In 1895 the London Baptist Association promoted services in East Ham, then a fast growing dormitory suburb. A temporary iron-building at the corner of Katherine Road and Victoria Avenue housed the first congregation. R. Sloven, 1896-1908, became the first minister.

In 1901 the congregation moved to a new building in Plashet Grove with a 1000-seater sanctuary surrounded by halls and rooms. By 1903 membership was 972, one of the strongest churches in the then East Ham Borough. In 1908 Charles Howe led a team of East Ham members to start Bonny Downs Baptist Church - and stayed there for 53 years.

Worship, preaching, programmes and activity continued under the leadership of F. Williams, 1909-1919 and then returning from 1925, after the ministry of F.C. Buck 1919-1924. But two world wars, 1914-1918 and 1939-1945 resulted in population movement away, which unsettled, affected and weakened the church.

The slow decline of the 1930s accelerated during the 1939-1945 war and continued inexorably through a succession of ministers and then lay-pastors. Membership was 228 in 1941 and 52 in 1951.

Humphrey Vellacott came in 1967. His first morning congregation was 6 people, the evening 14. But, he left: 100 members, a morning congregation of 150-200, evening congregation of 70-80, a Prayer and Bible Study group of 50-60 'converts or restored back-sliders', a reshaped building and a team of young ministers working in East London Baptist churches!

With the surrounding population changing fast through immigration, particularly from Africa and Asia, the congregation became multi-racial but continued to record a steady 100 membership from the 1980s into the 2000s. Roy Scarsbrook, joined and followed Humphrey Vellacott during the 1980s staying to 1999, emphasising evangelism and eventually becoming one of a group of supported overseas missionaries, as he went to Poland. Tony Watts, a New Zealander, came initially for a six-month interim pastorate but stayed to 2008, and faced a transient situation within a multi-faith, multi-racial environment.

-Colin Marchant June 2008

Our Minister Rev. Jeremiah Dawood is Married to Susan Dawood and they have a son and a daughter, Mr. Jordan and Miss Jessica Dawood.

Rev. Jeremiah has the following qualifications:

Certificate of High secondary school Sudan 1988

B.A in Theology The Evangelical Theological Seminary, Cairo, Egypt 1992

M.A Master of Arts in Theology and Mission South Korea Asian Center for Theological Studies and Mission 1994

Fully accredited Minister Baptist Union of Great Britain 2014

Work Experience

OM Christian Mission Around the World 1983- 2008

 Served on the OM ship ‘The Doulos’ 1987-1988

 Men’s Ministry and summer outreach and training conferences Sudan 1989-1991

Oversaw the work of OM in Libya, Tunisia, Algeria and Malta 2001-2009

Author of ‘A True Disciple’ 2010

Police Chaplaincy London 2011-2013

London Baptist Property Board Director 2017-2019

 District Minster for Eastern Area London 2018- present

Minister of East Ham Baptist Church London 2009-present

What is happening at East Ham Baptist Church?

We have achieved so much at East Ham Baptist Church.

1. Through the Jesus DVD project we were able to reach 8000 homes with the gospel.
2. In the last 9 years many people were baptized at East Ham Baptist Church.
3. Significant contribution during the Olympic.
4. Renovating the church building and building a new house at the back of the church.
5. Significant contribution to the well being of the homeless and needy people.
6. Significant contribution in the spiritual growth of church members.
7. Development of New leaders at East Ham Baptist Church.
8. Significant Contribution in the New-ham borough, building relationships with other churches and leading in evangelism and mission
9. We have 7 people studying at Surgeon collage now, with the vision of training people for the ministry.

Prayer is at the heart of everything we do as a church. We draw our strength from our position as a “Praying Community”. As the Lord is answering our prayers, it certainly increases our faith to trust Him more. It also prepared us to understand that God does all things wonderful in His time. We have our prayer meetings from Tuesday to Thursday from 9am to 10am, and Friday from 7pm to 9pm giving working people opportunity to join.

Our multicultural character means that we need to support people dealing with their immigration matters, especially in prayer. It happens that for the last 5 years, the Lord granted immigration status to every single request we submitted to Him. This is one of the ways He is using to add people to our church. This kind of support is even vital when they have to go to Court for their appeal.

Spiritual growth is at the centre of our prayer meetings. As people see how the Lord is moving in our midst, this led them to have hunger for God and become more and more committed to God and His work in our church.

Church members have moved onto a new level with God. The journey is long, and we will continue to learn from the great teacher, the Lord Jesus Christ, until we meet with Him in the sky.

Growing in number comes also with the challenge of providing care to the flock the Lord will send. It requires more people prepared to share this challenge. As we understood this reality, we put in place a practical training to ministry by giving a chance to our spiritually mature members to lead the service, to preach, and also to lead prayer meetings.

Our website is a powerful tool with “Sermons and Resources” pages where they are loaded. This support helps those who cannot take notes to refer to them, to those who take notes to improve them and simply helps those who did not attend to catch up.

Our church is located in a multi faith area in Newham where there is a strong presence of Mosques and Hindu Temples. We continue to take advantage of Reverend Jeremiah’s experience in Evangelism this year we have commenced a new venture of praying in the park after morning service thus far it has been well received. We continue with our objective to reachevery home in our area with Jesus DVD project and tracks/ leaflets. It is encouraging to welcome people coming to contact us for more DVDs/ tracks/leaflets which they would like to offer to their friends and family so that they too may draw nearer to Jesus Christ our Lord and Saviour.

• Parenting and Grand Parenting courses for people in our local community.
• Using all the skills of the health professionals that we have in church to help the community keep in good health. This will open doors to share the Good News of Christ as they become involved in all areas of people’s lives. Physical, mental, and social wellbeing combined with their spiritual needs.
• Use the event of Christmas to give to less fortunate children abroad.

The aim of our Youth Department is to enable the young people of all ages, to use their gifts in a positive way to bring the message of Christ to others of their own age and to all other groups. This can only be achieved if the young people are given positive direction and guidance by those who are guided by the Holy Spirit, and have a genuine desire to see a reversal of the negative publicity about young people within this society.

We believe that the church has an important role to play in ensuring that our young people remain focused, committed, confident, bold in the things of God, God fearing, and loving people.

We give to our Young People opportunity to lead a family service on Sunday morning once every four month.

Sunday School is very important to us and we thank God that the events facilitated by the children have gone from strength to strength.

Our Men are taking a break and we will re-start again soon.

This ministry is very stable and they continue to meet on the first Saturday of every month at 8-10am, with more ladies stepping up to facilitate leading the sessions.