New Life Authentic Christian Community began as New Life Baptist Church on August 21, 1988 holding its first service at Theron Rankin Baptist Association building with 107 people attending.  The Reverend Larry J. Estes was the officiating pastor.

New Life grew rapidly and additional room was needed.  On November 27, 1988, the church started holding Sunday services at the Catawba Funeral Home chapel.  The association building was still used for Sunday School and Wednesday prayer services.

The church voted on September 17, 1988 to buy 6.92 acres of land on County Home Road to be the future home of New Life Baptist Church.  With God's blessings, $42,000.00 was raised by November 13, 1988 for the purchase of this land.

Everyone was anxious to get to our new "home" so it was decided to hold a tent revival on the land June 4-8, 1989.  With the preaching came blessings from heaven in the form of rain every night and holes in the tent, but that didn't dampen the spirit of New Life.  Ground was broken on July 30, 1989 and the building was complete for the first service on May 6, 1990.

On December, 1991, it was decided that additional Sunday School rooms were needed.  A modular building was purchased and put in use in March 1992.

In the spring of 1993, the Reverend Steve Clark was called to be the new pastor of New Life.  He and his family began their service to the Lord on April 4, 1993.  Under the leadership of Pastor Steve, the New Life family continued to grow and soon more space was needed in all areas.  The congregation voted on March 22, 1998 to into into a building program.  As the funds grew, so did the excitement.  Plans were drawn up, bids were taken and a contractor was chosen.  Ground was broken on March 29, 1998 and construction on our new facilities began.  Soon the new fellowship hall was ready for use while the sanctuary remodeling was done.  On June 6, 1999, the family of New Life held its first service in the new sanctuary with the building dedication held on August 1, 1999.

The Lord was just beginning His work with New Life.  The vision for an Authentic Christian Community was being planted in the church's ministers. The vision was for multiple locations.  Early in 2000 praying and fasting brought a clear vision to spread the unique ministry of New Life with multiple locations in the Catawba Valley.  It wasn't until 2001 that the Lord brought a church planter, Dale Bentley to the church.  Dale was given the ministry of developing a new church site.

In 2002, the Lord made clear that He desired that the Mountain View community be the church's newest location.  Starting with a small core group, the church selected the Westover Shopping Center as the location for the church site.  Renovation began on the old Kerr Drug store location.  In the interim, the new group met at the Brookford Community Center.  On September 14th, the Mountain View church site began meeting in their new facilities.

On September 29th, the church celebrated it's fifteenth anniversary with Kingdom Sunday.  The special guests that day were the church's first pastor, Larry Estes and the first minister of music, Chuck Sanders.  A special Kingdom Fund was established to enable the church to build new church sites without debt in the future.  New Life marvels at the wonderful work that the Lord has done in these short fifteen years and looks forward to many more years of serving Him.
    

And today, as we write this history, the family of New Life continues to grow.  We welcome all our new families and friends and hope they will join us in serving the Lord here at New Life.