Gospel Compels Us to Help Our Immigrant Neighbors Navigate the Nuances of New England, Dorsett Challenges Annual Meeting Attendees
Representatives from churches around New England gather for worship during the 2023 Annual Meeting
When New England Baptists from nearly sixty churches gathered the first weekend of November for their 2023 marathon of inspiration, information, fellowship, and networking, their attention was focused not on the 228 people gathered at a church in Manchester, NH, but on the thousands who were not present, thus highlighting the annual meeting theme—“Who Is Your Neighbor?”—and calling for renewed efforts to live out the biblical calling to a life of authentic missions and evangelism.
“The gospel compels us to help our neighbors,” Terry W. Dorsett, the Baptist Churches of New England Executive Director, preached almost exactly thirty years to the day after he, and his wife, Kay, moved to the Vermont village of Washington to invest the rest of their lives in ministry to their neighbors across the region. Drawing on the biblical parable of the man who asked his neighbor for loaves of bread to feed an unexpected house guest (Luke 11:5-13), he said, “We must be a friend to a neighbor in need. Our neighbors need friends.”
Dorsett expanded on that thought by pointing out that “We have the ability to help someone. The problem is we are focused on ourselves. Individuals can help in simple ways and churches can help in larger ways, especially if they have a building.” The fact that many church facilities are left vacant except for three hours on Sundays “is probably not good gospel stewardship” when there are so many community engagement options available to them.
Dr. Terry Dorsett speaks at the 2023 Annual Meeting
“Our neighbors,” especially recent immigrants to the region, often “need a neighbor to help them navigate the nuances of New England,” Dorsett observed. In the last thirty years, he reported, two million internationals have moved to New England and at least 100 languages are spoken across the region. BCNE congregations worship in twenty-four languages other than English and fifty-two percent of the BCNE’s 388 churches worship in a language other than English (in 2022 that total was 44 percent), making the BCNE a majority-minority convention of churches.
“It’s important to know who our neighbors are,” he continued. “Sometimes our churches are not [effectively] reaching our neighbors because we still think we are the New England of 1970—and we’re not! We’re a multicultural and multi-ethnic place.” The Executive Director urged those present to move beyond the stereotype of a New Englander as being a White, fifth-generation person of Irish or Italian heritage. “That’s no longer true. That’s not who our neighbors are. Our neighbors are from all over the world.”
For those reasons, Dorsett concluded his sermon with a challenge for individuals and churches to prayerfully consider how they might engage anew in ministries that touch their neighbors and by giving financially to the Baptist Convention of New England, which cannot, he noted, any longer count on regular streams of income from denominational and other charitable sources from beyond the region, as they once did.
The Baptist Churches of New England made history when they elected Lierte Soares Jr., a Massachusetts pastor from Brazil, as their president. By a unanimous vote, the self-proclaimed “reverse missionary” to New England, who also calls himself a “pastor with a missionary heart,” became the first Brazilian state-convention president in the 178-year history of the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest Protestant group in the United States.
When Soares preached BCNE’s annual sermon, based on Luke 10, he highlighted the lawyer’s reply about who “proved to be a neighbor” to the recently-mugged Samaritan—“The one who had mercy on him,”—and on Jesus’s perpetual challenge, “Go and do likewise.” The BCNE president focused his remarks on his own immigrant transition from Brazil to the United States and related some of the difficulties that immigrants still encounter when they arrive here, calling these tough experiences “a crisis of belonging.” Soares called for a “time to rethink the Great Commission in America . . . because America is no longer a melting pot or a salad bowl. . . . We want people from all cultures” to find faith in Jesus.
Dr. Dorsett prays over the newly elected BCNE President and Vice President
The BCNE made a little more Baptist history when Dorsett and Claiton A. Kunz, director of Faculdade Batista Pioneira, Ijui, RS, signed a partnership agreement that gives the Brazilian Baptist seminary the central role in leading BCNE’s new Multiplication Center that commences in January.
Renee Ghobrial, the Next Generation Ministries leader, paid tribute to her predecessor, Allyson Clark, who retired after 44 years of youth ministry that started when she was a college student. Speaking for generations of New England youth and their ministry leaders, she said, “We’re extremely grateful for how you . . . equipped us and pointed us to Jesus.” Clark responded by telling stories, thanking the BCNE “for valuing teenagers,” and by quoting from Acts 20:24. “God has been faithful and has blessed my life beyond what I deserve,” she stated. Clark will continue “changing lightbulbs” in a part-time role as the BCNE’s facilities manager and she is filling in as co-leader of collegiate ministries. Ghobrial reported that in the last year BCNE’s teenagers gave $14,297 for their local and international missions work and, because of Clark’s leadership, they have given nearly $200,000 for these causes since 2000.
Saturday’s agenda was packed with practical breakout sessions that offered insights in the region and internationally. Two of the workshops led by Global Missions Mobilizer Sam Taylor, “Called to Be On Mission” and “How Can My Church Be Engaged in Missions?”, brought together International Mission Board representatives Dan and Tara Byrd, Americans who serve in Manchester, UK, and Baptists from Northern Ireland Andy and Rachel Millar, who are part of a church-planting team in Claremorris, County Mayo. When the Millars toured New England, they visited BCNE churches and pastors. “We hope and pray that our new-found friendships will flourish and that solid partnerships will be formed. We hope that this will strengthen God’s work, both here in Ireland and in New England,” the Irish couple wrote after returning home. A second trip to Ireland by BCNE representatives is being planned for 2024.
Gary and Jana Moritz led a breakout session, “Finding Blessing by Blessing Your Neighbors,” that gave participants a deceptively practical approach to building relationships. The acrostic BLESS, said Moritz, the BCNE’s Church Revitalization Director and pastor of City United Church, Lunenburg, MA, summarizes a five-step process: “Begin with prayer, Listen to the Holy Spirit, Engage through shared meals, Serve others, and Share your story.”
Lawum Kayamba with the Robert H. Brindle Church Planting Award
The couple also demonstrated the “Bless Every Home” app that provides “the tools to get to know your local community by name, and to bless the lives of those around you by praying for, caring for, and sharing the gospel with them” (https://app.blesseveryhome.com). “Following Jesus is not meant to be comfortable. . . . If you are a pastor who is not sharing your faith then something is wrong,” he concluded.
Two exemplary pastors were honored by the BCNE during the annual meeting. Lawum Kayamba of the Democratic Republic of the Congo received the annual Robert H. Brindle Church Planting Award. He is pastor of Disciples International Christian Church, in Portland, ME. Michelet Alexandre, a Haitian who is pastor of Bethesda Missionary Baptist Church, Brockton, MA, received the Raymond C. Allen Award for Excellence in Evangelism and Missions.
Jeff Christopherson, Executive Director of Administration, Canadian National Baptist Convention; Neil Cole, founder of the Awakening Chapels network and Church Multiplication Associates; and Jonathan Santiago, Send Relief’s Puerto Rico Ministry Center Director, were also plenary presenters.
In the business sessions, David Um, a chaplain at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was elected vice president. He is a graduate of MIT, Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, and New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. Sandra Coelho, the Leadership Development Coordinator, was re-elected clerk.
Those present welcomed eight churches and church plants to the BCNE and received the board report that 1,805 new believers were baptized by BCNE churches, representing a 45 percent increase over the previous year, the fourth highest number of baptisms in the state convention’s history. The proposed 2024 budget of $3,084,944, which featured only minor changes due to inflation, was approved unanimously. Once again, the budget includes sending twenty percent of revenues to the Cooperative Program for ministries and missions beyond New England. Church representatives adopted a revised constitution that eliminated the Resolution Committee and changed the formula for how many members may be elected to the Board of Directors from each region of New England.
The 2024 annual meeting will be held November 1-2 at First Baptist Church, Manchester, CT.
A Massachusetts native and a New England Baptist since 1970, Dan Nicholas is the BCNE managing editor