We are a group of families (young and old!) and single adults who live in the Boston area. Our backgrounds and occupations are diverse, but we share our gratitude for Jesus, who rescued us from all kinds of trouble, as well as our desire to follow Him.
Many of us have roots in the historic restoration movement, but we aren't hoping to restore the faith of the 1800s. We desire to restore "the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints" (Jude 3). This is the faith we seek to understand, live, and share with others. We believe this original faith handed down to the Apostles was complete and perfect (John 16:13), and that our job is simply to mine this treasure and put it into practice, whether in season or out of season.
"My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me." John 10:27
Like our spiritual forefathers, we desire to be Christians only but certainly do not consider ourselves to be the only Christians. We do not align ourselves with any denomination, but embrace what Jesus taught in John 17 and what Paul taught in 1 Corinthians 1 regarding the goal of Christian unity and the wickedness of sectarianism. We are devoted to building bridges, ignoring labels, and breaking down walls that separate obedient believers from each other. As such, we are in fellowship with believers throughout the world. We are amazed at what God is doing in this day to restore His Church, even in the most unlikely places.
We are striving to be a fellowship that embraces every aspect of Jesus’ Great Commission (Matthew 28:18-20). We are striving to be a fellowship that puts the greatest emphasis on what was most important to Jesus, "to major in the majors," such as to love God with one's whole heart, mind, soul, and strength, and to love one's neighbor as oneself. We also do not want to miss or ignore any of the commands Jesus gave His followers. We recognize we have blind spots and seek to keep an open mind to learn from other Christians the things we may have missed.
We desire to be a church that focuses on doing our own work while thinking about, talking about, and highlighting the positive things other Christians and churches are doing that are pleasing to God. We are striving to put into practice things that other like-minded believers can find encouragement in and inspiration from and can be implemented and multiplied anywhere in the world, by any group.
We recognize that "those who preach the gospel should make their living from the gospel" (1 Cor. 9:14). At the same time, we are committed to utilizing house churches and raising up self-supported preachers and teachers. This allows us to free up more resources to help the poor and to spread the Gospel both domestically and overseas. House churches proved to be extremely effective for the early church, and we believe they are still worthy of imitation today.
We strive to be a fellowship that embraces the cross of Christ and the difficult way of suffering for righteousness’ sake. We want to be among those who grasp and teach that in some cases, our only rewards for following Jesus will come after the Day of Judgment, not in this brief life.
About Our Work
As a church, we are focusing our ministry efforts in two areas:
- Over the long term, building strong, healthy house churches devoted to following Jesus’ example and putting into practice all that He commanded, and
- Distributing sound Bible teaching that brings non-believers to faith, strengthens Christians, and equips leaders.
We believe that being a follower of Jesus requires more than just a knowledge of the Bible or an understanding of who Jesus is. It also requires more than simply mastering a few of His teachings. Instead, being a Christian requires an abiding relationship with God and a commitment to actually do all that Jesus taught. We are committed to having open minds and hearts to the ways God desires for us to know and follow Him, as well as sharing these things with others.
Given our goals above, with each lesson we post to this website, we do our best to provide detailed teaching notes. These allow anyone to “be a Berean" and study these things out for themselves to ensure what is being taught aligns with Scripture. Second, these notes serve as a starting point to help men in the church to teach others.
In addition to our teaching ministry, we support (and cheer on) other Christians around the United States (and throughout the world) with their own work. We want to see God build a healthy, unified, and fruitful church. We welcome and embrace fellowship with Christians near and far, seeking to encourage, equip and strengthen God's church, wherever it may be.
Over the past years, we have been involved in getting out solid Bible teaching in the Middle East. Along with other brothers and sisters and Scroll Publishing, this work has included translating books, transcripts of teaching materials, and video lessons into Middle Eastern languages. These are distributed without charge to Christians and Muslims. These teaching materials are designed to help non-believers come to faith, as well as to strengthen the faith of the Christians. Please pray that we may have God’s wisdom in this work. Pray for our brothers and sisters to have the faith and courage to be faithful until the end!
Supporting Our Work
Some have asked how they might support our work. As we have no full-time staff and very low facility costs, we are able to use our financial resources to serve the poor and to support mission work. However, the workers are few, but the harvest plentiful! We currently have expenses related to maintaining our website and our work in the Middle East. If you would like to support either of these teaching ministries, feel free to reach out to us with the contact form below or donate directly via PayPal. Donations made to our church are tax-deductible.
Donate via PayPal
https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=RL5H8V98BTSAQ
Contact Us
Please feel free to reach out to us using the contact form below.