 The church thrived.It acquired a burial ground in 1807 and laid plans to buy the lots it had leased, along with another adjacent one, and to erect a new brick church to replace the original building.In 1820, as Zion was engaged in erecting its new church, the congregation was scattered across a number of temporary meeting places, a competing black denomination appeared in Richard Allen's African Methodist Episcopal Church, that was trying to build a national organization from its Philadelphia base.