History
Spring Run began as a dream when Andrew Conrad asked Sycamore Presbyterian Church to plant a daughter church along the Hull Street corridor. They along with West End Presbyterian Church challenged others in their churches to share the dream. In the late summer and early fall of 2005 a core group of about 50 adults and children came together to shape the dream into reality. As you look at this brief timeline thank God for what he has done and let’s dream together about what God will do in the future.
October 2005
A group of 50+ began meeting in a home in Woodlake to pray and shape a vision of what this church would become.
December 2005
We began 5 Community Groups to intentionally focus our energy in living in community not just with those in the church but in our neighborhoods as well. New people were invited into these groups and our numbers grew.
January 2006
Our first Women’s Getaway Weekend allowed women to have some fun-time, to develop friendships and invite other women who did not go to church to get away for a weekend. This has become an annual event. It also launched our women’s ministry which now has many things to offer.
February 2006
Our first Men’s Retreat took place near Smith Mountain Lake. Some men became passionate about making this happen annually in the Fall. So in October 2006 we began the Men’s Retreat which has been a great experience. This spawned some men’s bible studies.
March 19, 2006
We had our first public worship service at Spring Run Elementary School with about 90 people in attendance.
Fall 2006
We trained new leaders and increased to 7 community groups.
September 2007
We hired Brian Fletcher as Assistant Pastor and were averaging 150 people in attendance. We began new community groups bringing the total to 12 groups.
May 2008
The culmination of months of officer training led to the organization of our church as a self-governing church with our own elders and deacons elected by our congregation. Our average attendance was 186 people and about 85% participation in community groups.
Fall 2008
We formed a Facilities Development Team to look for facility that could meet our long-term needs.
Summer 2010
With the growth we have seen we ramped up our search for property. We hired HuffMorris architects to help us with programming to determine what size facility we wanted for our ministry dreams, and to help evaluate potential sites for desirability and affordability.
Winter 2011
Began talking with Woodlake United Methodist Church about the possibility of purchasing their Woodlake campus.
Spring 2011
The Facilities Development Team and officers considered the opportunity to purchase Woodlake United Methodist Church and agreed it to present it to the congregation.
May 2011
The Facilities Development Team informed the congregation of the opportunity to purchase WUMC’s Woodlake Campus.
June 2011
We hosted our first Vacation Bible School with 90+ kids attending.
June 2011
We had several congregational meetings and voted unanimously to make an offer with a Letter of Intent to purchase WUMC.
July 2011
We had ongoing discussions with WUMC during which they gave some options as counter proposals. The officers unanimously approved one of the options which we then presented to our congregation for approval.
August 14, 2011
The congregations of Spring Run Presbyterian and Woodlake Methodist met separately and both approved the Letter of Intent.
September 2011
Spring Run Presbyterian Church launched the BOLDLY campaign.
There are many more things we have done as a church. Since we began we have had more than 60 people join our church by profession of faith, meaning they had never joined a church before. Many of these people were new Christians. We have given financial support to new church plants in Powhatan, Richmond, and Smithfield. We have or are supporting missionaries in Africa, India, East Asia, and Prague. We have sent short-term missionaries to Uganda (and partnered with Richmond Kickers to send Gifts to Gulu for kids there), Ukraine to teach university students English through Bible stories, West Virginia to help fix homes of the poor, and to Harrow, England to run a kids club for Hindu children at a church plant called New Life Suwarta Sangat. We participate in feeding the homeless in Richmond through a program called Loaves & Fishes. We have run summer backyard bible clubs multiple times.
We now have 330+ people who are part of our church and average 215 in Sunday attendance with 245 people in small groups (community groups or bible studies).
Read more about Our Story on the SRPC website.