Manassas Assembly of God Changes Name Ahead of Stafford Expansion

MANASSAS, Va. — Manassas Assembly of God has a new name: Chapel Springs Assembly of God Church.

The church dropped the Manassas portion of their moniker because they plan to open a new church in Stafford County.

“God is leading us in an exciting new direction. We’re expanding by opening new branches of our church in other communities. We’ll be opening our first new site this fall in North Stafford. As we began praying and planning for our expansion, it became clear that we needed a name that would work anywhere, not just in Manassas,” said Senior Pastor Scott Leib.

The church takes its new name from a small street nearby off Va. 28, Chapel Springs Road. The name was chosen after a panel took more than 400 names into consideration, according to a press release:

Longtime church member and historian Charlie Byrd immediately set about months of detective work on the name. “I had lots of help from the folks at the Prince William County Library and the Manassas Museum,” he says. “We scoured old records for any mention at all of Chapel Springs.”

The resulting efforts netted maps of the area from the early 1820s, which identified a White Chapel and an Old Chapel Spring on the property.

As Byrd continued his search, he unearthed the December 4, 1854, edition of the Alexandria Gazette. The paper contains an advertisement for the sale of a parcel of land on which Chapel Springs is situated. The tract was described as “249 acres situated near Bristoe Station with a dwelling house, good soil, sufficient wood and water with the Chapel Spring supplying a never-failing stream of excellent pure water.”

Says Pastor Scott Leib, “’A never-failing stream of excellent and pure water.’ What a perfect description not just about a spring but about a church—a church which would relocate on the same property. That advertisement captures the essence of our church over these past 76 years!”

The church plans to have its new campus in Stafford County open by October. In February, the church held meetings at Shriley Heim Middle School on Telegraph Road in Stafford for those who had questions about the expansion, according to the church’s Facebook page.

This is not the first time the 76-year-old church has changed its name. With it’s roots in the Great Depression and the Old Dixie Threater on Main Street in Old Town Manassas, the congregation later moved to the corner of Maple and Quarry streets and changed its name from Manassas Full Gospel Church to Manassas Assembly of God in the 1960s. A later move took the church to Plantation Lane in Manassas in 1979, and then another move brought the church its current 150-acre home on Va. 28 near Bristow in 2001.

In Manassas, the church offers four worship services each weekend and has special programs for infants, children, and teens.