Chapel Springs Church Opens New Campus in Stafford

Chapel Springs Church, a longtime fixture in the Manassas area with a 150-acre campus in Bristow, has just this weekend opened a new campus to serve the Stafford community. Chapel Springs-Stafford will be meeting Sundays at 10:30 a.m. at Shirley C. Heim Middle School on Telegraph Road in Stafford.

“We love being at Shirley Heim,” said Campus Pastor Rick Sarmiento. “It’s smack in the middle of a group of neighborhoods that we’re excited to become a part of. We’ve already been able to serve at Stafford Junction, and we hope to be able to support this community in any way we can.”

While Chapel Springs would eventually like to open in a more permanent location, they are currently making the best of working out of a school, which has allowed them to move right into the community.

“We’re literally a church in a box,” said Sarmiento, laughing. “We load up a trailer every week that has everything from speakers to coffee pots, to puppets for kids church to nursery toys, to a folding stage for our live worship band.”

But Sarmiento said it would not be possible without plenty of help, saying, “We have a terrific logistics team who gets us unloaded and set up in under an hour.”

Lead Pastor Scott Leib said this is an exciting time for Chapel Springs Assembly of God.

“God is leading us in an exciting new direction. We’re expanding by opening new branches of our church in other communities. The Stafford campus is our first of what we hope are many campuses positioned to serve local communities throughout Northern Virginia,” Leib said.

He also thinks it is important to bring churches close to the people, so it is convenient for them, especially in a high-trafficked area.

“Northern Virginians spend so much time driving—we don’t want them to have to drive long distances to get to church on the weekend. So by opening campuses like our new one in Stafford, we can bring church close to people instead of their having to drive far to come to us,” Lieb said.

Chapel Springs-Stafford offers a live worship band, high-energy kids church, and a full nursery staffed by trained, screened caregivers. Pastor Rick Sarmiento shepherds the congregation through Sunday worship, weekly get-togethers, and community service projects. Congregants worship together and then view a sermon by the lead pastor via a high-def video feed.

Until their name change in May 2013, Chapel Springs Church was known as Manassas Assembly of God, a church with a 76-year history beginning in the Dixie Theatre in Old Town Manassas in 1936. The church has grown and moved over the years; currently their central office and campus is at 11500 New Life Way in Bristow. The church is part of the Assemblies of God fellowship of churches.

Chapel Springs Church offers five worship services each weekend and has special programs for infants, children and teens. They offer programs to help people in need, including Divorce Care, GriefShare, a food pantry, an ESL program in Georgetown South and much more. For more information, readers can visit their website at chapelsprings.org/stafford.