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Because the mission of EGC is to understand and help nurture the vitality of urban churches and communities, we are constantly listening and learning in order to discover what God is doing, and understand how he might want us to come alongside him in his work. That is the driving force behind EGC’s research department. So for the past year or more, we have been conducting concentrated research on the status of the church in Boston, and what we see is encouraging!

In 1993, we discovered Boston’s Quiet Revival, observing that the number of churches in Boston was growing exponentially while the population remained relatively constant. Back in 1970, we catalogued 300 churches, and today we find about 575 in Boston. That represents a net gain of one new church every 46 days for the past 35 years. Considering the steady growth in the numbers of new churches, we find ourselves in the longest period of sustained growth of Christianity in Boston’s history.

When Boston was settled in 1630, the Puritans became the dominant group in the religious life of Boston. In the late 1700’s, however, the Unitarian heresy took hold in Boston. In 1808, founders of the theological seminary in Andover led the opposition to the Unitarian movement and many new Trinitarian churches were started. Church growth generally kept pace with population growth from 1830 to 1930, as American cities grew and the Boston area led the way in the Industrial Revolution. In the 1920s, following almost 100 years of strong city growth and the accompanying vigorous growth in the number and size of Boston’s churches, the city faced a cutoff in immigration with the imposition of strict immigration laws. There followed a decline in the number of churches from the late 1940s and into the 1970s. The population shift to Boston’s suburbs caused a major decline in membership in the older neighborhood churches, and few immigrant groups were importing the faith from their countries of origin. It seemed as if the church in Boston was dying.

This all changed when the 1965 Immigration Act opened Boston’s doors to newcomers from Asia, Latin America, the Caribbean, and Africa. But it wasn’t until later we learned that this event marked the beginning of a “Quiet Revival” in Boston church development. For the next 40 years, more new churches would be planted in Boston than in any other comparable time period in the city’s history. Boston church members today represent more than 100 nations, and worship in over 30 languages.

EGC has been tracking changes in the churches since 1970. In 1969, Web Brower, who managed our Spanish-language bookstore, observed that the number of Hispanic churches was growing. To understand what was happening, in 1970, Judy Hall, wife of EGC’s president, and their co-worker, Chet Young, surveyed Boston’s churches and found 300 in the city. Although we did not publish a directory, that survey established a baseline for the number of churches. We added a research department to the Center in 1976, which began to keep track of neighborhood and church development. Our first church directory was printed in 1989, and at that time we identified 406 Christian churches in Boston. The numbers of churches expanded in the second-, updated-, and Millennium editions of The Boston Church Directory.

The results of these periodic surveys indicate ongoing church growth and development on an unprecedented scale. The number and nature of the new churches in the growing edge of Boston’s church community today show that the Quiet Revival of recent decades appears to be continuing and even increasing! The chart on the first page combines historic research findings of the church from 1630 with EGC’s church survey research data from 1970 to the present along with population data to show the rate of population growth and decline as compared to the numbers of churches.

The combined total for the number of active churches in Boston and Cambridge today is approximately 675. About 100 new churches were planted in Boston between January 2001 and July 2006. Across the river in Cambridge, 16 churches were planted.  (See table, right.)

In a general sense, the Boston neighborhoods which experienced the higher number of new churches planted—East Boston, Hyde Park, Roxbury, and Dorchester—align with the neighborhoods which also have the greater projected population increases as determined by the 2000 U.S. Census data and the “2008 Projected Populations” by the Boston Dept. of Neighborhood Development. In East Boston, the projected population increase from 2000-2008 is 2,502, similarly for Roxbury the projection is 1,904. In the case of Dorchester, the results for North and South Dorchester are combined for a total projected increase of 2,067. The only exception to the relationship between population projections and number of new churches planted in this group is Hyde Park where the projected population increase was only 791 but 11 new churches have been planted. For basis of comparison, Hyde Park has the same number of new churches planted as East Boston with less than one-third the projected population increase.

Even in communities where the population is decreasing, such as Jamaica Plain (-1,017), Back Bay/Beacon Hill (-833), and Roslindale (-279), there is still a need to reach out to segments of the population that are not fully reached. Perhaps that is the reason several new churches have been planted in these neighborhoods. Jamaica Plain had five churches planted between 2001-2006, Back Bay/Beacon Hill reported one, and in Roslindale two new churches were identified. Hyde Park had the largest percent of increase of new churches even though their population had not changed. It may be that shifts within the population makeup opened the door to church planting.

What are these new churches like? Of the 100 new churches in Boston, 76 reported the language they used for worship. Of these 76, 39 are non-English or bi-lingual, 19 worship in Spanish, 8 in Haitian Creole, and 9 in Portuguese. Greek, Korean, and Russian languages also were reported; one new church for each of these languages. In the 16 new Cambridge churches, 15 reported their languages as follows: English 4, Portuguese 4, Korean 2, Amharic 1, Bengali 1, Creole 1, French 1, and 1 church which offers bi-lingual Taiwanese-English worship services. Within these new churches of Boston and Cambridge, ethnicities as reported included: African, African American, Anglo, Asian, Brazilian, Eritrean, Ethiopian, Greek, Haitian, Hispanic, Indian, Korean, Korean-American, Latvian, Multi-ethnic, Nigerian, Taiwanese, Vietnamese and West Indian.

We can see that the geographic and cultural diversity of the Quiet Revival seems to be continuing, despite decreases in certain neighborhood populations and consistent with the continued influx into Boston of members of the international Christian community.

Today in Boston there is robust church planting, and a hundred new churches. There is the ongoing need for ministerial training, leadership development for church leaders and youth, capacity building for churches and organizations, and the many kinds of services that God has raised up at EGC to help nurture church vitality and encourage Kingdom growth.

What’s next for Boston? Perhaps it is more revival. Perhaps it is persecution. But no matter what God has up his immense sleeves, he is fulfilling his promises to build the church over which Jesus Christ is the head, and to proclaim his glory in all the earth.

[published in Inside EGC, September-October, 2006]