The Baptist Churches of New England, the 388-church fellowship of Christ-followers, commenced sixty-five years ago, on August 17, 1958, when forty people gathered on a Sunday afternoon at a Congregational church in a Greenland, New Hampshire, “to discuss the possibility of beginning a Southern Baptist church in the area,” according to Merwyn Borders, former director of the Green Mountain Baptist Association in Vermont, in his book, The Circle Comes Full: New England Southern Baptists, 1958-1998. On the following Sunday afternoon, the group met again, in Newington New Hampshire and voted to call themselves the “First Southern Baptist Church Mission” in New England.

When New England Baptists from nearly sixty churches gathered the first weekend of November for their 2023 marathon of inspiration, information, fellowship, and networking, their attention was focused not on the 228 people gathered at a church in Manchester, NH, but on the thousands who were not present, thus highlighting the annual meeting theme—“Who Is Your Neighbor?”—and calling for renewed efforts to live out the biblical calling to a life of authentic missions and evangelism.

The Baptist Churches of New England made history November 4 when they elected Lierte Soares Jr., a Massachusetts pastor from Brazil, as their president. By a unanimous vote, the self-proclaimed “reverse missionary” to New England, who also calls himself a “pastor with a missionary heart,” became the first Brazilian state-convention president in the 178-year history of the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest Protestant group in the United States.

When New England Baptists gather November 3-4 at ONE Church in Manchester, NH, for the 2023 Baptist Churches of New England Annual Meeting, they will consider a challenging biblical question: “Who Is Your Neighbor?”

“New England has a similar cultural context to Europe” and a developing partnership with like-minded Baptists there, initially with churches in Ireland, Portugal, Scotland, Spain, and Wales. Both regions experience a “post-Christian environment and a postmodern mentality” that shapes their approaches to ministry and missions, explained Sam Taylor, BCNE’s Global Missions Mobilizer and the former Boston Area Regional Coordinator.

Everywhere people looked in usually tranquil Central Vermont they saw compromised homes, devastated businesses, washed-out roads—and shattered lives. Portions of Montpelier and Barre were nearly washed away in July by what the governor called “historic and catastrophic” flooding.

Karen “Kay” Jonas Dorsett, 58, beloved wife, mother, grandmother, and friend, entered the portals of heaven on July 31, 2023, after a courageous battle with pancreatic cancer.

The Brotherhood Mutual Insurance Company gave the Baptist Churches of New England a $25,000 unrestricted gift on June 28. Since 2016, their annual gifts to the BCNE have totaled nearly a quarter of a million dollars, according to Ken Dorothy, a Boston-area licensed insurance broker since 1979 and a member of Genesis, a BCNE-member community church in Woburn, Mass.

Maner Tyson, a country boy from rural North Carolina, who could not speak or pray in front of others, remembers himself as the “least likely person to be chosen to be a pastor or to live in a city.” God, it seems, had a different opinion. Tyson has been the pastor for thirty-three years of Waterbury Baptist Ministries in Connecticut.

An African pastor, Lawum Kayamba, a native of Kikwit, an important commercial center in southwestern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), found his way to the seaside city of Portland, Maine, and started Disciples International Christian Church, a thriving multicultural, evangelical church.

After nearly thirty years as the founder and bivocational pastor of Igreja Comunidade Batista de Naugatuck (First Brazilian Baptist Church of Naugatuck), in the Naugatuck Valley of Connecticut, Jose Monteiro has lived a lifetime of Christ-centered “obedience in the same direction”—on the path God set for him since preaching his first sermon when he was 12 years old.

When J. D. and Natalie Mangrum moved into the oldest neighborhood in one of America’s oldest cities, they decided that community engagement would be a lifestyle, not an activity. As they started a multicultural, multigenerational Baptist church in 2016, they chose not to schedule a series of public events to garner attention, but to develop authentic friendships that eventually would earn them the opportunities to discuss the gospel with their neighbors.

When most pastors decide to start a church, they think of hymnals and folding chairs. A team of volunteers planning a new congregation in central Massachusetts decided instead that knee pads and helmets were essential items for the innovative ministry they had in mind.

“You don’t have to be a millionaire to make a difference” for youth, said Merrill Thomas, who served twice as a Baptist Foundation of New England board member. The secret to sustaining a not-for-profit endowment, he advised, is to give generously every month to a cause in which you believe.