As New England nears the 250th anniversary of the climax of the first Great Awakening, some New Englanders say another awakening may be in the offing. So far no one is claiming anything comparable to the waves of revival that swept such towns as Boston and Northampton, Massachusetts, in the mid-1700s But many church leaders note an increasingly visible surge of evangelical piety in a region known for its reserve.

“We’re on the brink of something,” claims Stephen Macchia, president of the Evangelistic Association of New England (EANE). “There’s a movement afoot, and everyone I talk to in the evangelical community says the same thing.”

The signs of resurgence take several forms, say evangelical church leaders. Perhaps the most noticeable have to do with the growing number of churches. Assemblies of God congregations, for example, have almost doubled in the last 20 years or so, with church membership climbing from less than 8,000 in 1968 to approximately 25,000 in 1988, according to Sherri Doty Coussens, statistician at the denomination’s international headquarters.

While the Southern Baptist Convention claimed only 31 congregations in New England two decades ago, the figure now stands at 175. Some of them are small and without their own church buildings, but Larry Martin of the Greater Boston Baptist Association says many are thriving. “God seems to be opening doors faster than we can keep up with,” he states.

Southern Baptists and other church groups report an especially fertile mission field among the region’s urban ethnic populations. Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in South Hamilton, Massachusetts, has strengthened a number of ethnic congregations through its Center for Urban Ministerial Education (CUME) in inner-city Boston. The center offers multilingual classes and allows pastors to complete all degree requirements without leaving the city.

Heightened interest in evangelism training is another indication of possible revival, observers note. Attendance at an annual regional evangelical training conference for pastors and laity rose from a typical 400 in the late 1960s to multiple thousands in recent years. The approximately 6,000 who gathered in Boston’s Hynes Auditorium for EANE’s Congress ‘85 made the event the city’s fourth-largest convention that year. Macchia said EANE is working to see “every willing Christian in New England involved in evangelism.”

A Mainline Infusion

In addition to evangelical denominations, mainline liberal churches are being touched by charismatic and evangelical renewal, says Carlene Hill, editor of EANE’s New England Church Life. These include United Church of Christ and Episcopal congregations.

Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary is at least partly responsible, observers agree. Garth Rosell, professor of church history and director of Gordon-Conwell’s Ockenga Institute, notes that the seminary has fed hundreds of graduates into churches in surrounding communities. “What we are beginning to see,” says Rosell, “is that a lot of the old, traditional, mainline churches have been infused by new people—young, biblically trained pastors and youth leaders who, over a period of time, have been bringing about changes in those churches.”

But not everyone is convinced there is significant evangelical resurgence in New England. While David Roozen, director of the Center for Social and Religious Research at Hartford Seminary in Connecticut, believes evangelicalism in New England is “a source of religious vitality to be watched,” he believes it “still has at best a foothold.” All Protestant bodies in the region are extremely small, he notes, with no Protestant denomination claiming more than 5 percent of the population in any of the New England states.

Rosell believes, however, that one of the most hopeful signs of renewal has to do not with statistics and more visible indicators, but with a growing vitality that expresses itself in the spread of Bible-study and prayer groups. He said such groups are “emerging in remarkable profusion throughout New England.”

Don Gill, until recently president of EANE, says he has seen significant gains in the impact of evangelicalism in the almost 20 years he worked with EANE. But he is also careful to suggest that renewal is best seen in the light of “ongoing development.” Said Gill, “When we talk about renewal or revival, a lot of people think in terms of some kind of spiritual brush fire that sweeps across the area and has a lot of emotion. If that’s what people are looking for, I think they are bound for disappointment. On the other hand, if you look at the situation in terms of the emplacement of congregations and entities that have a gospel base and a gospel center,” he said, “something significant is indeed taking place.”

By Timothy K. Jones in New England.

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