A former church building has found new life as a center for cultural exchange and fellowship among Africans in the Diocese of Massachusetts.
In October the diocese celebrated the opening of the Bishop Alan M. Gates African Anglican Episcopal Mission Center in the now-closed Grace Church. Located in Everett, a city of about 50,000 people just north of Boston, the center is about five years in the making and reflects the vitality of the diocese’s immigrant worshiping communities, whose clergy and parishioners come from Kenya, Nigeria, Rwanda, South Africa, Sudan, Uganda, and Zambia. It also recognizes the efforts of Bishop Gates, who is now retired, to support the ministry of African clergy during his 10-year episcopacy.
The center is envisioned as a hub for African clergy, their families, and parishioners to gather for events, small-group retreats, counseling, and spiritual guidance. It will also serve as a center of worship for emerging congregations and African communities.
Early in his ministry as bishop, Gates said, he became more aware of the significant presence of African Anglicans within the dioceses, including a half-dozen congregations that worship in the languages of their countries of origin.
“That seemed to me to be a real blessing,” Gates said. “And it also seemed to me that part of the way that we get past the North-South divide in global Anglicanism is to make sure that when African Anglicans are present in our own diocese that they feel fully welcomed and empowered to be at the table as part of us.”
About five years ago, the diocese’s African clergy caucus presented a proposal for the mission center. The idea was met with enthusiasm, and the question became where the center would be located. When Grace Church closed its doors in the fall of 2023, it presented the right opportunity.
“We began to connect the dots that actually it was an outstanding place for the African center proposal, not least because it already was the location for a Dinka [South Sudanese] worshiping community,” Gates said of the former Grace Church.
The facility received new paint, lighting, flooring, and landscaping for its repurposing as the mission center. The next phase of work will involve removing pews to create a multipurpose event space, and plans are underway to hire a part-time manager of the center.
The diocese held a dedication service for the center on October 12, with about 140 in attendance. The service included the blessing of a newly installed peace pole, with the message “May Peace Prevail on Earth” in multiple languages, the dedication of a refurbished meditation garden, and the confirmation of 12 candidates from four congregations.
The Rev. Canon Jean Baptiste Ntagengwa, who serves as canon for immigration and multicultural ministries and leads the African clergy caucus, preached. He cast a vision for the center as a place “where all are welcomed, where all voices are lifted up, and where there is a bridge between the Global South and church in the West.”
“I see the center being a place of refuge, where somebody who needs some rest, somebody who — maybe they have been running from border to border and need to have a quiet place and meditation — to come and have that place of peace and healing,” he said in an interview.
“And, in the future, I see the center even inviting those churches in the Global South, their representatives, African bishops, to show … that we have this Jesus, who is our Savior, who welcomes everybody and transcends race, transcends ethnicity, transcends nativism, transcends everything.”
Ntagengwa recalled arriving in the United States in September 1999. At the time, he only knew one other Kenyan priest in the diocese, who helped introduce him to the culture. Beyond that, there wasn’t any formal orientation for immigrant priests.
“To me it was very, very cold,” Ntagengwa said. “Now I’m accustomed to it, but if I had had somebody to tell me, ‘You need this [clothing],’ it would have been helpful.”
Since then, the diocese’s African clergy caucus has grown to 12 members, including one who is preparing for ordination process.
This parallels the overall growth in immigration to the United States from Sub-Saharan Africa. The nonpartisan Migration Policy Network estimated that there were 2.1 million Sub-Saharan African immigrants living here in 2019, about 5 percent of the foreign-born population. The population has increased 16-fold since 1980.
The majority of these immigrants come from Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, and Somalia. Of these nations, Ghana, Kenya, and Nigeria have large and vibrant Anglican churches. Boston is home of the nation’s seventh-largest concentration of African immigrants.
Ntagengwa hopes the new mission center can fill in gaps for newly arrived Africans, including students studying at Boston-area universities, by offering cultural orientation programs and assistance with understanding rights and benefits and providing care packages for winter necessities. In turn, the center will offer orientation courses for Americans preparing to travel to Africa.
The center will also offer “Episcopal 101” courses for African Anglicans to orient themselves to the distinctive of worshiping in the American church.
The three newest mission churches in the diocese are African-Anglican: St. Peter’s in Waltham (Ugandan), Christ the King in Lynn (Kenyan), and Grace Chapel in Brockton (Pan-African).
Gates said the new center is a culmination of work in the past decade to bring multicultural ministries in from the margins and more fully integrate them into the diocese’s mission.
“It is a fuller celebration of the truly global character of the diocese as reflecting the character of our Anglican Communion,” he said. “It is also a receiving of and welcoming of the gifts that our immigrant clergy have to offer to the body.”
“I think one of the ways that we in the Episcopal Church push back against a narrative that would say, for instance, that African Anglicans don’t belong in the Episcopal Church is to proclaim and celebrate the ways that indeed they do and the ways that we in the Episcopal Church recognize them as our Anglican siblings.”