Our Story
August 11, 2009 | Posted by Doug
At New Day Church we always have a time for conversations during worship. We tried it at our first worship service and the energy was so vibrant that we made it a regular feature. When Jorman first started coming to New Day, he said, “Those tables are gonna keep me coming back.” We get to know each other around the tables and it’s great to be able to have a meaningful conversation about the scripture and the theme for the day.
The principles which unites us at New Day Church are:
1) connecting with God and following Jesus in a relationship that transforms lives,
2) crossing boundaries of race, class, sexual orientation and age to transform community; and .
3) confronting social injustice with the compassion and abundance of God to transform society.
Doug Cunningham, Sheila Beckford, Jorge Lockward, and Lisa Cunningham formed a leadership team which began meeting regularly through the summer of 2008. Doug, a United Methodist minister, was appointed to this ministry by Bishop Jeremiah Park of the New York Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church. Lisa, who was just graduating from college and preparing to join the New York City Teaching Fellows, committed herself to helping lead this new ministry. Sheila, a recent graduate of Drew Theological Seminary, also felt called to this justice and boundary crossing ministry, as did Jorge, who is the director of Global Praise for the United Methodist General Board of Global Ministries.
We led New Day Church’s first public worship service on October 19, 2008 at the Fox Funeral Home on Grand Concourse at 201st Street with 37 people present. The new congregation continued to worship monthly moving to the Bronx High School of Science in November.
On March 15, 2009 New Day United Methodist Church began weekly worship with 150 people joining in the grand opening celebration. Following Easter, we launched “Six Weeks of Spiritual Growth” from April 19-May 24, 2009, Our next series was “God’s Abundance.” The church moved to Lehman college during the summer of 2009 and then to the Academy of Mt. St. Ursula beginning in September, 2009. We worship there each Sunday at 11:00 a.m. See the Worship page for details.