Jane Yim
The Exploring Church Spaces Project
2025: The Exploring Church Spaces (ECS) Project is a study being conducted through the Researcher in Residence (RiR) program of the Emmanuel Gospel Center (EGC). The RiR program is designed to elevate the work of committed Christian practitioners addressing key challenges in Boston by inviting them to join EGC’s research team for a season. Grounded in rigorous research standards, the RiR program conducts community-rooted research on key issues in Boston and develops useful resources for urban churches. The ECS Project explores challenges and opportunities that urban churches face in managing their spaces before highlighting sustainable and innovative property use.
The ECS Project’s research will expand to include alternative congregational models of using church space. Experiential learning field trips will be organized for leaders to foster connection and spark innovation. We also will engage stakeholders in Boston’s real estate ecosystem (including developers, architects, city planners, government officials, and church leaders) to create a systems map and convene discussions on collaborative strategies that address real estate pressures in the region while benefiting congregations. Lastly, we will synthesize the findings, develop practical written resources, and disseminate our findings broadly.
By fostering sustainable church property use, enhancing missional impact, and addressing critical challenges, the ECS Project exemplifies EGC’s commitment to mission-driven, community-centered transformational work.
The Next Step in Reimagining Church Space: A Learning Community for Urban Leaders in the City
2025-26: The Emmanuel Gospel Center (EGC) is gathering an affinity group of church leaders, practitioners, and stakeholders who support congregations in Boston. This group will explore how churches are currently stewarding their spaces and what factors help or hinder their ability to innovate church space use. Participants will share experiences from their own contexts, identify patterns they are observing across the city, and consider what kinds of support congregations need to navigate these challenges more effectively. Projected outcomes will be defined as increased clarity and vocational discernment among participants about the factors shaping church space use in Boston. They will also have a better understanding of what congregations may need at both the neighborhood and citywide levels and identify resources that might help churches move forward in new and different ways.
Passing the Mantle: A Shared Learning Project on Leadership Succession and Intergenerational Ministry
2025-26: Emmanuel Gospel Center’s applied research team will launch a year-long project engaging pastors, ministry staff, lay leaders, and emerging leaders around complex and often unspoken realities of leadership transition. This project builds on EGC’s decades of relationship-building and its recent experience with leadership change. In conversations with senior leaders across the city over the past three years, a clear theme has surfaced: many longtime pastors expect to retire within the next decade, while fewer young leaders are available to follow them. Older leaders carry the responsibility of preparing their congregations for change, while emerging leaders often navigate questions about readiness, cultural expectations, and belonging. In multicultural settings, these dynamics become even more delicate and call for low-pressure, trusted spaces for reflection.
Jane Yim is the Director of Applied Research at the Emmanuel Gospel Center. Her passion is to do community-based participatory research that is with others and not about them. Her research interests include faith, congregational flourishing, and community well-being. She is also a bivocational English congregation minister at a Korean American church in Greater Boston.
Congregational and Community grants provide support for urban pastors, churches, faith-based community organizations, and theological institutions to share resources, ideas, and practices for life-giving ministry in cities across North America. Typically, we invite those who have not previously had access to resources or grant funding. This inaugural cohort of grantees included organizations working with children and youth, capacity building for a community. ministry, support for community healthcare, and research on congregational responses to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Affinity Working Group initiative aims to provide time and space for HUB learning network members to engage in focused ways with others interested in a similar topic and questions around ministry in the city. We anticipate working group members to explore, deepen, and assess their own vocation, urban context, and church life; gain clarity about vital questions and issues in a particular focus area (eg. youth, arts, etc), and learn from group members’ lived experiences and other sources of knowledge and wisdom.
Congregations and Communities grants provide support for urban pastors, churches, faith-based community organizations, and theological institutions to share resources, ideas, and practices for life-giving ministry in cities across North America. Typically, we invite those who have not previously had access to resources or grant funding.
