| New Life Church | |
|---|---|
 The church grounds with "The Tent" in the foreground and the mountains in the background | |
 | |
| Location | Colorado Springs, Colorado |
| Country | United States |
| Denomination | Nondenominational |
| Weekly attendance | 15,000 |
| Website | www |
| History | |
| Founded | 1984 |
| Clergy | |
| Senior pastor(s) | Brady Boyd |
New Life Church is a charismatic evangelical non-denominational multi-site megachurch based in Colorado Springs, Colorado, United States.
New Life Church was founded in 1984 by Ted Haggard. [1] The church started under his leadership as an independent church meeting in his home. From these origins, the church grew through a succession of larger meeting spaces including strip mall office space and other non-traditional church locations.
The initial sanctuary on the campus, now referred to as the "theater", seats 2,000 and was dedicated in 1990. [2] It is used primarily for the New Life Friday Night congregation and New Life Kids on Sunday mornings.
The New Life campus is also home to the World Prayer Center, which opened in 1998. The World Prayer Team organization founded global internet-based prayer efforts among its participants out of this building. [3] The World Prayer Team is under the direction of Modern Day Missions. The building hosts prayer rooms.
The Tent which was dedicated in 2003 and is used for various ministry gatherings including the Junior High Sunday Service. [4]
The current main sanctuary (referred to as the Living Room) seats 8,000 and was dedicated in 2005. [5]
In August 2007, Brady Boyd became senior pastor. [6]
According to a church census released in 2023, it claimed a weekly attendance of 15,000 people and eight campuses throughout the Colorado Springs area. [7]
On November 2, 2006, Haggard was accused of paying a male escort for sex for three years and of also using methamphetamine. [8] Later the same day, Haggard voluntarily stepped down as pastor so "the overseer process can be allowed to proceed with integrity", and that he would be seeking "spiritual advice and guidance". [8] Two days later, New Life Church's Board of Overseers announced that they had decided to permanently dismiss Haggard from his role. [9]
In January 2009, new allegations emerged that Haggard, while pastor at New Life, had an inappropriate relationship with a former attendee. [10] Haggard's successor, Brady Boyd, said the church reached a six-figure settlement with the man, who was in his early 20s at the time. [11] According to a News Channel 13 report, the man said the contact was "not consensual". [11]
On December 9, 2007, Matthew Murray, age 24, opened fire in the New Life Church, striking five people and killing two, sisters Rachel and Stephanie Works; their father David Works was one of the individuals injured. Jeanne Assam, a church security volunteer, shot and wounded the gunman who then killed himself. [12] Several hours prior, the same gunman opened fire at a Youth With A Mission training center in Arvada, Colorado, striking four people and killing two.[ citation needed ] He was formerly a missionary-in-training with Youth With A Mission and was from a devout Christian family. [13] Police found a letter from the shooter addressed "To God". [14]
Since its beginnings, the church has engaged in spiritual mapping, in which areas believed to be spiritually controlled by territorial spirits (demons) are plotted out using maps and prayed against, preferably on-location, through spiritual warfare. In the mid-1990s, church members traveled to Mali, where they anointed villages to stop demonic forces. The following year, the church also mapped Colorado Springs and used a "24/7 prayer shield" in order to protect the city from demonic invasion. Dutch missionary René Holvast and American radio journalist Alix Spiegel, observing this in Mali and Colorado, respectively, found themselves discovering what Holvast termed a "new paradigm" in Christian missions. Both the newly-growing concepts of spiritual mapping and strategic spiritual warfare were key parts of C. Peter Wagner's New Apostolic Reformation teachings. Haggard and the church worked closely with Wagner to support him, as well as Luis Bush (known for coining the term 10/40 Window ). Holvast would later go on to write his dissertation on the topic and Spiegel covered it in a radio episode. The church "and the adjacent World Prayer Center that was dedicated in 1998 were, for roughly a decade, the epicenter of an ongoing, radical redefinition of Christianity." [15] [16] [3]
New Life Church is well known for its prolific songwriters (Ross Parsley, Jon Egan, Glenn Packiam, Jared Anderson, Cory Asbury, Pete Sanchez) and worship leaders, having released over a dozen albums (Over It All, My Savior Lives, Counting On God, You Hold It All, Strong God, Soak) and hundreds of songs (I Am Free, Great I Am, My Savior Lives, Here In Your Presence) through New Life Worship and Desperation Band. [17]
New Life Worship is under the direction of Eddie Hoagland, while Jon Egan leads most Sundays at New Life North.
New Life Church, along with Focus on the Family, established Colorado Springs as a conservative evangelical center in the 1990s. [18] In 2005, Jeff Sharlet claimed that while New Life is "by no means the largest megachurch ... [it] holds more sway over the political direction of evangelicalism" than any other church in America. [5]
Ted Haggard and other members of the church were featured on a 1997 episode of the PRI radio program This American Life , [19] as well as the documentaries Jesus Camp , Friends of God , Constantine's Sword , The Root of All Evil? , and HBO's The Trials of Ted Haggard .
Evangelicalism, also called evangelical Christianity or evangelical Protestantism, is a worldwide interdenominational movement within Protestant Christianity that puts primary emphasis on evangelization. The word evangelic comes from the Greek word for 'good news'. The Gospel story of the salvation from sin is considered "the good news". The process of personal conversion involves complete surrender to Jesus Christ. The conversion process is authoritatively guided by the Bible, the God in Christianity's revelation to humanity. Critics of the conceptualization of evangelicalism argue that it is too broad, too diverse, or too ill-defined to be adequately seen as a movement or a single movement.
Pentecostalism or classical Pentecostalism is a Protestant Charismatic Christian movement that emphasizes direct personal experience of God through baptism with the Holy Spirit. The term Pentecostal is derived from Pentecost, an event that commemorates the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the Apostles and other followers of Jesus Christ while they were in Jerusalem celebrating the Feast of Weeks, as described in the Acts of the Apostles.
The Association of Vineyard Churches, also known as the Vineyard Movement, is an international neocharismatic evangelical Christian association of churches.
A megachurch is a church with a very large membership that also offers a variety of educational and social activities. Most megachurches are Protestant, and particularly Evangelical, although the word denotes a type of organization, not a denomination. The Hartford Institute for Religion Research defines a megachurch as any Protestant Christian church that draws 2,000 or more people in a weekend.
TheRedeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG) is a holiness pentecostal megachurch and denomination headquartered in Ebute Metta, Lagos, Nigeria. With presence in 197 countries and territories of the world and more than 5 million members in Nigeria alone, it is one of the biggest church denominations in the world with over 9 million members worldwide.
Richard James Foster is a Christian theologian and author in the Quaker tradition. His writings speak to a broad Christian audience. Born in 1942 in New Mexico, Foster spent the majority of his childhood growing up in Southern California. Foster has been a professor at Friends University and pastor of Evangelical Friends churches. Foster resides in Denver, Colorado. He earned his undergraduate degree at George Fox University in Oregon and his Doctor of Pastoral Theology at Fuller Theological Seminary, and received an honorary doctorate from Houghton College.
Ted Arthur Haggard is an American Methodist pastor. Haggard is the founder and former pastor of New Life Church in Colorado Springs, Colorado, and is a founder of the Association of Life-Giving Churches. He served as president of the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) from 2003 until November 2006.
Michael Leroy Bickle is a former American evangelical leader and founder of the International House of Prayer (IHOPKC). Once the leader of IHOPKC, Bickle oversaw several ministries and a Bible school until his dismissal in December 2023 after confessing to sexual misconduct. Bickle has also been accused of child sexual abuse.
The Sinner's prayer is an Christian evangelical term referring to any prayer of repentance, prayed by individuals who feel sin in their lives and have the desire to form or renew a personal relationship. This prayer is not mandatory but, for some, functions as a way to communicate with and understand their relationship with God through Jesus Christ. It is a popular prayer in evangelical circles. While some Christians see reciting the Sinner's prayer as the moment defining one's salvation, others see it as a beginning step of one's lifelong faith journey.
Spiritual formation may refer either to the process and practices by which a person may progress in one's spiritual or religious life or to a movement in Protestant Christianity that emphasizes these processes and practices. The processes may include, but are not limited to,
Embassy of the Blessed Kingdom of God for All Nations is an Evangelical Christian Charismatic megachurch, denomination, and parachurch organization headquartered in Kyiv, Ukraine. The senior pastor is Sunday Adelaja.
Paula Michelle White-Cain is an American televangelist, apostolic leader in the Independent Charismatic movement, and a proponent of prosperity theology.
Douglas Evans Coe was an American evangelist who served as the associate director of the Fellowship Foundation, a religious and political organization known for hosting the annual National Prayer Breakfast. Coe has been referred to as the "stealth Billy Graham". In 2005, Coe was named one of the 25 most-influential evangelicals in the United States by Time. Coe was an ordained ruling elder and lay minister in the Presbyterian Church (USA).
Spiritual mapping refers to the belief among some Christians that specific demons, known as territorial spirits, are associated with specific locations and can be conquered through strategic spiritual warfare by plotting out geographical areas and their perceived problems in order to pray on-site. Spiritual mapping is part of the first of three steps in spiritual warfare, defined by sociologists Brad Christerson and Richard Flory as research, prophecy, and intercession. Religious studies scholar Sean McCloud has referred to spiritual mapping as a "Third Wave [Charismatic] version of geomancy that discerns where and why demons control spaces and places, ranging from houses and neighborhoods to entire countries."
Gayle M. Haggard is an author, speaker and the wife of American evangelical preacher Ted Haggard.
Bethel Church is an American non-denominational neo-charismatic megachurch in Redding, California, with over 11,000 members. The church was established in 1952, and is currently led by Bill Johnson. Bethel has its own music labels, Bethel Music and Jesus Culture ministries, which have gained popularity for contemporary worship music. The church runs the Bethel School of Supernatural Ministry with over 2,000 students annually.
The Salem Baptist Church is a Baptist megachurch located at 752 E 114th Street in the Pullman neighborhood of Chicago, Illinois, United States. The senior pastor is Charlie Dates.
Charles Peter Wagner was an American missionary, writer, teacher and founder of several Independent Charismatic Christian organizations. He is known for leading and building the New Apostolic Reformation, a network in the Apostolic-Prophetic movement. In his earlier years, Wagner was known as a key leader of the Church Growth Movement and later for his writings on spiritual warfare.
Evangelical theology is the teaching and doctrine that relates to spiritual matters in evangelical Christianity and a Christian theology. The main points concern the place of the Bible, the Trinity, worship, salvation, sanctification, charity, evangelism and the end of time.
Protestant liturgy or Evangelical liturgy is a pattern for worship used by a Protestant congregation or denomination on a regular basis. The term liturgy comes from Greek and means "public work". Liturgy is especially important in the Historical Protestant churches, both mainline and evangelical, while Baptist, Pentecostal, and nondenominational churches tend to be very flexible and in some cases have no liturgy at all. It often but not exclusively occurs on Sunday.
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Other | |
