GOFFSTOWN — The Rev. Bob Oliver is unsure how many people will be in the congregation when he opens the doors of the Plymouth Brethren Assembly of Manchester church on Sunday, Aug. 19, at 10:30 a.m. And that’s fine with him.

“We’ll start with a few,” he said. “We’ll go door to door just like Jesus did, befriend the people and love them, and that’s how you build a church.

“We are not trying to get any existing Christians to change from their church to our church. We want to win the lost of Jesus first, then we can bring them in and let God reveal his will and plan for them,” Oliver said.

“We’ll build it up from the ground, just like Jesus Christ did,” he added.

The new church is the 34th Plymouth Brethren Assembly parish in the nation. Oliver explained what makes the church unique.

“We take the Bible for what it says literally,” he said. “There is a heaven, hell, the devil, we take it all literally. We’re literalists.”

And, Oliver added, they’re independent, premillennial and dispensational.

“That basically means, that ‘premillennial,’ that Jesus Christ will come and set up a 1,000-year kingdom on Earth. The dispensation is that God works in different time periods with man. We’re in the dispensation of the Age of Grace,” he explained.

Oliver previously served as pastor to a nondenominational church in Canada, a Bible Baptist church in Colorado and a Southern Baptist church in Baring, Maine.

When he served at these churches, Oliver said, “I was taking over existing churches and adopting the problems with them. With this, we’re starting from scratch, and we’ll let the Lord be in control and enjoy his presence.”

Troubles with a split at the church in Canada led to Oliver’s move to New Hampshire.

“People were divided. My wife and I prayed and we just kept hearing ‘Manchester, N.H.’ We took a trip down here and the Lord provided a building for the church and an apartment, and we believe it’s his will for us to be here in Manchester,” he said.

Oliver’s new church will hold four services a week instead of one a week, as is common at other churches.

“With all of the evil today, violence and economies collapsing, we’re supposed to gather together more in these last days, to get ready for the coming of the Lord and have multiple services to make us stronger spiritually,” Oliver said. “We’re not like a church where you have a pastor and the board of elders, deacons and such. It’s a fellowship. We study the word together, we worship, sing and praise the Lord together.”

The church is located at 757 Mast Road in Goffstown. Weekly services will be held on Sundays at 10:30 a.m. and 6:30 p.m. and Tuesdays and Thursdays at 7 p.m.

For more information, call the church office at 626-5049 or email pastorboboliver@gmail.com.

gmiles@unionleader.com