It All Began in Boston

As we traveled around Boston these days, we realized again how God used our years in Boston from 1970 -1982 to shape our lives.

For our first two years in the Boston area, we lived in a one-room efficiency student apartment at Andover Newton Theological School. The apartment was already furnished. It measured about 400 sq. ft. and had just enough room for our clothes and books. With a few decorating touches, we made it our own.

Each day Lynn drove to Lexington Christian Academy, which was about an hour away on busy roads filled with temperamental Boston drivers. I went to class and studied. At night, Lynn graded papers and did lesson plans. I went to more classes and studied some more.

At Andover Newton, I was able to pursue training in prison ministry through a field work program at a nearby maximum security prison. Every week, we’d travel to the prison to meet with inmates who were about to be released. After their release, we’d follow up with them on the outside.

I took classes not only at Andover Newton but also at other seminaries in the area. One of my classes focused on counseling alcoholics. It was taught by an Episcopal priest who was himself a recovering alcoholic.

My work in the prison and my experience with alcoholics led me to my first job as the director of a counseling program for alcoholics at The Salvation Army Harbor Light Center in Boston.

The Harbor Light Center was located in the area of Boston where homeless and street people congregated. The Center offered a 30-bed temporary shelter for men, a 10-bed temporary shelter for women as well as a 60-bed alcohol rehabilitation program for both men and women.

Daily contact with so many poor, homeless, and addicted people had its effect on us. They taught us honesty and patience. They forced us to exercise and stretch our faith. They made us examine our values and the culture that shaped us. We loved many of these people. Some of them loved us back. As a result, our lives changed.

We were also privileged to work with some wonderful staff, including two African American women whom we met during our visit to Boston. 

Jaqui was my administrative assistant for most of the time I served as executive director of the Harbor Light Center. Sandra joined our staff as the manager of our homeless shelter. Both of these women remained on staff at the Harbor Light Center after I left. Jaqui worked there for 31 years, Sandra for 30 years. Working for this many years in a setting that has uncommonly high levels of pressure and stress is an amazing testimony to their resilience and faith. Sadly, both Jaqui and Sandra lost their jobs when the Center closed for financial reasons about seven years ago. Both have struggled financially since then. Both have lost people close to them. Sandra has had to overcome two different types of cancer. 

Sandra and Jaqui have many reasons to be burned out, frustrated, angry. But, they are filled with faith. The joy in the faces of these two women when we met together overwhelmed us. They truly are saints whose lives have touched hundreds of people with hope and who have served the Lord in some of the most difficult circumstances and conditions to be found anywhere.

After two years in seminary housing and two years in a third-floor walk-up apartment near Lexington Christian Academy, we settled into a three-family house in Hyde Park in southeast Boston. We raised both of our babies in this house, which was to be our home for the rest of our time in New England.

Lynn was a stay-at-home mom who became involved in local women’s Bible studies and, in time, started to work out of our home as a freelance editor. I traveled by bus and subway to Harbor Light Center each day and often on weekends.

After four years on staff at Harbor Light Center, The Salvation Army asked me to serve as the executive director of the Center. This involved the oversight of 25 staff from many different racial and ethnic backgrounds. It forced me to develop new skills in budget management, fundraising, community relations and strategic planning. On Sundays, it brought our entire family to the Center to lead worship services for residents and elderly people in the area.

On the Sundays that we did not have responsibilities at the Harbor Light Center, we attended services at Park Street Church in downtown Boston. Park Street Church was where we were members and where both of our kids were baptized. The church was home to many students and a large group of internationals. As one of the oldest churches in the U.S., it had a huge commitment to missionary support and to faithful exegetical preaching.

We were able to attend a Sunday worship service at Park Street Church during our visit to Boston. As we heard the magnificent organ and joined the congregation in singing, we choked up and stopped singing. Our eyes filled with tears at the memories of the services we had attended at Part Street while we lived in Boston.

It was at Park Street Church that we attended our first week-long missions conference. It was there that God touched our hearts to serve the poor internationally. It was there that we first heard about World Relief. It was there Lynn took a course taught by J. Christy Wilson at the Boston Center for Christian Studies and learned about tent-making mission strategy. It was there that Lynn worked with our first refugee family.

Our involvement with Park Street Church opened our eyes to the world outside of the U.S. As a result, we felt led to pursue missionary service overseas, where poverty and human need was so much greater for many people than in the U.S. To gain access to these countries, I felt led to pursue an MBA in health care management on a part-time basis at Boston University.

So, I quit my full-time job at the Harbor Light Center and took on a number of part-time jobs--working for a friend at his local seafood restaurant business, serving as a pastor at a small church in our community, working as the weekend administrator at Boston City Hospital, consulting to The Salvation Army.

As I approached the end of my studies at Boston University’s School of Management, I accepted a position as Director of Administration and Personnel with World Relief, which was located in Wheaton, Illinois.  As  result, we had to leave Boston for a new life in a Chicago suburb.

It was very hard for us to leave Boston. We loved the area. We loved the people. We had many friends and many wonderful memories. But, we clearly felt God’s leading to go, and so we uprooted our family and ourselves and moved away.

But, Boston had changed us. We arrived in Boston with each other, our faith, and only those things that we could carry in the back of our old Ford sedan.

We left with such riches in terms of family, friends, experiences, and careers. Our views of the world, of service to others, of missions, and of God’s faithfulness had been enlarged and forever changed.

Now, 44 years later, we thank God for taking us to Boston. During these many years, we have had a wonderful journey filled with blessing and joy.

And, it all began in Boston.