Immanuel Baptist Church’s Williamsburg campus now has a permanent new home as the 14,300 square foot building played host to its first service Sunday morning.
“This building is a great resource. It is not the church. The people are the church. People are curious about what God can do or who Jesus is. We want to tell them all about it,” said Stephen Gadwah, worship pastor.
“It is funny that we are right next to urgent care where physical ailments are being treated. This is a place where spiritual ailments are taken care of. We want to show people that there is more to life than what they may have seen and experienced. There is a good God that loves them and cares for them.”
The public was able to get its first look inside the new facility during an open house on Thursday.
The church held its first weekly service ever at the Williamsburg Tourism and Convention Center on Sept. 11, 2016.
When the tourism center started renovations, Immanuel moved its services to the old Walmart building adjacent to Cumberland Regional Mall. Dayspring Health Inc. purchased that building in May 2022.
The church learned that it was going to be leaving the mall space after November 2023 and started looking for a pre-existing space in Williamsburg to rent, but nothing suited its needs. The church temporarily moved back to the Williamsburg Tourism and Convention Center and started looking for land.
The church found what it needed across the street from Cumberland Regional Mall and next to Hope Primary & Urgent Care off US25W.
The church broke ground on April 28, 2024, and started construction on the building between May and June 2024.
“We are pretty excited to see the end result,’ Gadwah said.
“We have a kid’s wing, a worship area, a foyer and a few rooms as well for adults, and a small kitchen.”
The average attendance for Sunday services is about 350 people, and the auditorium seats about 400 people.
“It just allows us to be a place where we can gather and do things with more excellence on Sunday morning,” Gadwah said of the new building. “With our field in the back, we are hoping to be able to utilize that for various things. We have some things in the pipeline that we are working on. We also want to be a visible presence.”
“This is a reminder of what God has done and what he is able to do because we never really planned on building a building from the ground up. God provided that and we are so thankful. It just allows us to be effective and more visible in the community that we live in. Next year marks 10 years for our campus to be in existence.”
Gadwah said there are two values that the church really holds vastly to, which are written on the church walls for congregants to see. These are the lense or the filter that the church puts everything through, “His grace is greater than our past” and “His word is greater than my experience.”
“God’s grace is great enough to save any sinner and raise any dead person. His word is greater than anything that we experience or what the world may tell us. Because of that we should hold tightly to God’s word and allow it to determine everything we say, think and do,” Gadwah said.
