Church Landscape Review: Pressed But Not Crushed
Church Landscape Review: Pressed But Not Crushed
Survival, Resilience & Church Plants of Boston Area New Churches, 2014-2024
Churches share similarities with families, schools, and businesses. Pastors take on roles that often mirror those of parents, teachers, and managers. But at the end of the day, the Church is an entirely different entity. It is a creation of God, entrusted with a ministry of life empowered by his Spirit. That’s why—even amid pressure, hardship, or loss—resilience is possible.
“We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed,” Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 4:8-9. “Perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed.”
And as jars of clay holding the treasure of the gospel, we demonstrate that this “all-surpassing power is from God and not from us” (2 Corinthians 4:7).
A large group of newer church communities in Boston is evidence of what happens when churches ground themselves in this spiritual reality.
The churches that survived those ten years demonstrated several key dynamics:
Their pastors had clear personal callings and support from mentors and peer groups.
They overcame challenges by following the concrete solutions that arose when they sought the Holy Spirit’s guidance.
They started with various outside sources of funding and ensured their pastors didn’t need to work a full-time job outside the church.
They didn’t wait until they thought they were big enough to plant another church. They made an early and ongoing commitment to multiplication.
These are just a few findings of the Applied Research team at the Emmanuel Gospel Center in Pressed But Not Crushed: Survival, Resilience & Church Plants of Boston Area New Churches, 2014-2024.
This report is part of the 2025 Church Landscape Review project, which revisits the churches the team had originally interviewed as church plants in a 2014 research study. That project involved in-depth interviews with a diverse group of new churches from different denominations, ethnic groups, and networks.
Ten years later, EGC revisited the 2014 snapshot and re-interviewed almost two dozen of the original churches to explore how the Boston-area church landscape has evolved over the past decade.
Like other reports in the project, Pressed But Not Crushed includes data, commentary, reflection questions, as well as next steps for ministry leaders.
Visit the Church Landscape Review project page for more information about the methods, participants, and terminology used in the study. There you will also find a series of reports we’re releasing periodically throughout 2025:
