Joe Souza’s decision to interview pastors in Greater Boston about their goals for urban ministry “was a game-changer.”
It helped him better “understand the perspective of the people already doing the work,” he said, and 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.
As BCNE’s new Boston area regional coordinator, Souza faces the task of responding to these ministry realities.
“How do we help immigrants and refugees coming to the region? How do we have more of a multicultural presence?” he said he asks himself. “These are huge needs and huge challenges. That’s what I’ve been hearing. That’s what I’ve been praying about.”
It will take more than church planting, noted Souza, a native of Rio de Janeiro. Along with his wife and three children, he moved to New England in 2004 to start Celebration Church in Charlestown, the oldest neighborhood in Boston. For 14 years as a church planting catalyst — a task he says is not unlike “a matchmaker” — he discovered, encouraged, connected and trained nearly 80 people willing to start a church.
Once someone sensed God’s call to Greater Boston ministry, Souza drove them through various neighborhoods where they might plant their lives and assisted them to find affordable housing, a perpetual hurdle in one of America’s hottest real estate markets. Sixty percent of the church planters he befriended in those years were White English-speakers and the rest were internationals from many countries.
When interviewed in 2021, Souza said he enjoyed “helping pastors in whatever they’re doing. I have a heart for that type of ministry … . I’ve made every mistake in the book. I’m a survivor.”
He called himself “a voice of encouragement and hope,” a coach and a mentor for the next generation of New England church leaders. That servant approach and the friendships he has developed over the years continue to help with his present roles.
Mobilizing churches within their contexts
In addition to guiding the work of what was once called the Greater Boston Baptist Association (now merged with BCNE), he also is ethnic ministry coordinator for the Boston region. He noted 85% of the international churches in BCNE are in that area.
Souza understands that a big part of his new role is “to mobilize churches for mission within their contexts” and to foster a sense of “functional unity and togetherness.” He wants to combat the NIMBY (Not in My Backyard) attitude prevalent in some circles and help pastors and other church leaders realize that their neighborhood is a “mission field” and, starting from where they are, they can “make an impact on the city.”
The necessity in Massachusetts communities, Souza noted, is to develop “connecting point(s) to not only talk about Jesus, but to live out the gospel.”
“That’s the paradigm right there. Are we being generous? Are we working together?
“That’s a huge shift and I don’t know what that’s going to look like in five years,” Souza admitted, “but I think God is really starting to confirm that this is the vision that we need to implement.”
Souza said he has seen too many “barriers being built rather than bridges. How do we build bridges to work and serve together to meet the needs of the city in the name of Jesus?”
Most churches, Souza noted, are not doing evangelism in their neighborhoods. Working with others on the local level, he wants to change that by creating a “transformation” that will require “not only training and talking, but doing! Churches need to be reaching their regions and working together,” he declared.
Training opportunity
To that end Souza has implemented a seven-month, seminary-level training program focused on second-generation international youth. Using “Charting a Bold Course” curriculum, he said he wants to “see if we can impact the future of ethnic churches and develop higher capacity leaders.”
Some Hispanic and Brazilian congregations in New England are struggling to survive or even closing their doors because they are not effectively reaching their “next generation” members and cultivating them as leaders, Souza reported.
Following their classroom time, 14 young leaders from nine churches traveled to London for 10 days in July. Another 11 ventured to Portugal and eight went to Brazil. There they received what Souza described as “a wake-up call” when they discovered “the urgency of living missionally and saw how God can use [everyone] outside the four walls of the church.”
“Marketplace ministries,” evangelism outreach projects and innovative churches the BCNE youth visited in Europe “exposed them to a [post-Christian] reality that is similar to New England.”
By investing in efforts to train youth and view them as church leaders committed to urban ministry, Souza concluded, “the missions field [is becoming] the missions force.”
EDITOR’S NOTE — This story was written by Dan Nicholas and originally published by Baptist Churches of New England.
