First Mennonite Church was a historically white congregation founded in 1917; Bethel Mennonite Church was a historically Black Mennonite church founded in 1959; and Fuente de Salvación was a Hispanic congregation that began sharing space with the First Mennonite Church in the 1980s. Toward the end of the 20th century, the three congregations joined together in fellowship and moved into their current Gothic Revival church, which was constructed for Bethany Evangelical United Brethren Church in 1907. Now known as Nueva Vida Church, the merged congregation maintains the “vision of an intercultural, bilingual, Mennonite ministry in the community and beyond.”

Nueva Vida hosts a number of programs on its three-building campus. The Precious Life Learning Center is housed in the main church building and serves 45 children and their families year-round. Across the street, the church runs a drop-in educational center equipped with a computer lab for neighborhood youth, and it partners with local social service agencies to operate a photo ID clinic. Above the youth center is an assisted-living apartment for three women who are low-income and/or living with disabilities. For these many partnerships benefiting the city of Norristown, Interfaith Philadelphia named Nueva Vida a “Zone of Peace.”

A National Fund grant of $183,000 with $416,508 in matching funds raised by the congregation allowed Nueva Vida to complete critical repairs and upgrades. The project scope included repairing masonry on the bell tower, restoring stained-glass windows, installing air conditioning throughout the facility, and completing numerous accessibility upgrades and general repairs to highly trafficked spaces. The work succeeded in making the building more energy efficient, accessible, and welcoming to all.