Beginnings
The Church which meets at Priory Road traces its beginnings to 1750, when a group of around 60 covenanted to form a Baptist Church confessing the 1689 Baptist Confession of Faith. They were drawn from the ranks of another Baptist Church which met in Netherton, a faithful and well-established cause dating back to the 1650s. The reasons for the group’s departure seem to have centred on a desire for a church that was more fully committed to the doctrines of grace and fuller fellowship with other Baptist churches that were Calvinistic by confession.
Led in the early years by one of the founding members, a John Cartwright, the new Baptist Church had neither meeting-house nor pastor for a substantial length of time. Supported financially by the Particular Baptist Fund in London, the Church relied on the ministry of its own elders and support from ministers of the Midland Association of Particular Baptist Churches. The Association, one of several such in the country, was a regional society of Calvinistic Baptist Churches which had formed a century prior for mutual aid and encouragement. The Church continued to meet in Netherton, possibly in members’ houses, until enough funds were secured to build a meeting-house in New Street in Dudley, a work finished in 1777.
Three years later, in 1780, a call was extended to Mr Abraham Greenwood, the young pastor of a Calvinistic Baptist Church in Rochdale, Lancashire. The call was accepted and Dudley received its first pastor in 1781, three decades after its first days in Netherton. The Church has since known the blessing of seventeen more men in the pastorate.
The Church at New Street and Priory Road
New Street remained the abode of the Church for the next century and a half. Then in 1925 Dudley Council informed the church of its plans to widen New Street. A long and painful search for a new site ensued, ending in 1930 when a purchase order was finally placed on Priory Road.
The Church bade farewell to its much-loved New Street premises in 1933 and for the next four years it would meet in Castle Cinema on the High Street whilst seeking to raise funds for the new building.
In 1936 the Earl of Dudley laid the foundation stone of the building at Priory Road and in 1937 the current church building was opened to great rejoicing.
Full Circle: A Return to the 1689 Baptist Confession of Faith
In the course of the long 19th century, regional Associations amalgamated to form the Baptist Union. They gradually lost their doctrinal distinctives, a trend which accelerated towards the end of the century when Baptist Associations which had been Calvinistic historically merged with their ‘General’ or Arminian counterparts. The church at Dudley followed these currents and by the dawn of the twentieth century, a very different church had come into existence: whilst none of the original evangelistic zeal had been lost and a strong commitment to evangelical doctrine remained, the doctrines of grace no longer held a central place in the teaching and practice of the church.
In the wonderful providence of God, the Church saw fit in 1974 to call to the pastorate a man who had discovered these same doctrines as a student at Bible College – Mr Alun T. McNabb and his wife, Margaret, arrived at Priory Road that year, taking up residence at the Manse behind the church with their four children. They would remain for more than a quarter century. In the course of this pastorate the Church formally withdrew its membership from the Baptist Union (c. 1979) and re-instated the 1689 Baptist Confession as the church’s doctrinal position (c. 1980).
Much more can be said about the history of what Christ has done in and through His church as men, women, boys and girls have met to worship and serve Him through the centuries. Only eternity will disclose what has been accomplished through countless Open Airs, Sunday School lessons and the many other Gospel ministries undertaken by members at home and abroad. It is our earnest prayer and fervent desire to remain faithful to our Master not just today but in the generations to come, until such time as He should return on the clouds of glory.
