The following is a Christian Work Project sponsored in part by a grant from the Boston Baptist Social Union.
A major ministry of the First Baptist Church of Lynn has been to make available to ethnic churches a place to hold services. This allows churches to minister to their community located in Lynn. Communites that we as an English speaking church are unable to reach. At present we are sharing our church facility with Spanish, Haitian, Brazilian, and Karen speaking churches. The Karen church serving the Karen Refugees [from Myanmar or Burma] that are coming to Lynn began worship in our church back in August of 2007
We have provided direct family assistance, camping for Karen children at Grotonwood, and have added Re. Lin Coin, the pastor of the Karen church to our staff. Pastor Coin enables us to better minister to the Karen community by leading their worship services, coordinating our assistance program which insures their needs are met, by participating and providing music in the English speaking services to name a few.
We will be adding a translator from the Karen community to our staff with a small stipend and the appropriate hardware to provide non-intrusive translation either into Karen or or English
This past year our ministry served over 75 Karen refugees in the Lynn area. The cultural group is Burmese/Karen and the age group ranges from 1 to 65+. We anticipate have another 25 ot 35 new Karen people in the next year.