We want to be a church in the community, for the community. We’ve been a congregation since 1891 and have served many generations of people in the neighborhood. In order to better minister to this dynamic community, we at Doremus Congregational “Re-Started” as New Life Community Church in October of 2002. Bringing a refreshed vision and the clear preaching of the Word of God, God has blessed and transforming many lives by the gospel of Jesus Christ. Our congregation is cross-generational, cross-cultural, and cross-racial. While our teaching is in English, we worship in English, Spanish and Mandarin (Chinese) to intentionally include the heart languages of our neighbors. We care about bringing Jesus to the diversity of Bridgeport.

More than anything else, we seek to please God by being a disciple-making church. We take seriously the command to preach the gospel, to lovingly persuade people to repent and trust in Jesus. Then we lead new believers to baptism and train them up to be disciple-makers themselves. We are asking God to multiply, not maintain, His Kingdom. And we trust God to work among us as we obey His Word without compromise, and live in step with the Holy Spirit.

We also seek to please God by being a loving family. We strive first to be a safe and healing place to grow, and look to take care of those who are struggling in our congregation. Then we want to look outward, addressing the needs of the hurting and oppressed in our neighborhood. The Bread of Life outreach ministers to the homeless and poor. The Helping Hands ministry organizes doing good deeds in Jesus’ name. We know that love is a verb. We seek to live it out just as God’s love was demonstrated to us in Christ.

Finally, we seek to please God by being a reconciling church. For God’s glory, we want to bring all cultures, races and social classes to salvation in Jesus. As cultural labels become secondary to being “in Christ”, we want to bring races and social classes together as a community in mission for the gospel. Then we seek to reconcile God’s people, cooperating in gospel ministry with every other life giving church, so that the world will know we belong to Jesus. We seek to change the reputation of Bridgeport so it is no longer remembered for its prejudice, but known as a place of peace, a place of God’s shalom.