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Good News Community Church Rochdale

Meet our Leaders

This is Ram Shrestha, pictured below (top left with his wife Keshari), who leads GNCC Rochdale. In the Summer of 2025, Ray Olaniyan recently joined the Good News team as our Network Evangelist for Rochdale.

 

Image 1 from Good News Rochdale | The Antioch Network

 

Ram is a Nepali missionary who helped Antioch and a team launch GNCC during the 2021 Lockdown, and since then became the overall GNCC leader.

 

When and Where we meet

GNCC meets regularly at Caring the Sharing, 78 Yorkshire Street Rochdale, OL16 1JU, for 

1) church gatherings (3 pm every Sunday, coffee and tea served at 4:30 pm afterwards), 2) Bible studies (6:30 pm till 8 pm, every Wednesday), 3) Open discussion, and Faith Exploration (2 pm, every Monday at Rochdale Library near Bean Café), and we hope to deliver English classes, Hot Topics, Christianity Taster Sessions at Regal Moon, and 7 week Christianity Explored in 2026. We also involved in regular outreach/door to door evangelism in Rochdale town centre (on Ballie St, and sometimes Yorkshire St, every Wednesday, and Friday mornings from 10:30 till 1 pm). Our main Sunday service starts at 3pm weekly:

Image 2 from Good News Rochdale | The Antioch Network

Please click here for a Google Maps link to our main venue, Caring and Sharing Rochdale.

 

Contact Details

Please email  or else phone Ram on 07799 177 276.

 

For more details, please email

 

  

Image 3 from Good News Rochdale | The Antioch Network

 

Recently, GNCC has welcomed UK Nationals as well as people from South Asia and Central America to its gatherings, and the team continues to meet new people through the free English classes which they run weekly.

 

GNCC leader Ram, pictured below with is wife Keshari, adds that this gives us a "taste of Heaven" where there will be represented people from "every nation, tribe, people and language" (Revelation 5:9).

 

Image 4 from Good News Rochdale | The Antioch Network

 

 

GNCC leader Ram had this to say recently,

"We are thankful to the Lord that He has sustained us to continue the ministry He has blessed us with. We are really thankful to our praying friends and supporters who stood by us in prayers, finance and also visiting us in person..."

 

"As the Bible says, 'The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field'.  Yes, the days and times we are in, or even the place where God has commissioned us to go to, seems stony ground where  the works  of God are not taking any roots. But through the power of the Holy Spirit, He has enabled us to be  His witnesses and our efforts will not be in vain."

 

Prayer Pointers

  1. Please give thank for a good Christmas Carol service in December, and a new year in 2026
  2. Please pray for effective ministry to asylum seekers and refugees in the borough
  3. Please pray for an Urdu-speaking evangelism to work alongside Ram, Ray and the team
  4. Please pray for a new base, perhaps in the town centre
  5. Please pray for new baptisms in 2026

 

GNCC's Baptism Service*

Image 5 from Good News Rochdale | The Antioch Network

 

Good News Community Church held its first ever baptism service on Sunday November 31st. 

 

Thanks to everyone at Branches Christian Fellowship who provided both venue and tech support, to Bing and co for leading worship, to our own Rev John for officiating and to many others for helping host, arrange food, and so on.

 

Image 6 from Good News Rochdale | The Antioch Network

 

Thanks mostly, however, go to God himself for bringing Tom to faith. To quote the apostle Paul in 2 Corinthians 5:17,

If anyone is in Christ, he in a new creation: the old has gone, the new has come

To find out more about Good News Community Church Rochdale, please email our GNCC plant leader Ram on .

  

When did GNCC Begin?

Following a "soft launch" which began online due to COVID lockdown measures on 22nd November 2020, Good News Community Church Rochdale, has since these measures lifted met in-person. Originally in St Luke's Parish Church, Deeplish, GNCC now meets at hits new base at 4 The Walk, in Central Rochdale, 3pm each Sunday. 

  

A diverse town that has undergone huge change in the last fifty years, Rochdale is a centre for refugees, so a church within our Diverse stream is ideal for this Town. 

Our vision for Rochdale is to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ and to inspire people to be in a relationship with God. We hope to see people gathering around Jesus and his word, from all of Rochdale’s diverse people, making disciples of Jesus."

 

Pray for Us

 

PLease prau for suceessful renewal of visas for Ram and Keshari, our friends from Nepal (pictured below left) who are seeking to extend their stay beyond the initial term which ends in December 2023. They speak English, Urdu and Hindi, and have already added a huge amount to what Good News can achieve in the multi-lingual town that Rochdale is.

 

Image 7 from Good News Rochdale | The Antioch Network

 

Thank you for everyone who has prayed for them, and praise God they have an apartment in the town centre! Please pray for them to settle into their new home. If you would like to make a donation to their missionary costs moving continent, renting a house and ministering in Rochdale, please email us on to find out how.

 

Find out More

To find out more about GNCC, their activities or church gatherings, please email Ram at  .  

 

Banner Photo Credit below:

Rochdale Town Centre by David Dixon, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=106494150

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