When pastor Dan Hammer felt called to lead a church plant in Manheim, he trusted the Lord to see it through.

"We'd been praying for years for this," he said. "This is God at work. He's opening doors. God opened a door and built a relationship. His fingerprints were clearly on this."

Mission Church will host its first service in Manheim at Manheim Christian School, 686 Lebanon Road, on Sunday, Oct. 4, at 10 a.m.

It will mark a northern post of the church that has more than two decades of roots in Lancaster.

"More and more people were coming to our church from the Manheim, Mount Joy and Elizabethtown area, and that's a long drive," Hammer said, describing the motivation to seek a Manheim location. "We started looking at bringing the church closer to the people."

God was at work, Hammer said, when He connected the church planters with Jon Sauder, director of admissions, development and spiritual life at Manheim Christian School.

As it turned out, several people who are active in the Manheim community were members at the Lancaster location of Mission Church, and they touted the benefits of the church plant.

It was perfect timing.

"We recently completed an expansion, with new classrooms and new bathrooms, and now that we had a better facility, we were eager to share it with the community," Sauder said. "I was very quickly on board and sharing the idea of the church coming here with our decision makers."

It also helped that some of the faculty are members of the church, as well as some of the students.

"God is knitting together a really cool story for Mission Church," Hammer said. "The heart behind this plan is to reach the community. It takes all different types of churches to reach all different types of people. You can never have enough churches."

The mission of Mission Church is "to make disciples who live loved and sent to the glory of God," Hammer said. "We want to create disciples who will spread the Gospel and change lives for all who hear it."

With more than a dozen years as a senior pastor in Maryland, Hammer understands what's needed for a successful church plant. He calls it the "four wheels of traction," including a planter, people, a place and provision.

"None of this could happen without God," he said, of the conversations about the new church which began this spring. "It's all His grace, all His glory."

He's excited about a partnership between the church and the school beyond Sunday mornings. Recently, Mission Church members provided lunch and notes of encouragement to faculty and staff for a preschool-year in-service day.

Sauder is also looking forward to benefits of bringing the church into the school.

"We're here to expand God's kingdom, and we have a mission to do that for the students and their families," he said. "For this space to have a mission beyond the school day is really exciting."

More than 100 Mission Church members will be making the move to Manheim, and Hammer invites anyone who's interested in learning more to come out on Oct. 4.

"We're blessed to be a blessing," he said, paraphrasing Genesis 12. "We want to bless the community locally with a Gospel impact that reaches out globally."

He's hoping this plant will help the church continue to expand into the Harrisburg area and beyond.

The nondenominational church has a student ministry and small group programs, and there is a place for everyone, Hammer said.

"Our goal is to glorify God and that every single person that comes in, whether they make this their home church or not, knows that God loves them, and we love them," he said. "We truly want to live a 'You are loved' culture."

Perfection is not expected at Mission Church, he emphasized.

"We want you to come as you are, not as you aren't," he explained. "Be met where you are with the love of God. We're all messy people. We're all sinners, but we're going to love like Christ as Christ loved us. This is not something we're called to define. Jesus does that. But it is a love we're called to display."

He encourages people to come to Mission Church no matter where they are in their faith journey.

"We want to reach lost people, and we want to help people grow," he said. "We believe every single person has a place in the mission of God. Our vision, our goal, our heart is to help you find your place to live faithfully in the mission that God has so graciously called us to."

To learn more about Mission Church, visit https://mission-church.com/mission-manheim.