Coordinates: 54°57′22″N 7°21′18″W / 54.956°N 7.355°W / 54.956; -7.355 Newbuildings Independent Methodist Church is situated on the Duncastle Road in the village of Newbuildings some 5 miles from Derry in Northern Ireland. It was officially opened in 1985 under the ministry of Rev Robert Maxwell. Rev Maxwell began his evangelistic work in the year 1978. He continued to minister to the congregation until 1988 when he accepted the call of Dungannon Independent Methodist Church.
Rev Eric Moore was then installed in Newbuildings. His ministry spanned 15 years when in 2003 he was invited to take up the pastorate in Bangor Independent Methodist Church.
There followed a period of vacancy until 2008 when Rev Jonathan Campbell left Ballysillan Independent Methodist Church to become the congregation's third minister.
In October 2009 Rev Campbell called for Derry's long-standing Hallowe'en celebrations to be banned, telling the BBC the event is "one of the two major days for Satanists" and denouncing it as "evil" and corrupting of families and youth. He set up a petition to deliver to Derry City Council calling for the event to be banned in which he claimed to have "heard reports" that people had sex in the street in previous years and alleged that the event "encourages people to get involved in Satanism and brings a curse upon the city". The petition was sabotaged after the local media reports and the city's mayor, Cllr Paul Fleming, told the BBC that while Campbell was entitled to his "opinion", the event would go ahead.
Newbuildings Independent Methodist Church is affiliated to the Fellowship of Independent Methodist Churches.
Famous quotes containing the words independent, methodist and/or church:
“The dignity and stability of government in all its branches, the morals of the people, and every blessing of society, depend so much upon an upright and skilful administration of justice, that the judicial power ought to be distinct from both the legislative and executive, and independent upon both, that so it may be a check upon both, as both should be checks upon that.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)
“When Methodist preachers come down
A-preaching that drinking is sinful,
I’ll wager the rascals a crown
They always preach best with a skinful.”
—Oliver Goldsmith (1730?–1774)
“A State, in idea, is the opposite of a Church. A State regards classes, and not individuals; and it estimates classes, not by internal merit, but external accidents, as property, birth, etc. But a church does the reverse of this, and disregards all external accidents, and looks at men as individual persons, allowing no gradations of ranks, but such as greater or less wisdom, learning, and holiness ought to confer. A Church is, therefore, in idea, the only pure democracy.”
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834)