BCNE News
The latest news from our network of New England churches. Looking for our New England Perspectives Articles? Click here.
Vietnamese Church Makes New England Baptist History While Struggling to Reach Second Generation With the Gospel
A monumental slice of New England Baptist history happened on June 2 when the first Vietnamese church in the Baptist Churches of New England network ordained their first pastor.
BCNE’s Vacation Bible School Training Draws Church Leaders From 19 States
“When it comes to kids’ ministry I want to soak in every bit of training I can and hear the curriculum taught from different perspectives,” wrote Renee Hauser, an experienced Vacation Bible School leader from North Carolina.
Couple Who Brought Fresh Perspectives to BCNE’s Church-Planting and Partnership-Development Strategies Are Relocating to Florida
Associate Executive Director Hal Haller, who strengthened the Baptist Churches of New England’s church-planting efforts, developed a church “multiplier team,” and led in the creation of an interdenominational partnership to start new congregations, completed his ministry in New England after nearly four years of leadership at the BCNE. He plans to move to Florida later this month to coach business executives.
Kiwanis Club Honors Fellowship Church Granite State with a Community Impact Award
Aaron Cockrum takes seriously God’s challenge to “seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you . . . and pray to the LORD on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.” Apparently, town officials and civic leaders in Hooksett, NH, concur.
Soft-Spoken Bengali Pastor Combines the Mind of a Scholar and the Heart of a Shepherd
The late Pentecostal scholar Gordon D. Fee, who taught for almost two decades at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, South Hamilton, MA, once told an academic gathering at which he was being honored that he “was spurred on to scholarship in part when he heard a minister say from the pulpit, ‘I would rather be a fool on fire than a scholar on ice’”—which led Fee “to the conviction that it should be possible to be a ‘scholar on fire.’’’
New England Youth “encounter God in new and fresh ways” through YEC retreat and Quest training
It’s never been easy to be a teenager and today it’s never been more challenging. More than 550 teens and their ministry leaders from 39 churches found solace from the pressures of life when they took part in the Youth Encountering Christ (YEC) retreat January 26-28 in Sturbridge, Massachusetts, and in the twenty-fifth annual Quest discipleship experiences.
Two Thousand Attend an Innovative Church’s Pre-Easter Egg Hunt
Every Easter season, Scott Kearney and the members of The Well Church take an innovative approach to reaching their neighbors with the life-transforming Gospel.
Teens Attending YEC 2023 Challenged to Live Faithfully
Two high school seniors will long remember the January weekend they spent in a hotel ballroom with four hundred of their peers from across New England. They took part in the BCNE’s Youth Encountering Christ (YEC 2023) winter retreat January 27-29 at the Sturbridge Host Hotel and Conference Center in Massachusetts.
Renée Ghobrial Challenges Today’s Teens To Experience Genuine Christian Life
A New England native with family roots in Egypt and an abiding love for mentoring teenagers and young adults, Renee Ghobrial has been serving BCNE churches since January 1 as the leader of Next Generation Youth Ministries.
Clark retiring from a lifetime of dynamic youth ministry
When Allyson C. Clark moved from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, Fort Worth, TX, to metro Boston in 1991, the Nashville, TN, native was often asked “How long are you staying?” New England Baptists were accustomed to enthusiastic Southern Baptists serving a church for a few years before retreating to warmer, friendlier climates. “This question had a great impact on me. I told them I was here to stay. It took five years and they finally stopped asking,” she said.
Innkeepers see Luther Rice homesite as regional center for hospitality and networking
If somehow a science-fiction time machine deposited Luther Rice on his boyhood farm in Northborough, the famed Baptist missions pioneer would be surprised by its astounding development as a center for missions and ministry throughout the six-state New England region, but not by the hospitality with which Donna and Roy Carlin, the latest in a line of Rice Lodge innkeepers, welcomed him back home.