Boston Sankofa Journey Affinity Working Group
2020-21: UniteBoston worked on a capacity-building initiative to fund a part-time administrative staff person and a dialogue across difference training. For the past ten years, UniteBoston’s united worship events, website, and neighborhood dinners have brought together Christians across historic divisions of race, denomination, and generation.
2021-22: UniteBoston continued to work in a capacity-building initiative to fund a part-time administrative staff person and a dialogue across difference training. This is a renewal grant.
2024-25: The “Boston Sankofa Journey” Affinity Working Group will delve into Boston’s history of racism, aiming to reconstruct a shared memory for Christians in the city. Through communal learning and practice, members will share personal narratives, explore historical contexts, interview local leaders, and consider implications for Christian discipleship in Boston. Key inquiries will focus on Boston’s involvement in the North Atlantic Slave trade, including the role of churches in perpetuating or opposing slavery, as well as identifying stories, content, and experiences to foster collective racial healing, reconciliation, and shalom.
Executive Director for UniteBoston since 2012 and the catalyst for UniteBoston’s bridge-building work with Christians throughout the area, Kelly studied at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary and Boston University. She has worked as a consultant and spoken at conferences around evangelism, mission, Christian unity, and conflict transformation.
Congregational and Community grants provide support for urban pastors, churches, faith-based community organizations, and theological institutions to share resources, ideas, and practices for life-giving ministry in cities across North America. Typically, we invite those who have not previously had access to resources or grant funding. This inaugural cohort of grantees included organizations working with children and youth, capacity building for a community. ministry, support for community healthcare, and research on congregational responses to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Congregational and community grants provide support for urban pastors, churches, faith-based community organizations, and theological institutions to share resources, ideas, and practices for life-giving ministry in cities across North America. Typically, we invite those who have not previously had access to resources or grant funding.
The Affinity Working Group initiative aims to provide time and space for HUB learning network members to engage in focused ways with others interested in a similar topic and questions around ministry in the city. We anticipate working group members to explore, deepen, and assess their own vocation, urban context, and church life; gain clarity about vital questions and issues in a particular focus area (eg. youth, arts, etc), and learn from group members’ lived experiences and other sources of knowledge and wisdom.
The new HUB Local Gatherings initiative supports the coordination of neighborhood or citywide gatherings by a network member to connect with other Christian leaders around a topic of inquiry, encouragement, and support related to ministry in the city. The gatherings are topical, contextual, and consider sustained engagement between or beyond the meetings themselves.
The Affinity Working Group initiative aims to provide time and space for HUB learning network members to engage in focused ways with others interested in a similar topic and questions around ministry in the city. We anticipate working group members to explore, deepen, and assess their own vocation, urban context, and church life; gain clarity about vital questions and issues in a particular focus area (eg. youth, arts, etc), and learn from group members’ lived experiences and other sources of knowledge and wisdom.
I pray that together we could embody + exemplify shalom: complete reconciliation between individuals, city systems, the natural world, and God.