Immanuel Baptist Church holds ground breaking for Williamsburg facility

Even though it has no foundation or even walls yet, you could still get an idea Sunday evening of what the Immanuel Baptist Church building for its Williamsburg campus was going to be like.

There were chalk outlines around where the outer walls would be and around where the interior walls would be located. There were signs indicating what sections inside the chalked off areas were going to be used for once completed.

Those in attendance walked inside where the nearly 15,000-square-foot one-story building will sit and prayed for the church and for those rooms to be used for God’s will.

Sunday’s groundbreaking ceremony concluded with many of those in attendance standing around the exterior where the building will be located with shovels in hand and ceremonially shoveling dirt to mark the beginning of an effort to give the Williamsburg church its own building for the first time in its history.

At the close of the service, Worship Pastor Brent Foley joked that it would be great if anyone wanted to stick around to help dig the footers for the building.

While Immanuel Baptist Church’s Williamsburg campus has been around for nearly eight years, this building will be its first permanent home.

Assistant Minister Miguel Reis noted that the church started with about 40 people in attendance and has now grown to routinely having over 300 people on Sunday mornings.

“It has been really cool to watch it grow. We have a lot more families than we originally started with and lots of college students. It is really fun,” noted John Owens, college director.

Williamsburg’s Immanuel Baptist Church held its first service on Sept. 11, 2016, at the Williamsburg Tourism and Convention Center, which they would call home for about five and one-half years before moving into a portion of Cumberland Regional Mall for a while.

When Dayspring decided to start operations in that portion of the building, the church moved back to the Williamsburg Tourism and Convention Center where it will remain until its new building is constructed.

Owens said when the church learned it was going to be leaving the mall space after November 2023, it started looking for a pre-existing space in Williamsburg to rent, but nothing really suited its needs.

Then the church started looking for land, and found what they needed across the street from Cumberland Regional Mall and next to Hope Primary & Urgent Care off US25W.

“God opened up this opportunity from a guy, who was very kind to us and helped us out, and gave us a good deal on the land. We just took that as a sign we should be here,” Owens said.

Actual construction on the site is expected to start early this summer. A completion date is unknown and will hinge in part on the weather.

“We are all very hopeful we will be in there as fast as it can get done,” Owens added. “Whenever our staff and finance team and committees got together, they really wanted to honor the Lord with what we are doing. Hopefully, by God’s grace, we will see it grow more.”

Intern Noah Brandt, who is a student, said the church is really excited about the project.

“We are excited to see how the Lord uses this. It is all about him. The Lord has done it all,” Brandt added. “The church is growing and getting to make a bigger impact with the people around it.”

For more information about Immanuel Baptist Church’s Williamsburg campus, go to https://weareibc.com/williamsburg-campus/.