the work that he wants to do in our hearts and in our lives—and other people are not going to see the salt” that is mentioned in Matthew 5:13.
“I hope all of you are saved,” he told the pastors and church leaders, “but I want you to remember something: being saved and surrendered are two different things. You can be saved, but if you are not surrendered, his power is not working through you,” Childers proclaimed.
Reading again from Ephesians, the preacher said, “We are a people who were separated from God because of depravity of sin, yet we have been brought near to him by the precious blood of Jesus Christ, our Lord.”
Saturday: A Leadership Lesson From Titus
The second day of NEXUS 2025 featured leadership development consultant and conference speaker Mac Lake, founder of Multiply Group, Charleston, South Carolina, who preached about the Apostle Paul’s ministry in Crete.
“My job [as a pastor] is to reproduce myself, not replace myself. It’s [God’s] job to replace me. He gets to choose, not me, but we have to reproduce ourselves, ” leadership development specialist Mac Lake told New England Baptist pastors November 8 at the inaugural NEXUS conference.
“This is why I left you in Crete,” Paul wrote Titus, “so that you might put what remained into order, and appoint elders in every town as I directed you (Titus 1:5, ESV). Lake interpreted those instructions from the Apostle to his ministry partner and fellow worker as a call to develop a first-century “leadership pipeline” on Crete, a Greek island in the Mediterranean Sea.
“I need you [Titus] to put a leadership pipeline in place. I need you to put elders in place so that we have leadership across this island,” Lake said.
The Saturday speaker continued by describing Paul’s instruction to Titus to “urge the younger men to be self-controlled, [to] show yourself in all respects to be a model of good works, and in your teaching show integrity, dignity. . .” (Titus 2:6-7, ESV) as a call “to be mature in their faith” because “those are your potential leaders.”
When “Paul sees [an] evangelistic outbreak happening” on Crete, Lake added, he’s not asking “how to control it,” but instead seeking an answer to the question: “How do we set a structure and system underneath it to support this movement?”
“Do you realize that if you’re not discipling leaders,” Lake challenged the crowd of mostly Baptist Churches of New England pastors and leaders, “it’s one of the most selfish acts a leader can demonstrate... because it’s like [deciding that], ‘I don’t care about the future. I don't care what happens after me. It doesn’t matter about the future condition of the church.’”
Addressing those gathered in Marlborough, he added, “You don't know when God will call you out of your leadership position.”
Pastors: Reproduce, Don’t Replace Yourself
“My job [as a pastor] is to reproduce myself, not replace myself. It’s God’s job to replace me. He gets to choose, not me—but we have to reproduce ourselves—and that’s what Paul is teaching in Titus. In order to support [an] evangelistic movement that’s happening, we’ve got to start cycling leaders at different levels of the pipeline.”
More leadership development insights and teaching by Lake, who is known for “equipping churches to build strong leadership pipelines,” may be found online. His YouTube channel and publications are packed with encouraging presentations and discussion questions.
Before the NEXUS Conference, Lake spoke on “Fueling a Movement of Multiplication” for a BCNE podcast. He spoke at length about his church leadership pipeline. Gary Moritz, the BCNE church revitalization director, who is the lead pastor at City United Church, Lunenburg, Massachusetts, introduced and dialogued with Lake on the podcast and at the conference.
Also at the Annual Meeting
Fourteen breakout sessions on Saturday offered biblical insights and practical ideas for those looking for vital tools to fuel a movement of multiplication in their home church or remove leadership-development barriers to the gospel. Other sessions helped attendees become spiritual influencers or improve their understanding of Jesus’s discipleship principles so they might better engage in Christ’s plan for kingdom growth. BCNE provides the same sort of in-person and online training throughout the year.
The church representatives accepted the $2,938,400 (2025) financial report as presented by Dorsett, who is both the BCNE executive director and treasurer. They approved by a unanimous vote, and without debate, the $3,277,000 (2026) proposed balanced budget.
The BCNE Board of Directors honored Chris James, lead pastor of Mill City Church, Lowell, Massachusetts, with a resolution of appreciation for more than twenty years as the Boston Collegiate Coordinator and Collegiate Events Coordinator.
It was announced that the 2026 NEXUS Conference/Annual Meeting will be held November 6-7 at Hope Chapel, Sterling, Massachusetts. The theme “Flourish” is drawn from Psalm 92:13 (ESV), which says of “the righteous”: “They are planted in the house of the LORD; they flourish in the courts of our God.”