A new home for New Hope Church

The new year has brought a new home for Aurora’s fledgling New Hope Community Church. With the recent sale of the Ivy event center to Brandi Flynn (See the article on last week’s ANR Business Page), the church plant led by Pastor Mike Brill that had been meeting there since November needed to find a new place to meet on Sunday mornings. That need was met when Brill contacted the owners of the former Assembly of God Church at the corner of 7th and L streets. 
Brill said the owners are planning to start a new business in the building but even then won’t need it on Sundays and evenings, so New Hope arranged to rent the building for its 10 a.m. Sunday worship services. The facility will also be used on Sunday nights through the month of March for a special Bible prophecy series from 6 to 7:30 p.m. Brill said he usually conducts the interactive study twice a year and it generally sees a good turnout from the community with members of other churches joining in. A special service is also in the planning for 6 p.m. on Good Friday, April 3. 
Asked how the new church is doing in its first four months, Brill said attendance has been averaging between 20 and 30 for Sunday morning services and individuals and other churches in the area have been extremely generous in providing for needs the congregation has had.
For instance, a church in Henderson recently replaced its sound system and donated its old sound board to New Hope. 
“I put out a plea for chairs a while back and within an hour 80 chairs had been offered,” Brill said. 
Brill said financial help has also come from Converge Heartland, the group of Baptist churches in six Midwestern states with which the congregation is affiliated. 
“We were featured in the district’s monthly newsletter this month as one of three new church plants in the district,” he said. 
Brill said the new building is actually better suited to the congregation’s needs than the Ivy. 
“We’re encouraged at this point,” Brill said. “The Lord is supplying what we need.”
Having mapped out the surrounding neighborhood in a grid pattern, Brill said members of the congregation are planning to go door to door in the coming weeks to invite unchurched people to visit the church. 
“We’re concentrated on the immediate neighborhood and are not interested in pulling people out of other churches,” Brill said, noting that in a town of 5,000 he knows there must be many people who don’t now attend any church.