A McLean church will break ground Sunday on a $7.5 million expansion that will greatly increase its size and capacity in the hopes of attracting new worshippers in the area’s expected population boom.

Trinity United Methodist on Dolley Madison Boulevard is planning 14,000 square feet of addition that will include new classrooms, a chapel and a nursery, church Worship Chair Susan Hunnicutt said.

She estimated the expansion would triple the church’s capacity. The expected boom in the surrounding area would make that growth possible, Hunnicutt said. The three county districts that encompass the area — Hunter Mill, Dranesville and Providence — are expected to grow by about 56,000 residents between 2005 and 2025, according to county demographic data. Many of the new residents would be concentrated in the Tysons Corner and McLean areas.

“The community grows, we grow,” Hunnicutt said

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She said church officials have planned how to carry out the expansion, which the congregation is entirely funding, for the last three or four years.

The project, however, would hardly put the about 700-member Trinity on the scale of a “mega church,” such as nearby McLean Bible Church, which draws weekend crowds of about 10,000.

“We don’t feel like we want to be a mega church,” Hunnicutt said. “Being kind of a medium-sized church [means we’re] still large enough where you don’t need to see all the same faces all the time, but it’s still small enough that the minister knows who you are.”

wflook@dcexaminer.com