Evangel Hospital was the vision of SIM missionary Dr. Lonnie Grant. He made a proposal to SIM in 1956 to build a hospital outside Jos, to be known as Evangel Hospital, to care for the medical and spiritual needs of Nigerians. At the time, SIM had a hospital within Jos (Bingham Memorial Hospital, established in 1947) which catered mainly to missionaries. It was located in the center of town in the former ECWA Headquarters.

After much discussion, the proposal to build a new general hospital was accepted by SIM. Later, the British Plateau Provincial Office in Jos approved the construction after granting the Certificate of Occupancy for the present site.

Aerial view of first two buildings, c. 1960. Polo field is to upper right.

The out-patient clinic building was the first building built, being dedicated in February 1959. The following year, construction began on the male/female ward; the operating theater was the present injection room. In the beginning, the hospital staff were mainly missionaries.

A school for training community health workers, known as SIM-MATS (SIM-Medical Auxiliary Training School), was the primary emphasis in the 1960's. The staff and students ran the outpatient department as the main teaching facility, seeing about 300 patients daily. The student dormitory (White House) and classrooms are now the site of the ECWA Community Health Program offices.

In 1969, the hospital became the center where Lassa fever, the hemorrhagic fever virus in West Africa, was initially identified. After two missionary nurses died of hemorrhagic fever, a third nurse, Penny Pinneo, got sick and was flown to the USA where the virus was isolated and named.

The Lassa fever outbreak in 1970 in Jos was written up and published in several tropical medicine journals. During that outbreak the city of Jos was under quarantine because of yellow fever and later Lassa fever. The Medical Director, Dr. Jeanette Troup, became sick and died after an accidental puncture wound during an autopsy on a Lassa patient. The amenity ward is named after Penny Pinneo and there are plaques in the library and theater in memory of the nurses who died.

About this time, the Bingham Memorial Hospital was closed and merged into Evangel Hospital's new building, which housed the private ward, theater (operating room), and maternity unit.

In 1975, the Plateau State government took over the mission schools and hospitals in the state; many changes took place and most of the missionary staff were replaced by Nigerians. Two SIM doctors and two SIM nurses stayed to work under the government. SIMMATS was also taken by the government. After three years the hospital was given to ECWA. The Pediatric ward was built and the children were moved from the old ward, which is now the nurses' station in the female ward.

The current maternity ward was opened in 1987 and the old maternity unit in private ward became the ICU and theater, expanded to their present positions. The amenity ward was opened in 1992.

Dr. Phil Andrew, an SIM Australian missionary, had a vision for the general practice (GP, equivalent to family practice in US) training program which started in 1982 with one resident. Since then the hospital emphasis has been in training family physicians. All the present Nigerian consultants are graduates of the GP program.