COLORADO SPRINGS — New Life Church has leased what was the city’s first African Methodist Episcopal Church building in downtown Colorado Springs and plans to begin services there on Easter, the first expansion for the city’s largest church beyond its 55-acre campus on InterQuest Parkway.
New Life will rent the former church building at 320 S. Weber St. on Sundays, said Glenn Packiam, New Life’s Sunday night campus pastor. He will serve as pastor of the downtown campus.
The building is owned by local catering company Garden of the Gods Gourmet, which acquired it for $575,000 in August, remodeled it and renamed it Carter Payne Events Center. Packiam said New Life plans to conduct services at 9 and 11 a.m. starting April 8, with a capacity of about 220 people at each service.
“Sometimes the best way to open a way to new people is to go where they are, so we are going to a new part of the city where people might not want to go all the way to our main campus,” Packiam said. “This is a low-overhead way of testing something, since we are renting the building.”
New Life, with 11,000 members, has been experimenting with a Sunday night service as a way to attract more members, and began looking at the downtown location several months ago after the events center opened, Packiam said. Although services will be offered at the events center, he said Bible studies and other New Life ministries will be scheduled in members’ homes. Packiam will keep his office at New Life’s main campus, though he plans to hire a part-time children’s ministry coordinator for the downtown campus.
Packiam said he plans to preach at both services on the same subject as New Life Senior Pastor Brady Boyd, much as he now does at New Life’s 5 p.m. Sunday service, using the same Scripture readings and an outline both develop together. He said the downtown campus also will offer a children’s ministry using the same curriculum used by New Life’s main campus and feature songs during worship, but accompaniment will be with an acoustic group rather than a rock band.
The downtown building, completed in 1897 on land donated by Colorado Springs founder Gen. William J. Palmer, was the longtime location of Payne Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Church until that church moved in 1986.
