Our Story
New Day Church is built around a vision of connecting people with God, crossing boundaries of race, class, sexual orientation and age; and confronting social injustice. Doug Cunningham, a United Methodist minister, first began conversations with New York Annual Conference officials in early 2007 about starting this church. Lisa Cunningham, 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 Beckford, a recent graduate of Drew Theological Seminary, also felt called to this justice and boundary crossing ministry, as did Jorge Lockward, the director of Global Praise for the United Methodist General Board of Global Ministries.
The four of us formed a Leadership Team which began meeting regularly through the summer of 2008. 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.” This summer we are focusing worship around “Faith Questions” such as “What is my purpose?” “Why do bad things happen to good people?” and “How can I have more faith.” We worship each Sunday at 11:00 a.m. See the Worship page for details.
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