ABC from A to Z

In 1999, a small group of Christians from a hodgepodge of different backgrounds gathered together at a home in Needham on a street called High Rock. Despite their differences, they shared a common vision that God could actually do something new through them in Greater Boston.

Eventually, the group started to grow and began meeting in Cambridge, eventually choosing the name Highrock and calling themselves a church. They diversified in ethnicity and joined the Covenant Church, a denomination based in Chicago. Pretty soon, the congregation moved to Arlington and got deeply invested in what they called “radically local” ministry - getting to know their actual neighbors and investing in the town of Arlington. They wanted to love their actual neighbors as Christ does.

In 2008, Highrock sent half their members to Brookline to start a new church there. And in 2012, Highrock had twins, launching two new independent churches that would be called Highrock, but could live out that same radically local DNA in new cities: one church plant launched in Quincy and the other one was our church, Highrock North Shore.

How we came to be Highrock North Shore was kind of the perfect storm.

In March of 2011 Pastor Aaron Engler, who was serving as the Young Adults pastor at Highrock Arlington at the time, met with the senior pastor, Dave Swaim, for his annual review. During the course of that conversation, the two pastors started to dream about what it would be like to plant a church on the North Shore.

The following Sunday, Pastor Dave preached a sermon about loving the people in our actual communities. He challenged Highrockers to either move to Arlington or if they couldn’t, to gather a group of people in their area and consider planting a church where they lived.

One Highrocker living on the North Shore started to look around at the people next to him in the pews. He realized a bunch of Highrockers were already commuting from the North Shore. Quite a crew, in fact. And he approached Dave after the service to suggest planting there.

Within a few days, Highrock North Shore had a pastor, a place, and a people...a people that grew. At our church, we believe that a Christian will drive any distance to be part of a church community that they love. But our non-Christian neighbors likely won’t. So if we want to love as Christ did, to really show genuine, authentic community to people who don’t know him yet, we have to move into their neighborhood.

This kind of community is contagious. On Maundy Thursday in 2011, 11 North Shore Highrockers gathered together for dinner in the Lees’ home. The following Maundy Thursday in 2012, there were 60.

After those first conversations, we started meeting together for dinner and a Bible Study just like those first Highrockers on High Rock street, to dream and plan and pray. We started holding Sunday services in the Salem YMCA, then half a year later started renting space from the First Universalist Society in Salem and a few years later we moved to the First Baptist Church.

In 2019, we began conversations with Dane Street Congregational Church, a 220 year old congregation in Beverly. They had led vital ministries on the North Shore for over two centuries, including one of the country’s first Sunday Schools, ministries to those struggling with food insecurity all the way back to the early 1800s, and sending out missionaries to India.

On February 9, 2020, Partners at both congregations nearly unanimously voted to merge, and on March 8, 2020, Highrock North Shore “adopted” Dane Street Congregational Church, including their history, building, and congregation. At that point, we began the process of transferring assets and formally sunsetting Dane Street Congregational Church.

That week, shelter-in-place guidelines from the COVID-19 pandemic hit Massachusetts, and after that first “adoption Sunday” gathering together as one church, we were forced to meet virtually for a year and a half. We began meeting in person again in May of 2021, and at that point, we started the process of integrating the congregations together, and expanding our ministry to include both Beverly and Salem.

In February, 2022, the Highrock Network of Churches decided to dissolve their formal Partnership (read more about that decision here). In light of that decision, the Highrock congregations in Acton, Brookline, Haverhill, Malden, North Shore, and Quincy, which already had independent finances and leadership, discerned a new name to reflect their unique calling and story.

Through congregational and pastoral discernment, we chose the name Anchor Bay Church to reflect our grounding in God’s word and history as a centuries old congregation (Anchor), while embracing the fluidity and movement of a youthful congregation (Bay). We are rooted and dynamic, young and old, inward and outward, deep and wide. We are a yes, and church.

Over the past decade and beyond, God has used us to show each other his love in tangible and intangible ways. We’ve laughed together. We’ve cried together. We’ve told stories of God’s grace.

We’ve brought each other meals when we’ve had new babies. We’ve taken weekend trips together, thrown parties for one another, carried each others' moving boxes, gone to each others’ art shows and soccer games and science fairs.

Over the past few years, we’ve stood by each other as parents, wives, husbands, and babies have been in the hospital. We’ve faced death and depression and doubt together. We’ve witnessed new life together. We’ve supported each other through recovery and miscarriages. We’ve toasted each other with champagne to celebrate new jobs and new grandkids and new degrees. We’ve fought together and forgiven each other. We've done what we could to serve the North Shore in the name of Christ.

Like those first Highrockers who gathered on High Rock Street, we come from a variety of different backgrounds. Our stories are different and so are our gifts.

We are young and old and in-between, and some of us haven’t been born yet. We are Asian, Caucasian, German, Latina, Latino, and from Oklahoma. We are empty nesters and newlyweds, professors and students, scientists and singers, doctors and young professionals, bartenders and baristas, creative types and the not-so-much. We are social conservatives and social progressives, social activists and social workers, full-time parents and full-time kids. We are male and female, married, single, divorced, and it’s complicated.

Some of us have loved Jesus for a long time and some of us are just getting to know him. But at the end of the day, we are drawn together by the love of Christ, the need for his grace, and compelled to live his mission in the world.

That’s our story. Welcome aboard.