Ramsbottom Evangelical Church has been situated at its present address since 1976. The betting shop was the first property to be purchased. Later the sports shop was acquired and very recently number five was added and will be used mainly for Sunday School classrooms.

The beginnings of the Evangelical Church go back to Summerseat in the late 1950’s. The Primitive Methodist Church, comprising a few godly ladies, invited Rev. Raymond Gregory, minister of Dundee Lane Congregational Church, to help them. The Primitive Methodist building became unsafe due to river erosion and for a period of time the church held their meetings in a car garage on Robin Road. Later the church moved to the Summerseat Liberal Club and then to the old Summerseat Co-op on a ten year lease.

1961 marked a turning point in the life of the Evangelical Church when younger men were invited to attend a Billy Graham crusade – at least two of them were soundly converted to Christ. 

The church continued to be very active in it’s evangelism and under God’s blessing there followed many more conversions. The writer of the article has many fond memories of those early days as I heard for the first time of a wonderful Saviour who loved me and gave Himself for me.

The lease on the Co-op building ran out in 1973 and the leaseholders would not re-new the contract. The church met in private homes for a while and in 1976 moved to it’s present location.

The chuch experienced much testing in the early seventies. However, this was followed by times of joyful blessing when several young men and women were converted and added to the church.

After many faithful years of sound biblical ministry, Rev. Raymond Gregory retired in 1998. He and hes wife Muriel still live in the town and continue as active and valued members of the church. In May 1998 Pastor Oliver Allmand-Smith accepted a unanimous call from the church to be our new Minister.

Our hopes and prayers are that God will continue to build His church in Ramsbottom and that many more will come to know and love our Saviour Jesus Christ.

WHAT THE CHURCH BELIEVES

1. The full inspiration of the Holy Scripture, their authority and sufficiency as not only containing, but being in themselves the Word of God. 

2. The unity of the Godhead and the divine co-equality of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.

3. The total depravity of human nature in consequence of the fall and the necessity of the new birth. 

4. The true and proper deity of our Lord Jesus Christ and His real and perfect manhood.

5. The justification of the sinners by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone.

6. The future resurrection of all mankind and the judgement of the world by our Lord Jesus Christ.

At Ramsbottom Evangelical Church:

We preach God’s Word – nothing more, nothing less. We believe that the preaching of God’s Word is the most important part of our worship. We seek to be guided in all things by the Bible and the Bible alone.

We love the Lord Jesus Christ – we rejoice because He came to this world, leaving behind the glory of heaven, to die on a cross to save sinners like us. We are amazed that He should love sinners and rebels like us so much. The cross of our Lord and Saviour is at the heart of all our preaching, worship and evangelism.

We are passionate about the Gospel – We long to see lost souls converted to Christ. To this end we proclaim the gospel through monthly open-air meetings, door-to-door work, leaflets, tracts, breakfasts and special evangelistic meetings, as well as every Sunday in the church. We pray for this work regularly, both as individuals and as a church. We support the work of gospel outreach throughout the world especially in Papua New Guinea, Portugal, Mozambique and Rwanda.

We support one another in the church – living, working and growing together as the body of Christ in this town.