Since its founding five years ago, Greater Faith Baptist Church has been a ministry on wheels, meeting at three different sites while plans for its own home in Stone Mountain takes shape.

Those days are numbered as construction on the church's permanent home — a 14,000-square-foot sanctuary — begins Oct. 24.

The Rev. Garry Baker, the church's pastor, said their first sanctuary, which is being built at a cost of $600,000, will rise on a five-acre site at 958 South Hairston Road in Stone Mountain. The church had a formal ground-breaking ceremony in February. Construction is expected to take seven months and church members hope to be worshipping there by May.

The 500-seat sanctuary with administrative offices, classrooms and a kitchen is part of a $1.7 million expansion that the church is undertaking. A second phase, which will include a two-story building with classrooms and a commercial kitchen, is planned for 2007, and the final phase, which will include a community room, gymnasium and swimming pool, is set for 2008.

Baker, who happens to be a trained architect who spent 10 years working on construction projects with the H.J. Russell Construction Co., is overseeing the construction, which is helping to keep costs manageable for the fledgling church. At the end of all construction, the church's campus will have 40,000 square feet of buildings.

Before launching Greater Faith, Baker was a pastor for 11 years at Clarkston First Baptist Church.

Baker said the church is locating in Stone Mountain and Lithonia to be close its it members.

While Baker was growing the church, he did double duty as pastor of Shiloh Baptist Church in Shelby, N.C., and commuted back and forth to tend to his growing Atlanta flock.

Since its launch in 2000, Greater Faith has held worship services at Maranatha Christian Academy in Lithonia, Ebenezer Baptist Church in Stone Mountain and for the last two and a half years at a facility owned by Antioch AME Church at 4730 Elam Road in Lithonia.