God had given me and my wife, Sarah, missionary hearts to serve the cause of Jesus in hard places. Even still, the specific place he chose to call us was a surprise.
Salem, Massachusetts, is a small city of 45,000 people and is known around the world because of the 1692 Salem Witch Trials, when 19 people were hanged for being accused of witchcraft. Today, ironically, it is known as a place of pilgrimage for modern-day witches and, more broadly, for anyone who loves Halloween. Over one million visitors flock to this 400-year-old seaside city each October, which generates a large percentage of the city’s annual revenue.1
Outside of commercialized Halloween, Salem is home year-round to estimates of as many as 8,000 people involved in modern-day Wicca, Witchcraft, New Age, and Pagan traditions of many kinds. It is also home to the global headquarters of The Satanic Temple.2 It is a city marked by ongoing spiritual intensity, both visible and invisible, and you can feel a tangible weightiness as soon as you enter the city.
Power Encounters
In the months leading up to our initial move to Salem, we experienced a direct and personal power encounter with a demonic presence that threatened our literal territorial entrance into the city. During our first few months ministering in the city, we had multiple visitors enter our church building exhibiting antagonistic spiritual motives. This involved individuals lying prostrate on the floor and reciting indiscernible ritualistic incantations during our worship services, and individuals clearly and discernibly pronouncing curses on our church from outside the building. We have also had ritualistic markings left on our church doors and signs.
the presence of the living God was shining forth and bringing light into the dark corners of Salem.
While these are fear tactics and examples of direct opposition from the evil one, as Christians, we can initiate power encounters as well. When we first accepted the call to Salem, a faithful elder pastor encouraged us with the words of 1 John 4:4, ‘He who is in you is greater than he who is in the world.’ God has been faithful to lead us in humble, yet powerful, prayer in the darkness. Over time, he has mobilized our church to quiet prayer walks within The Satanic Temple and outside ‘The Salem Witches Magic Circle’ ceremony at sundown on Halloween in the public park. While likely unbeknownst to others at those times, the presence of the living God was shining forth and bringing light into the dark corners of Salem.
Fearing the Gospel
We have begun to recognize that it is not we as Christians who are to be afraid of dark places, but rather, more truly, it is the strongholds of darkness that are legitimately terrified of the power of Jesus in their midst. Therefore, it has been important for us to remember that while Salem is a unique place, it is not unprecedented.
The ancient city of Ephesus, for instance, was a city also known for its spiritual intensity. Acts 19 describes a powerful encounter between the true God whom Paul was preaching of and the goddess of the Ephesians, Artemis. The fear from the city was that Paul’s God would also bring the city’s lucrative idol-crafting business into ‘disrepute’ and their goddess ‘may be counted as nothing’ (v27). The gospel, they feared, would bring about not just spiritual competition, but economic disaster.
The same is true in Salem as well. As the darkness (and the commercialism and monetization of witchcraft) is confronted with the beautiful truths of the gospel of Jesus, the presence of witchcraft, the occult, and pagan communities is not the only thing at risk; so too is the city’s economy. Therefore, the fear that causes pushback to the gospel can be significant.
we do not fight back against people, but against darkness itself.
In this moment, Christians in hard places do well to remember the apostle Paul’s reminder to those same Christians in Ephesus, when he famously wrote, ‘We do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places’ (Eph 6:12). Therefore, we do not fight back against people, but against darkness itself.
This requires Christians in places like Salem to have an altogether different posture and be a unique presence.
A Gentle and Patient Posture
The type of posture we have learned to embrace is one of gentleness and patience. Evagrius the Solitary, a fourth-century Christian, is attributed to having said, ‘There is scarcely any other virtue which the demons fear as much as gentleness.’3 We are seeing this in Salem. It requires us to share Jesus and build relationships in quiet ways. This does not mean shrinking in courage, but rather being strong in humility and confident in God’s invisible work through us.
The complementary posture to gentleness is patience. Paul encouraged Timothy (also in Ephesus) to preach and teach, but to do so ‘with complete patience’ (2 Tim 4:2).
Battleground places need faithful and persevering churches who are committed to ministering at God’s pace and timing.
Places like Salem require more than ‘flash in the pan’ street evangelism or just seasonal ministries (though those can still be effective in leading to rapid conversions). Battleground places need faithful and persevering churches who are committed to ministering at God’s pace and timing. This may not be the most dynamic type of ministry in appearance, but is effective in building healthy disciples of Jesus for the next generation and is reflective of the early church in the Roman Empire.4
The Church We are Becoming
A phrase we have learned to embrace is ‘faithful presence’.5 One way our church is doing this is by being faithfully present on Halloween night.
Our church is located in the heart of a busy, dense, and diverse neighborhood. For many years, because of logistical excuses or theological reasons, our church was a non-presence on Halloween night. Picture literally thousands of people walking by a dark church building. But through a renewed commitment to being a gentle, patient, faithful presence, now, on October 31, every light inside and outside the church is turned on, and dozens of volunteers are outside greeting adults and children with warm smiles, handing out candy and hot apple cider, and even praying with people. It is the gospel of Jesus that teaches us to be for the people of our cities, and not simply against certain festivals or customs.6
Over time, we have come to value three words in particular and posted them on our outside sidewalk sign. They are an invitation for secular and spiritual people alike. The words are curiosity, community, and surprise. In our city of spiritual diversity and intensity, we have found that inviting people to come with their spiritual curiosity into an authentic, loving community leads to a genuinely surprising encounter with Jesus. As Jesus himself promised, ‘Seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened’ (Matt 7:7-8).
The Harvest is Plentiful
As we pondered and counted the cost of our initial call to Salem, God continually placed before us the words of Jesus, ‘The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few. . .’ (Luke 10:2). How could we say no to God if there was a need for workers? But the Lord also showed us that we were not entering into this spiritual battleground alone. The work of the gospel in Salem had begun long before us. What pushed us over the edge to say our ultimate yes to God was the friendship of a dozen or so churches that already existed in the greater North Shore of the Boston region.7 This group of diverse churches, from all different denominations and cultures, showed us what God was already at work doing in the region. It also showed us that we did not have to be pioneers in Salem. Jesus and others had gone this way before.
So we said yes to Jesus. We then almost immediately began praying the second part of Luke 10:2, ‘Therefore, pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.’ We have seen the answer to prayer, as now multiple new church plants are underway in Salem.
‘The future is as bright as the promises of God!’
In 1812, 120 years after the Salem Witch Trials, another momentous occasion took place in Salem. Six missionaries were called, commissioned, and sent out for foreign missions from Salem’s harbor, marking a renewed missionary movement from the Americas to the world.8 One of those six, Adoniram Judson, when later imprisoned in his own spiritual battleground context in Burma, responded to the question asked him, ‘What do you think of the future of Christianity in our country now?’ Judson, famously, responded, saying, ‘The future is as bright as the promises of God!’9
We have this same confidence. The land of Halloween cannot thwart God’s unstoppable plan of redemption and the building of his kingdom. We’re humbled to be here for a front-row seat.
Endnotes
- cbsnews.com/boston/news/salem-october-halloween-record-breaking-visitors
- salem.org/which-witch/the-journey-from-1692-to-salems-modern-witch-community/ thesatanictemple.com/
- Evagrius Ponticus, The Praktikos and Chapters on Prayer, trans. John Eudes Bamberger (Cistercian Publications:1970), §§6, 15. 4
- See Alan Kreider. The Patient Ferment of the Early Church: The Improbable Rise of Christianity in the Roman Empire. (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2016).
- James Davison Hunter. To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy, and Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 241–253.
- Matthew 9:36 is just one example: ‘When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.’
- North Shore Gospel Partnership. https://www.nsgospelpartnership.org/
- Adoniram and Ann Hasseltine Judson, Samuel and Harriet Newell, Samuel Nott Jr., and Gordon Hall. They were commissioned in Salem’s Tabernacle Church and sailed from Salem Harbor on February 19, 1812, aboard the brig Caravan as part of the first group of missionaries sent from America to foreign lands.
- Courtney Anderson. To the Golden Shore: The Life of Adoniram Judson. (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1956), p. 486.