A BRIEF HISTORY
The purpose of this church is to glorify God by bearing witness of His holiness, emphasizing the necessity of separation from apostasy and worldliness, faithfully instructing and warning from God’s Word, functioning in brotherly love for the edification, exhortation, comfort, and maturity of believers in the Lord Jesus Christ, the biblical instruction of children, and to evangelize the unsaved.
The church began as a home Bible study with members from Grace Bible Church in Dracut, MA and Fellowship Bible Church in North Andover, MA. (FBC now relocated to Methuen, MA.)
Fellowship Bible Church had formed a “mission board” designed to establish churches in the New England area. Both Grace Bible & Salem Bible churches were the result of that mission.
In 1980, a Bible study began in a home in Salem (Yorks), with several families from the area in attendance.
In 1981, we held our first church service at the Robert Frost School on Main St. in Salem with about 20 people. The Frost School was sold, and six months later we had to relocate to the Soule School on Policy St. in Salem.
After a few months, the church rented property on 11 Ermer Road in the north end of Salem. The property consisted of a 4-acre parcel of land with an oversized split-level home. After renting for about a year, the Lord enabled the church to purchase that home. The pastor & his wife lived upstairs and church services were held downstairs.
This arrangement continued for seven years, and at that point, the Lord enabled the pastor to build a home on the lot behind the church.
Two additions were added to the “church-house”. An assembly room was added in 1989, and a few years later, an addition in the rear was added to house restrooms and a foyer.
In late 1997, a building committee was formed to work on plans for a new building. Groundbreaking for the new building began in the Spring of 2001, and the building was completed in January of 2003.
“To Him be glory in the church by Jesus Christ throughout all ages, world without end. Amen.”
