A big amen for shared space
Former Newton church building serves as nurturing host for small congregations willing to juggle their schedules
One in an occasional series of articles touching on religious life in area communities.
NEWTON - You might call them God's start-ups. They're congregations that are slowly growing strong enough to take on a life - and eventually a building - of their own. For now, though, until they win the uphill battle for space and funding, five local groups of first- and second-generation immigrants have found a haven at the Newton Corner Worship Center, an unusual church "incubator" that houses congregations with fewer than 100 members. There, they can share space, supplies, and devotion.
Most weekends at the center look something like a busy United Nations convention - with Jews, Arabs, Brazilians, Filipinos, and Greeks taking turns worshipping in carefully orchestrated shifts.
The routine kicked off on a recent Saturday afternoon with the Beth Yeshua Messianic Congregation, Jews who read from the Bible in Russian, holding a blessing for children, followed by a group luncheon of homemade beet salad, gefilte fish, and chopped liver.
By 10 a.m. Sunday, Greek-Americans from the Compass Community Church are worshipping on the building's ground level, and the Arabic Baptist Church is preparing Gospel readings for its faithful, mostly immigrants from the Middle East, in an upstairs stained-glass sanctuary. At 2 p.m., the Philippine International Church takes over the lower hall. A few hours later, the New England Brazilian Baptist Church will arrive for its evening service and after-church fellowship, which often stretches past 10 p.m.
It's an unusual system - but exactly what the building was dedicated for, said Demitrios Deligiannides, who manages the Church Street property. He works on behalf of the Hellenic Gospel Church, which bought the former Newton Corner Baptist Chapel in 1990 for $1, under the condition that it be used to shelter fledgling church groups.
Each congregation pays $600-$700 a month in rent, which goes to taxes and repairs on the gracious, 121-year-old stone sanctuary.
"It's God's building," said Deligiannides, whose son, Hariton, is pastor of Compass Community Church, a second-generation offshoot of the Hellenic church.
The congregations don't share language or culture, but are tied together in the way that matters most to them, through a shared, Baptist-oriented outlook on faith. "Jesus Christ is the head" of their faith, he said. "We are the body."
On special Christian holidays, such as Christmas, the congregations gather for one worship service. For most of the year, the ministers hold monthly meetings to discuss building issues and maintenance, but they conduct their church business independently.
The church kitchen is where most of the routine intermingling takes place. Depending on the hour, you can find Russian women preparing beet salad, Filipino women warming adobo rice dishes and sweets, and women from the Arabic Baptist Church readying Pastor Sinote Ibrahim's favorite dish, traditional Egyptian falafel made with fava beans.
It's rare to find Arabs and Jews worshipping within the same walls, but Beth Yeshua's spiritual adviser, Mitch Forman, said that is part of the uniqueness of the Newton Corner Worship Center.
"We have really good relations with them," Forman said of the Arabic denomination. "I think we have something in common together, which is that because of our belief in Jesus, we are seen as nontraditional groups."
The congregation led by Forman, who is not an ordained rabbi, is primarily Russian-Jewish immigrants and their children who believe Jesus Christ is the Messiah. They left another congregation in Boston and began worshipping in Newton two years ago.
"It is wonderful to be here because Newton is really one of the centers of Jewish life in the Boston area," Forman said.
Ibrahim said he continually educates just about everyone - even other Christians - that many parts of the Islamic world are Christian.
His followers - which include immigrants from Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Sudan, and North Africa - were raised in largely Christian communities in their homelands, he said.
"We are colorblind and race-blind and nationality-blind. God accepts us as we are, wherever we come from," Ibrahim said. "This isn't political correctness. It's in our hearts."
A few groups have already grown past their incubation in Newton Corner. In recent years, a group of Indian Baptists grew big enough to seek out their own space in Hudson; a Haitian church left for space in Boston; and a group of Chinese evangelicals relocated to Cambridge.
Most of the current clergy said they are still several years away from a move. Having their own brick-and-mortar building would be exciting, they said, but is secondary in importance to the rich spiritual experience that being active in a small congregation can provide.
Much political and cultural attention has been focused recently on megachurches - such as those overseen by evangelical Christian leaders Rick Warren and Joel Osteen, who easily attract 10,000 worshippers every Sunday to services held in sports venues.
But microchurches, small groups that "plant" themselves in communities and serve just a specific neighborhood or a small group of immigrants, are one of the fastest-growing forms of worship, observers say.
Neil Cole, a Los Angeles-based Christian "church planter" and author of a 2005 book, "Organic Church," said more people are seeking the intimacy of a "spiritual family" and a very active faith, rather than settling for a heavily orchestrated event on Sunday morning that "reduces them to spectators in the audience."
Small startup congregations "empower ordinary people to carry the Kingdom of God on their shoulders instead of leaving that to officials," he said.
Cole, who studies small churches who meet in private homes, hotel rooms, and schools - by choice or when a center like the Newton Corner Worship Center isn't available - said some prefer to stay small permanently.
"There's a lot more spiritual transformation and growth in a small community, where you don't hide in a crowd," he said. The appeal of this kind of worship is that it can "lower the bar of how we do church and raise the bar of what it means to be a follower of Christ."
Erica Noonan can be reached at enoonan@globe.com. 