New Beginning Fellowship Assembly of God

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(This congregation moved to nearby Merrimack NH a couple years ago, and is now called, New in Christ Bible Church. It also changed its denomination from Assemblies of God to Southern Baptist Convention.)

Does this Pastor favor his own company business more than New Beginning Fellowship? I often wondered about this.

The church's name was changed from Sheepfold Fellowship more than a decade ago, yet even with having its sermons aired on local cable TV and YouTube for the past couple years, it probably has less members now than it did when it was still called, Sheepfold. I realize this church is not exactly located in the best neighborhood in Nashua, but for about the past dozen years, NBF has seemed to be still in the "planting" stage with no hope for any growth in sight.

I'm also well aware that, according to national Gallup polls over the past several years, New Hampshire has long-time been deemed to be one of the Least Religious states in the country.

The NBF Pastor doesn't respond well to suggestions and constructive criticism -- especially when a good portion of the congregation has either formerly worked for him, or currently works for his company business, which just happens to be immediately adjacent to the church itself.

I left NBF about eight months ago because I felt it was a stagnant congregation with just over a dozen members, and it seemed like any new visitors were leaving NBF as if there was a big revolving door in front of the church. I sort of viewed the church's situation like Paula Abdul's famous song, "One Step Forward and Two Steps Back". I wouldn't have minded if NBF had, at least, tried some innovative methods to try to grow its membership (i.e. obtain a temporary college Intern, retain a consultant trouble-shooter, etc.) and still remained a small congregation, but the Pastor just seemed complacent on keeping the numbers low.

What made me especially upset was when a female visitor asked an irrelevant question at a Wednesday night Bible study last year, and the Pastor automatically deviated from our scheduled topic just to accommodate this woman for the next two weeks. And, oh yeah, this woman quoted ZERO Bible scriptures to substantiate her argument and, within a couple weeks, chose no longer to attend NBF. I'm not suggesting there was anything immoral or unethical about the whole "bizarre" episode with that woman except that the Pastor NEVER displayed the same type of reaction or body language with me or most other men regarding similar type Bible-related questions.

It seemed like every other month, the Pastor would announce that NBF was about three weeks away from closing its doors due to "lack of financial support". As the old cliche goes, the definition of "insanity" is doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting a different result.

The Pastor's strategy to move NBF forward is: pray about it, sit on our butts, and then simply wait for God to add more members to the congregation. Needless to say, I DEFINITELY DO NOT believe that the Holy Spirit ever gave the Pastor this instruction for increasing the congregation. Before I left, NBF seemed more like a very small social clique (of mostly his employees and their relatives) than any semblance of a growing, thriving church.
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