When many senior adults see a birthday approaching, their thoughts turn to retirement, rocking chairs, health issues, and time with grandchildren. When asked why he does not slow down at age 72, George Moore, a retired pastor who eschews rocking chairs, is reasonably healthy and enjoys thirteen grandchildren, said, “I can’t sit still. I’ve got to be active and engaged. I consider myself to be a people person.” When his seventieth birthday was imminent, he discouraged friends and family from giving gifts. Instead, he took a completely different approach that continues to make a lasting impact on New England Baptists.

Joe Souza’s decision to interview pastors in Greater Boston about their goals for urban ministry “was a game-changer” that helped him better “understand the perspective of the people already doing the work.” What he heard helped him begin to shape a cohesive and effective “missional approach for the city.” Baptist Churches of New England pastors said they “need to be involved in some of the big issues around the city” and the region—urgent social concerns such as the epidemics of hunger, homelessness, poverty, and addiction.

The Baptist Churches of New England, the 388-church fellowship of Christ-followers, commenced sixty-five years ago, on August 17, 1958, when forty people gathered on a Sunday afternoon at a Congregational church in a Greenland, New Hampshire, “to discuss the possibility of beginning a Southern Baptist church in the area,” according to Merwyn Borders, former director of the Green Mountain Baptist Association in Vermont, in his book, The Circle Comes Full: New England Southern Baptists, 1958-1998. On the following Sunday afternoon, the group met again, in Newington New Hampshire and voted to call themselves the “First Southern Baptist Church Mission” in New England.

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 Baptist Churches of New England made history November 4 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 New England Baptists gather November 3-4 at ONE Church in Manchester, NH, for the 2023 Baptist Churches of New England Annual Meeting, they will consider a challenging biblical question: “Who Is Your Neighbor?”