“We’re a product of God’s provision and his generosity,” said Dane R. Helsing, pastor of Beacon Community Church, Belmont, MA, who moved with his wife, Laura, to the Boston area in 2006 from suburban Pittsburgh to attend Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. After graduating in 2009 and serving six years as associate pastor of Hope Fellowship Church, Cambridge, MA, Helsing, two dozen adults, and fourteen children planted the suburban Boston congregation in September 2015. They rented a dance studio and office space. Saving all that they could, the church eventually raised a building fund of $200,000.
Four years after the first worship service, Helsing, 40, and three church leaders, stepping out by faith, decided to attend a capital-campaign fundraising workshop in Detroit with the dream of growing the church’s innovative, relation-building, outreach strategy so they could serve more young families, graduate students, and professionals than ever. By then the church had grown to nearly 120 people and their efforts to reach beyond the walls of their rented $5,000-a-month space included serving Starbucks coffee while talking about Jesus Christ to strangers at two commuter rail stations, screening family-friendly films, and offering a basketball camp for neighborhood children.
Will Mancini, founder of Auxano, a Houston-based consulting group that helps church leaders discern and enhance a targeted vision plan that then “needs a surge of financial fuel” for church growth, led the two-day sessions. The August 2019 workshop helped Helsing understand in a fresh way that “generosity is a discipleship issue. We’re a product of God’s provision and his generosity.”
After they returned from Detroit, the Baptist Foundation of New England Board of Directors granted the church $3,200 to defray the cost of travel, lodging, workshop registration, and ancillary expenses. Expressing his appreciation, Helsing said the foundation’s “seed money produced a harvest” that he compared to the familiar biblical encounter (Matthew 14) when Jesus and his disciples compassionately fed a crowd with only five loaves of bread and two fish on hand.
Soon thereafter, Beacon members decided to rent the $1.4 million, historic, single-screen Studio Cinema. The dilapidated, 300-seat, 7,500-suare-foot theater, which needed a $112,000 roof (replaced this month in time for Christmas), became available for purchase just two months after they began renting it. With a $900,000, twenty-five-year mortgage from the Southern Baptist’s North American Mission Board, the $200,000 they had saved, and gifts from other partners, they purchased the theater for $1 million.
The foundation’s generous grant, and a gift from Hope Fellowship Church, Helsing noted, spurred them on to raise $80,000 (so far) for reconstruction and repair. Their monthly expenses now total approximately the same amount they were paying to rent the dance studio and office space. The theater building at 376 Trapelo Road and adjacent properties provide the church with income and opportunities to invite people to church.
Despite delays due to the ongoing pandemic, Helsing and church leaders are already making plans for and praying about starting another congregation eleven miles northwest in Bedford. “Healthy churches plant churches. We want to see New England reached for Christ,” the pastor challenged.
