What began as a dream with a number of families meeting in a home in Woodlake in the fall of 2005, became a reality in the spring of 2006, when we began a Sunday worship service at Spring Run Elementary School with about 90 people in attendance. In 2011, we moved to a larger space at Swift Creek Middle School, and by the summer of 2013, God provided the opportunity to purchase and move into our building in Woodlake. However, our story is more than a timeline of where we have been. It is about the people and the place in which we all live.
Our Place
This end of Hull Street is the suburban sprawl of the construction of new neighborhoods, schools, and shopping centers. Amidst the hustle and bustle of life, is the tranquility and beauty of the Swift Creek Reservoir. Life often brings difficult times and the reservoir is a reminder of the need to have a supply of water and a place of rest and beauty. It is both a physical need and a picture of a deeply spiritual need.
Our People
The hustle and bustle of our growing place carries over into our lives. We start new businesses or work to expand the ones we are in. We, and our children, are involved with schools, sports teams, golf leagues, and community or professional associations. We have dreams to pursue, and goals to achieve. And so we enjoy living the good life with friends. While generally happy as people in Midlothian, we never quite seem to be fully satisfied. We thirst for something more.
We want peace and rest, both physically and spiritually. People have always had this need for rest and a thirst for refreshment. Jesus said, “Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” We have been made by God to achieve and to desire peace and rest that will one day be realized in a new heaven and new earth. It will be a new community of humanity that lives in perfect peace and harmony.
In the meantime, we live in the tension between brokenness and paradise. We all face similar experiences—death, job changes, and marriage troubles to name a few. Our society is fragmenting even as we try to hold it together. But God is using Spring Run Presbyterian Church to take the unraveled threads and frayed ends of our lives, and re-weave them into a beautiful tapestry. When Jesus came to us he began to fashion a new humanity and he continues to do so as we forge an authentic community of people through life’s joys and struggles, its victories, and defeats.
It is not a perfect community, but it is an authentic community of faith where people are free to be themselves. The great thing about new communities is they are not formed in isolation—they require different people from different places to come together. So we value friendship with you and look forward to the new community that we can form together.