The Third Building

By the late 1880’s the church was again in need of more space. As in all previous occasions, the need was driven largely by an expanding Sunday School.

Groundbreaking services on the site our present building were held on Thanksgiving Day, 1889. The first spadeful was turned by the pastor and the 2nd by Florella Samson, the oldest member of the congregation.

The cornerstone of the new church was laid the following summer. On the Sunday before Christmas, 1891, the first services were held in the new chapel (site of today’s Gathering Place). The completed church was dedicated June 12, 1892. The following spring the old church was demolished and two dwellings were built on the site.

On the day before the dedication, the Lancaster New Era wrote that the new church occupied "oone of the finest sites in the city" and that it was "in harmony with the beautiful surroundings in that locality" and was "claimed by many to be the finest building, architecturally considered, in the entire city."

During the afternoon service on June 12, the Sunday School surprised the Board of Trustees with the presentation of a communion table and a set of nickel-silver collection plates. These are the plates we still use every Sunday morning. The new building cost $80,000. On that Sunday, those plates were used to collect over $7300. Compare this to the $8 million dollar project we just completed. Today, that would be the equivalent of $730,000!

A year later, what was described as the finest pipe organ in the city was dedicated. That organ was replaced with a new organ during renovations of the sanctuary in 1930.