New Creation UMC, Portsmouth District

Pastor Larry Adams leads a "Blessing of the Animals."

New Creation is a combination of two Portsmouth District congregations, the established Aldersgate UMC and the new church start Grace Harbor. Combining the two into New Creation Church has added excitement and vision to both congregations.

"Aldersgate needed to avoid hitting that maturation plateau and eventual decline that established churches eventually reach," says lead pastor Larry Adams, "and capture the energy and evangelistic outlook of a new congregation as part of our own DNA. A typical multi-site church seeks to ‘clone’ a mother church in a new location, but that was not our purpose. New Creation seeks to offer as many styles and formats of worship — and as many different cultures and vocabularies — that we can, so that we don’t have just one style of ‘doing’ church."

Both congregations have a strong sense of mission, regularly sending work teams to Jamaica, Mexico and the Mississippi Gulf Coast. Aldersgate brings a strong tradition of youth ministry and Christian education, while Grace Harbor has more people participating in small groups than attending worship.

New Creation is strong in missions, including sending this team to the Gulf Coast last year to repair Katrina-damaged homes.

New Creation is also a satellite site for the Leadership Development Institute and opens its facilities for trainings for churches throughout southeastern Virginia.

New Creation may eventually include more sites that look different from either of the present two. Greg West, the pastor at Grace Harbor campus, is bilingual, so the hope is to eventually start a Hispanic ministry.

Adams hopes the work being done at New Creation can serve as a model for the Virginia Conference and beyond. "I feel like this model is one avenue of renewal for the entire denomination," he said. "[John] Wesley’s idea was that the more preaching points you have, the more infiltration the community has with hearing the gospel."