Would you be willing...?

Would you be willing...?

by Jeff Bass, Executive Director

Editor’s Note: In this opinion piece, Emmanuel Gospel Center’s executive director, Jeff Bass, shares how his life took an unexpected turn from the suburbs to the city. His story is one of the many ways God calls different people — from those down the street to others around the globe — to embrace the call to join him in his “divine mission for redemption.”

There I was. Alone in a room with the Rev. Dr. Michael Haynes. He looked me straight in the eye and said, “Would you be willing to go to the city?”

But I wasn’t really alone. I was among thousands of other college students that Dr. Haynes, the senior minister of Boston’s historic Twelfth Baptist Church and former pastor of Martin Luther King Jr., was addressing at Urbana ’79, just south of Chicago. That question has led to other “Would you be willing” questions over the decades, each one shaping God’s call on my life.

Urbana is InterVarsity Christian Fellowship’s famous missions conference, but I really had no interest in being a missionary. My college roommate and I had asked the English theologian John Stott a question when he spoke at Princeton a few months back, and Dr. Stott invited us to discuss it more over breakfast if we would come to Urbana in December. In retrospect, I think he was keener on getting us to Urbana than he was truly interested in our question. Be that as it may, after Christmas with my family in the suburbs of Cleveland, I drove to Urbana to have breakfast with Dr. Stott and attend the conference.

Jeff Bass as a young college student around 1979. Emmanuel Gospel Center.

It turned out that Urbana ’79 was an amazing experience. Forty-plus years later, I remember Luis Palau’s dynamic speaking, the energetic worship, the challenging small-group conversations, and a very well-orchestrated communion service with 17,000 participants. I don’t remember Billy Graham speaking, though I see he was on the agenda. I do remember that Dr. Stott’s devotions on Romans each morning were the best Bible teaching I’ve ever heard, and I remember that it was cool to have breakfast with one of the greatest theologians and Christian leaders of our time — though I don’t remember gaining much ground on our question.

What I remember most was Dr. Haynes’ passionate speech about the importance of God’s work in the city. I remember him saying at the end of his talk, “Some of you will be called to the city.” Thanks to the wonders of the internet, I just discovered that what he really ended with was:

“God this day may be directly calling you to personally covenant with him in a partnership to fulfill the most exciting yet demanding and critical mission of the Church of Jesus Christ in this new age and in the decade of the 1980s — right in center city, urban America, USA.

Brothers and sisters in Jesus Christ, our Lord is waiting for you to walk and work the city streets of this world with him in a divine mission for redemption. Would you be willing to go to the city?”

I can’t explain it, but it really did feel for a minute like Dr. Haynes was talking just to me — like I was alone with him in that big hall, and the Holy Spirit was asking me: Would you be willing to go to the city? And somehow, I knew at that moment I was being called to the city.

“I can’t explain it, but it really did feel for a minute like Dr. Haynes was talking just to me — like I was alone with him in that big hall, and the Holy Spirit was asking me: Would you be willing to go to the city?”

— Jeff Bass

Of course, I had no idea what that meant. It would not have been any stranger to me if Dr. Haynes had said, “Would you be willing to go to the farm?” I really had no connection with the city, and no real interest in the city either. I grew up in the burbs and was happy there. I picked Princeton over MIT in part because of its bucolic campus. I was studying environmental engineering and thought I would be headed to the woods someday.

But God had other plans. Not only was he calling me to the city, he was calling me to Dr. Haynes’ city. In the summer of 1981, I graduated from college, got married, moved to Watertown just outside of Boston, and started a new job as a hazardous waste management consultant at Arthur D. Little in Cambridge. And so began a journey to develop what so many others have had all along, a sincere love and appreciation for urban communities and urban people in general, and a passion for Boston in particular.

My wife, Ellen, and I did our best to get to know urban Boston. We joined an urban church — Ruggles Baptist on the border of Boston and Brookline. (It seemed pretty urban to us at the time.) We found a little ministry in the Yellow Pages (yes, this was pre-Google) called Christians for Urban Justice and started volunteering with them.

Through Ruggles, we met other people who cared about the city, and eventually, ten of us moved together to Boston’s Mission Hill neighborhood, building homes on land no one wanted. And through Christians for Urban Justice, Ellen and I met folks at the Emmanuel Gospel Center, including Doug and Judy Hall. I took their inner-city ministry course in 1988 and got my first introduction to systems thinking in Christian ministry. Around that time Doug, EGC’s executive director, asked me to join the organization’s board. From there, Rev. Bruce Wall, EGC’s board chair and a spiritual son of Dr. Haynes, encouraged me to join the staff in 1990, and I replaced Doug as executive director in 1999.

My life took a turn in December of 1979. An opportunity to have breakfast with a Christian leader I admired turned into an apparently clear word from the Holy Spirit, which led to a whole series of “Would you be willings”: Would you be willing to come to the city? … to move to Mission Hill? … to raise your family here and send your kids to Boston Public Schools? … to learn from the richness of people often labeled as “poor”? … to become friends with, work with, and work under people who are very different from you?

These “Would you be willings” challenged my faith, caused me to take risks and to grow, and led me to make choices in my life to follow through on what the Lord was calling me to.

More lately, the “Would you be willings” have been: Would you be willing to lament? … to find the courage to speak up even when it’s challenging or costly? … to repent of your arrogance and grow in humility? … to see things from other perspectives? … to give up power to empower others? … to learn to serve in new ways?

The journey has been — and continues to be — challenging, fulfilling, and often unexpected.

I want to continue to be willing…

TAKE ACTION

Since Dr. Haynes spoke to the young crowd at Urbana in the late 1970s, urban ministry has become even more crucial to the mission of the Church of Jesus Christ as more and more people migrate to the world’s cities. A lot has changed since then, and I wonder what challenges Dr. Haynes would have for us today.

I am clear that the Holy Spirit often challenges us with “Would you be willing...?” to invite us to cooperate with what God is doing around us. What “Would you be willings” is the Lord asking of you?

• Would you be willing to embrace the new opportunities God has created for the church through the COVID pandemic?

• Would you be willing to fight racism and injustice in your settings, even if it is personally costly to you?

• Would you be willing to listen to “the other side”?

• Would you be willing to follow instead of lead if leading has been your norm?

• Would you be willing to take the risk to follow God in a new way in this challenging season?

Jeff Bass

Jeff Bass joined the staff of EGC in 1991, and was named executive director in 1999. A graduate of Princeton University (civil engineering major), Jeff first worked as a consultant for Arthur D. Little, Inc., but left in 1987 to become the business manager of a local church, where he learned first-hand about the inner workings of an urban congregation. In 2014, Jeff was granted an honorary Doctor of Divinity degree from Gordon College. Jeff is an avid tennis and paddle tennis player. He and his wife, Ellen, have two adult children and two amazing grandchildren.

EGC’s Multicultural Milestones

For EGC, the 2010 Ethnic Ministries Summit was not a one-time event as much as another step along the way in our participation in and encouragement of the Kingdom of God in Boston expressed in all its cultural diversity. Here are a few of the milestones for EGC as we have watched God building his church in Boston, anticipating the church described in Revelation.

1969: EGC helped run a summer-long evangelistic program in inner-city parks, collaborating with 40 diverse churches and 150 workers; 7,000 hear the Gospel, 500 respond and are followed-up; this program continues for years and neighborhood churches take an increasing amount of responsibility to run their own evangelism outreach programs

1970: EGC opens La Libreria Español-Ingles, a bookstore to serve Boston’s growing Hispanic church community

1972: The Curriculum Project develops culturally relevant inner-city Sunday School curriculum, trains urban Sunday School teachers, coordinates urban education conferences

1976: EGC helps Gordon-Conwell found the Center for Urban Ministerial Education (CUME), an urban seminary well designed to serve and develop leaders in Boston

1981: Marilyn Mason joins staff, and serves three years to start creating networks with and among Boston’s Haitian community

1985: Rev. Soliny Védrine starts work as Haitian Minister-at-Large to support the growth of the Haitian church system, and is still on staff today

1988: Rev. Alderi Matos joins staff as Brazilian Minister-at-Large and serves until 1993

1988: Rev. Judy Gay Kee starts International Networking ministry, a relationally based ministry to find, encourage, and network Diaspora missionaries serving their homelands from Boston

1989: Rev. Eduardo Maynard joins staff as Minister-at-Large to the Hispanic community and serves 11 years

2001: Rev. Dr. Gregg Detwiler joins staff to develop Multicultural Ministry, now EGC’s Intercultural Ministries

2002: EGC supports the development of Hispanic pastors association, COPAHNI, helping them win a grant to establish the Institute for Pastoral Excellence to train and support Latino pastors

2002: EGC sponsors the Multicultural Leadership Consultation in Roxbury to bring together leaders from major ethnic communities around Boston, and produces a companion research report called Boston’s Book of Acts

2004: Rev. PoSan Ung begins serving Greater Boston’s Cambodian community as Minister-at-Large

2007: Intercultural Leadership Consultation—400 Christian leaders from 45 ethnic and cultural groups gather in Lexington; publishes New England’s Book of Acts to document the various ethnic and cultural streams which make up the church in New England

2007: EGC’s Intercultural Ministries team begins planning for their part in hosting the 2010 Ethnic Ministries Summit in Boston

2010: EGC helped host the 10th Annual Ethnic Ministries Summit: A City Without Walls! (www.citywithoutwalls.net)

[published in Inside EGC, May-June, 2010]

2010: Dr. Bianca Duemling joins staff as the Assistant Director of Intercultural Ministries

2011: David Kimball begins serving as Minister-at-Large, Christian-Muslim Relations

A Timeline of BEC's Impact on Boston Communities

The impact

Since its founding, the BEC has helped make an impact on church-based programs in Greater Boston that help urban residents reach educational goals.

1999: helped launch church-based Higher Education Resource Centers (HERCs). The Boston HERC in the South End continues to serve college-bound, urban students through its Passport (college preparation) and City Passage (mentoring) programs. It also partners with several schools in the Boston Public Schools. Formerly, there were sites located in Dorchester, Worcester, Lawrence, and Brockton.

2003: created the New City Scholars Program through a partnership with Gordon College. This successful program, which is now called the Clarendon Scholars Program, is run by Gordon, and is in its 9th year.

2007: helped Greater Boston Vineyard start a two-year college readiness program called REACH. The program was part of Vineyard Community Offerings, which has expanded to bless the community in various ways.

2009 and 2010: developed learning relationships with leaders from over 50 churches and ministries to understand how they are already serving their students and to assess the needs for further support.

2009-present: convened and supported a growing network of Christian leaders for reflection, learning, prayer, peer support, and coordinated action. Over 70 individuals representing more than 30 churches and organizations have participated in BEC learning community events and trainings.

2009-2014: helped the Greater Boston Chinese Community Services with ongoing program and staff development at its Episcopal Quincy Chinese Center. We helped to create and launch a two-year college preparation program for immigrant Chinese high school students. To date, the Xaris Zone college preparation program has served more than 60 students and helped more than 40 of them enter four- and two-year colleges.

2011-2012: took a leadership role to support the Boston Public Schools (BPS) Circle of Promise Initiative's efforts to foster partnerships between schools and faith-based institutions. We helped to plan, prepare, and facilitate a May event that gathered more than 150 school principals, staff, faith leaders, and congregants to hear about different models for partnerships and for dialogue. We helped the BPS to complete follow-up work for this event and to create documents and tools that provided interested schools and institutions with concrete next steps. We also co-presented at a BPS conference and co-hosted a workshop for BPS schools and faith-based partners.

July 2012-June 2014: serves as the Community Liaison for the BPS' Office of Community Engagement and Circle of Promise (CECoP), helping to support existing partnerships and matching more school and faith-based institutions.

July 2014-present: supporting and mobilizing churches to engage in partnerships with public schools. Also, facilitating a BEC cohort of leaders to strengthen their systemic understanding of the impact of their work.