Sunday Mornings on Centerville Turnpike
Azalea Garden Church meets on a nine-acre property at 1541 Centerville Turnpike in Virginia Beach, a short jog east from Indian River Road. The congregation has worshipped at this Virginia Beach address since 2001, when it relocated from its longtime Norfolk home. Sunday mornings are built around two back-to-back rhythms: Sunday School at 9:30 a.m. and Morning Worship at 10:45 a.m. Both take place on the same Centerville campus, and a parking lot large enough for a regional congregation serves everyone who drives in from Kempsville, Chesapeake, and the rest of Hampton Roads.
First-time guests find a building shaped by a series of capital campaigns the church has named over the years. A large multi-purpose sanctuary, an attached kitchen, an educational wing, and a Fellowship Hall were added across multiple construction phases, along with a dedicated Prayer Center and a Children's Center. A separate building on the property houses the church's preschool, Centerville Preschool Academy, making the campus a place where infants through senior adults share a single address.
Ninety Years of Witness
The story of Azalea Garden is a story of steady growth from a single Norfolk fellowship into a regional anchor of the Church of God movement. In 1993 the church celebrated its 60th anniversary, putting its founding at 1933. In 2023 the congregation marked its 90th year, holding the same core mission that has guided the body for nine decades: glorifying God, proclaiming the gospel, winning the lost, equipping believers, and demonstrating Christ's love to the world.
For the first sixty-eight years, Azalea Garden was a Norfolk church. By the late 1990s the growing ministry needed more space, and a stewardship campaign called "Possess the Land" led to the purchase of the Centerville Turnpike property. A second campaign, "Build the Temple," funded the first phase of construction, and on May 21, 2001, the church held its first service in Virginia Beach. A third campaign, "Enlarge the House" (2003 to 2006), added the Fellowship Hall, Children's Center, Benevolence Warehouse, classrooms, and the Prayer Center that is now one of the most used rooms in the building. A fourth campaign, "Touch Tomorrow Today," invested in the next generation through the children's ministry, the worship and arts ministry, and structural improvements at both campuses.
Along the way, Azalea Garden planted satellite congregations. In 1997 Senior Pastor Aubrey Maye commissioned Carlos and Teresa Ramos to start a Hispanic congregation in Norfolk, Iglesia de Dios Adonai, which grew to a weekly attendance above 175 and went on to plant two more Hispanic churches in the Richmond area. A second satellite, the Lighthouse congregation, was launched in 2001 at the former Norfolk campus with Larry and Becky McMasters as pastors. A second Hispanic congregation, Vino Nuevo, was founded at the Centerville campus under Sergio and Marcella Matviuk. Azalea Garden is recognized in the Church of God as the mother congregation for the Tidewater region.
Worship That Blends the Generations
The Sunday morning service is the heartbeat of AGC. The Worship and Arts Ministry leads a sanctuary choir and a band each week, choosing music that "blends the contemporary and the traditional." The goal of every gathering is the one Jesus named in John 4:23-24, to worship the Father in spirit and in truth. Worshipers who want to take part from home can join through the online church portal.
Sunday mornings are not the only time the sanctuary is open. A prayer service is held in the sanctuary on Sunday evenings at 6:00 p.m., gathering worshipers in the same space for a different focus. The church calls AGC a "praying church," and the rhythm of the week is shaped around that identity.
Sunday School for the Whole Family
Sunday School runs from 9:30 to 10:30 a.m. and is treated as one of the most important hours of the week. The church teaches that from birth to death, no one is too young or too old to learn the Word of God, and classrooms are organized from the nursery all the way through adult electives.
Children progress through a clearly mapped sequence of rooms in the educational wing: nursery for infants through two years (room 111), toddlers in room 108, Pre-K in room 106, early elementary in room 211, elementary in room 214, upper elementary in room 223, middle school in room 210, and high school in room 204. Adult electives include the Faith class (room 219), CrossTalk (room 213), the Joy class (room 220), and the Adult Bible Class, or ABC, in room 126. Monica Vines serves as Sunday School Superintendent, coordinating the teachers and overseeing this hour of discipleship.
Azalea Kids and Fuel Youth
Children's ministry at AGC is called Azalea Kids and is led by Isaac and Devan Davidson. Each month the kids focus on a new biblical topic broken into weekly interactive lessons and worship. Azalea Kids meets in two settings. On Sundays at 10:45 a.m., the children's wing offers nursery care for ages 0 to 3, a Junior Kids Church for ages 3 to 5 (potty trained), and a Kids Church for grades 1 through 6. On Wednesdays at 7:00 p.m., the same wing hosts nursery for ages 0 to 4 and a Kids Church for grades K through 6 alongside the rest of Family Night programming.
The youth ministry, branded as Fuel, gathers 7th through 12th graders on Sunday mornings for Sunday School at 9:30 a.m. and on Wednesday evenings for Fuel Youth Church from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. Devan Davidson aims to grow biblical literacy and a love of worship among the students, while Isaac focuses on helping children build a relationship with Christ through Scripture.
Young Adults, Women, and the Young at Heart
Young adults aged 18 to 30 meet on Sunday mornings at 9:30 a.m. and gather again for dinner on the second Saturday of each month at 5:30 p.m. The ministry's mission is to foster an environment where young adults can grow in their knowledge of Jesus Christ and experience a closer relationship with Him.
The United Women's Ministry is a multigenerational group that meets on Wednesday nights at 7:00 p.m. in the Joy classroom for Bible study, with a special time of fun and fellowship on the last Wednesday of each month. The ministry plans quarterly events and outings alongside its weekly gathering.
At the other end of the adult spectrum, the Young at Heart (YAH) ministry serves adults 50 and up, led by Pastors Larry and Becky McMasters. The cornerstone of YAH is a Wednesday morning worship service at 10:00 a.m. in the Fellowship Hall, led by a praise team and featuring preaching. The gathering is open to anyone regardless of church affiliation or membership, and the time given for praise reports and prayer requests has become a significant prayer ministry that often reaches far beyond the room.
Wednesday Nights: Family Night at AGC
Wednesday is one of the busiest evenings on the Centerville campus. The Young at Heart service runs in the morning, the Ignite Youth service runs in the early evening, and at 7:00 p.m. Azalea Kids, the United Women's Ministry, and a Family Night Adult Bible Class all meet simultaneously. A Men's Bible Study also gathers at 7:00 p.m. Past adult Bible studies have covered worldviews, leadership, prayer, biblical doctrines, the Book of Acts, and First Corinthians, with future studies planned on Essentials of Discipline, leadership, and Women in Ministry.
Vino Nuevo: A Spanish-Speaking Family
Azalea Garden's Hispanic ministry, called Vino Nuevo, holds its own weekly schedule under Pastor Gladys Ashmore. The congregation meets on Sundays for a worship service at 10:00 a.m. and a prayer service at 6:00 p.m., and gathers again for Bible study on Wednesdays at 7:00 p.m. The vision of Vino Nuevo is "restaurando vidas a través del poder y amor transformador de Jesús," restoring lives through the transforming power and love of Jesus, and the congregation exists to preach the gospel of Jesus to the fallen, the hopeless, and the alienated.
Pastor Ashmore joined AGC in 2009. She previously served as a missionary to the Miskito Indians of Honduras and pastored bilingual and English-speaking congregations on Roatan. She holds a Bachelor's Degree in Pastoral Christian Ministries from the Central American Pentecostal Seminary and is an ordained minister in the Church of God.
The Prayer Center and a Church That Prays
Built during the Enlarge the House campaign, the Prayer Center is one of the most used rooms in the building. Furnished with kneeling benches and cushions, the room includes prayer stations around the walls for missionaries supported by the church, the church staff, government officials, ministries, and local missions. The room is open to anyone who wants to come in and pray, and Sunday evening prayer services that began in 2007 grew into a regular rhythm of the church's life. The verse the church points to as the reason the prayer ministry exists is Philippians 4:6: "Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God."
A Heart for the Nations
Azalea Garden identifies as a missions-minded church. Each year the congregation supports approximately thirty to forty missionaries and mission projects with prayer and finances, and short-term mission trips are sent to locations across the United States and around the world, including an annual Christmas for the Children outreach in Honduras. A long-running district missions conference, started by the church, brings missionaries to the area each January to share their work with Azalea Garden and other area churches. In the 2007-08 fiscal year, Azalea Garden was among the top six Church of God congregations in the entire movement in contributions to world missions, and the church continues to support more than twenty missionaries on a regular basis. The Benevolence Warehouse on the Centerville campus serves as a local expression of the same outreach impulse.
The Pastoral Team
Dr. Rodney Vickers has served as Senior Pastor of Azalea Garden Church since 2011, after first joining the staff in 2006 as Executive Pastor. He is an Ordained Bishop in the Church of God, a graduate of Lee University, and holds a Master of Divinity from the Pentecostal Theological Seminary and a Doctor of Ministry in Marriage and Family Therapy from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. He also serves as Chairman of the Virginia Church of God State Missions Board and as a member of the International World Missions Board of Directors.
Pastor Chris Darling joined the staff in February 2021 as the church's worship leader, with a Master's Degree in Church Music from Lee University. He and his wife Beth oversee a music ministry that leads the congregation each Sunday, and they serve on the State Worship Team for the Church of God in Virginia. Pastor Larry McMasters came to Azalea Garden in 1973 with his wife Becky, and after decades of ministry that included pastoring the Lighthouse congregation in Norfolk for nineteen years, he now serves as Senior Adult Pastor, overseeing the Young at Heart ministry. Isaac and Devan Davidson, both graduates of Regent University with bachelor's degrees in ministry, lead Azalea Kids, Fuel Youth, and the Young Adult ministry. Pastor Gladys Ashmore leads Vino Nuevo, and Monica Vines serves as Sunday School Superintendent.
Beliefs
Azalea Garden holds to the Declaration of Faith of the Church of God. The church believes the whole Bible to be the inspired Word of God, confesses one God in three persons (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit), and affirms that Jesus Christ is the only begotten Son of the Father, born of the Virgin Mary, crucified, buried, raised from the dead, and now at the right hand of the Father as Intercessor. Salvation comes through repentance and faith in the blood of Jesus Christ, with sanctification through the Word and the Holy Spirit. The church practices water baptism by immersion, observes the Lord's Supper and the washing of the saints' feet, and believes in the baptism with the Holy Ghost, with speaking in other tongues as the initial evidence. The church also believes in divine healing as part of the atonement and in the pre-millennial second coming of Jesus Christ.
Online giving is available through the church's giving page, and sermons and services are streamed through the online church.