New Hope church celebrates 190 years in the community

Alabama was still a brand new state — mostly occupied by forest and farmland — when New Hope Cumberland Presbyterian Church started as a small prayer meeting in 1828.

“This was the frontier. This church is just 10 years younger than the state of Alabama,” Senior Pastor Donny Acton said.

For 190 years, New Hope has been part of the fabric of the north Shelby County community, and Acton said reaching this historic milestone is both a gift from God and a direct result of the work of its congregation.

“It’s shown the faithfulness of God, but it’s also shown the faithfulness of the people of God,” said Acton, who has been pastor at the church since 1995.

New Hope started with a group of men who attended a religious camp meeting and came away “convicted of their sins” and prepared to start a prayer meeting, according to the church’s history records. The first meeting was held only about half a mile away from the current church home at 5521 Double Oak Lane.

New Hope didn’t officially organize as a church until March 1, 1829, under the leadership of the Rev. John Williams and a small group of charter members. It has had a number of homes over the decades, from small log cabins to holding services at the property where Indian Springs School now sits.

“It’s been a continuous church somewhere in this valley since March 1, 1829,” Acton said.

According to church records, New Hope has weathered everything from fires and floods to the trials of the Civil War and splits within the Presbyterian denomination.

The church currently has about 130 attendees on an average Sunday, and Acton said its peak was around 250 members. If it ever got larger than that, he said he’d prefer to start a new church rather than keep growing New Hope. Having a small church creates a close community and accountability he believes are essential for its congregation.

“There’s a lot of ministry that happens in small churches,” Acton said.

New Hope moved into its current building around 2006, Acton said. It was a unique building process, he said, because the church felt called to construct its new home without any debt or loans. Through congregation donations and the sale of its former property — right across the street — they made it happen.

“When we came to this building, we came debt-free, and that was a feat of the Lord,” Acton said.

Acton said New Hope’s main purpose can be seen in its community outreach, not in its congregation numbers. Over the years, New Hope has had “a lot of ministers raised up out of this place” to go preach in other churches. It also opens its doors to nonprofits needing a meeting space throughout the week.

“Our ministry is to the community. It’s not to this building,” he said.

Acton and his wife, Associate Pastor Mindy Acton, volunteer with community groups, and Donny Acton serves as a chaplain for the Shelby County Sheriff’s Office. He assists in delivering death notifications to families and also is there to support the sheriff’s deputies in hard situations, he said.

“That’s been valuable to me to learn this community,” he said. “… It’s not about me sitting in an office waiting for people to come see me. As a minister, we’re supposed to be out there.”

That’s a lesson he said new pastors should take to heart — they can’t be effective if they don’t know their people.

“People know you by the ministry you do,” he said.

New Hope has had its ebbs and flows with the passage of 190 years, but Acton said it’s no coincidence that the church has continued to operate for so long.

“That’s pretty good testimony,” he said.

Learn more about New Hope Cumberland Presbyterian at newhopecpc.org.