Bethel Baptist Church - Macclesfield

News

The building project

It felt like the church building was surrounded in scaffolding for months in 2002, but it did finally come down. The work was much needed as the roof was leaking badly, particularly in the main worship hall! The Lord has provided through a variety of fund raising activities, gifts from other churches, a grant from WREN, and a grant and a loan from the Old Baptist Union. The loan was repayable over a two year period covering 2003 and 2004. We praise the Lord that the money came in, and the loan was actually repaid six months early, in the middle of 2004.

Walls were stripped of plaster, and new damp-proofing was applied. The main worship hall is now bright with a new colour scheme. A new ceiling has been put on the sports hall,and the windows you see in the picture on the left have almost all been bricked up (better for an active youth club). For a few weeks, the Sunday services were held in the sports hall whilst the main hall (above) was being redecorated. The main hall was back in use in time for the baptismal service at the beginning of December 2002. Redecoration of the sports hall continued throughout 2003.

Work continued in 2005 to make the building fully accessible to the disabled. An alternate entrance (in fact, the original entrance) now provides access to both the worship hall and toilet facilities without traversing any steps. Steps within the worship hall have been replaced with ramps. In a separate project, the lounge has been refurbished: most noticeably, the old carpet has given way to a laminate floor. Many thanks are due to some hard-working individuals within the church who have made a tremendous difference to the building.

In 2007 we turned our attention to the garden wall / retaining wall at the rear of the building, which divides our property from the railway cutting through which the busy Stoke to Manchester line runs. The wall was in a bad state of repair and potentially dangerous, so one of our members tendered his building business to rebuild the wall. The picture shows the new wall, following the same zig-zag line as the old, but in a much more stable state, overlooking the railway cutting to the town beyond.