A John Yeates Middle School business and information technology teacher is planning to go high-tech with a new church she’s starting.

The Rev. Tonya Watkins Spruill said she decided to start working on her plans for Acts Full Gospel Community Church last May, after “God began to speak.”

Spruill sought to dispel any misconceptions her church is affiliated with the Full Gospel denomination.

“We are a Baptist church,” she said. “We hold firm to the Baptist faith and message.”

Spruill said she is set to graduate from Regent University with a dual master’s in divinity, with a concentration in theology, and educational leadership with an endorsement in administration and supervision.

She said she has been a member of East End Baptist Church for 30 years or more. “That’s where I was baptized and married, where the service was held when my mom passed away, where my children were baptized and I just had a granddaughter baptized there,” she said.

“That’s where my foundation and my teaching came from.”

Spruill said God first gave her a vision to start her own church in a dream almost two years ago.

“It didn’t understand what it meant,” she said. “He just said, ‘Birth a ministry.’

“I prayed about it, then people began to speak about what God showed me. Then I prayed some more, and God confirmed that he wanted me to plant a church.”

Spruill said she is leading a “core group” of six to start the church, which will begin with 15 to 20 members.

She invited the community to a launch service in the Black Box Theater at King’s Fork High School at 3 p.m. on Aug. 1. Regular Sunday services, beginning the following day, will be held there at 10 a.m., following Sunday school from 9 to 9:45 a.m.

The School Board has approved Spruill’s church to use the high school.

Spruill said she’s working on getting a church website up and running, which will provide online access to her sermons.

Church members will also join her at 7 p.m. Wednesdays for “inspirational word and prayer,” she said, adding she’s looking for an appropriate location for that, which would also be streamed live online.

Spruill is planning to start “conference call prayer” on Tuesdays at 7 p.m., too. And she’ll be hitting the airwaves on AM 1270, Saturdays at 11 a.m. from the beginning of June.

Spruill plans to utilize social media to spread God’s word, including Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

“I love to teach, and I love my students,” Spruill said. “I’m not going to mix the two. My job is my job, and ministry is ministry.”