After a long wait on the market, Hastings' historical First Baptist Church at 401 N. Lincoln Ave. was officially sold to the Mercy City Church earlier this June.
While the old congregation of the First Baptist Church has diminished and moved on outside their physical church, Mercy City has been growing and expanding its reach.
Since its founding in Lincoln in 2015, Mercy City has opened four locations in Nebraska. Hastings now is set to become the fifth regional congregation, meeting in the brick building First Baptist dedicated in March 2026 — 100 years ago.
Hastings made for an easy next step in the Mercy City expansion for a few reasons. There was already a family prepared to move to Hastings, and the downtown First Baptist Church building was for sale.
Beyond those details, Co-Lead Pastor Matt Erikson, who shares the role with his wife, Carrie, grew up in Hastings. Erikson also officiated a wedding for the first time inside that very church building.
“People say, ‘Well, man, that's the middle of nowhere,’” Erikson said. “But we believe it's the middle of everywhere.”
The leadership at Mercy City said they wanted to purchase the old First Baptist Church because they would be able to ensure it remained a place of worship.
“Our church planting model … has been to go into areas where there are maybe some dying congregations or something that just needs revitalized,” Erikson said. “Hastings was one of those regions.”
While moving to smaller communities is uncommon among church planting, Erikson said he believes the city of Hastings is large enough to sustain another branch of the Mercy City congregation.
“Part of the vision of our church is to go into some of the spaces that wouldn't necessarily be popular from a church-planting standpoint,” Erikson said. “It's not really a popular thing necessarily to plant in a less populated space, and so part of the vision of our church is to do that.”
While the sermons for Mercy City churches are livestreamed from the broadcast location in Lincoln, each church location must have its own regional pastor to be able to work within the community.
For Hastings, this new local pastor is Jamie Stephenson.
“We’re just trying to make connections, meet people and build relationships,” Stephenson said. “You can’t build a relationship with a screen, so there are location pastors on site. This is where we’ve moved to be.”
When considering who will attend this new church, the Mercy City leadership made the decision to host interest gatherings this year to prepare for the opening.
“I think one important thing for me that people would know is while we're coming in to start a church, we're obviously appealing to people of faith,” Erikson said. “We have no desire to build our church while taking away from somebody else's church,”
This sentiment was reiterated by Stephenson, who has taken time throughout the past month to attend services at other local churches and introduce himself to the community.
“We’re not here to compete with anybody,” Stephenson said. “We think there’s just more that God wants to do in the city.”
The leadership at Mercy City Church intends to officially open and begin with a day of Sunday service around late February to early March 2027.
While renovations are being made within the building, Stephenson is using the extra time to invite locals to attend other events around the church in an attempt to draw in members of the community who may want to commit to faith and become regular churchgoers with Mercy City.
“It’s a tagline, but it’s true," Stephenson said. “We just really believe everyone always belongs. You don’t have to fix yourself to come to church. You don’t have to get everything put together or know the Bible.”
Mercy City’s practices and sermons alongside being a demographically young and nondenominational church pave the way as leadership continues to expand the Mercy City community.
Legacy of service
According to the centennial history volume “Adams County: The Story” by Dorothy Weyer Creigh, the First Baptist Church was organized in Hastings in 1873 through the work of the American Baptist Home Missionary Society.
The building at Fourth Street and Lincoln Avenue was the third to serve the First Baptist congregation. The attached Educational Building on the west side of the main church was added in 1965.
The congregation has been affiliated with the American Baptist Churches of Nebraska and made a big impact on Hastings over the years.
In 1983, FBC established a homeless shelter and soup kitchen downtown that today has grown into Crossroads Mission Avenue, an independent, faith-based organization with operations in several central Nebraska cities.