MARK WAITE / PVT Pastor Lonnie Biggs in front of the old meeting room at Willow Creek Golf Course clubhouse, which will bcome the sanctuary for Shadow Mountain Christian Fellowship Sunday services. Advertisement

The words "Willow Creek Golf Course" are still visible on the side of the clubhouse although the letters have been removed.

The exterior will soon be painted over by church volunteers, and the new letters will advertise Shadow Mountain Christian Fellowship with the Calvary Chapel dove.

Members of the non-denominational church hope to be moved into their new home in time for services on the first Sunday in August.

"That might be a little ambitious, but I don't think it's impossible by any means," Pastor Lonnie Biggs said.

The beer taps in the old bar and restaurant have been taken out and will be replaced by women serving cookies after church services. The restaurant will also serve as an overflow area in case attendance at Sunday services in the meeting room exceeds the 80 or so parishioners.

The pro shop will be used for the Sunday school area, the adjacent Willow Creek office space will be used for a nursery. A large cabinet that displayed golf news will display Quilts for Comfort and information on church missionary work.

Church volunteers were busy this week sweeping up the property and all the pine needles in the parking lot, repairing some dry wall, repainting the interior a light green and other work.

The water should be turned on at any time, Biggs said, for washing paint brushes and mopping the floors.

Shadow Mountain Fellowship had been holding Sunday services at Rosemary Clarke Middle School since the school opened several years ago. Other activities are held at Koinonia House, a manufactured home on Mesquite Avenue.

"This has been a miracle. God has done an amazing thing in that arrangement with the school. We've been with the school for years and not to get off on a tangent, but the stimulus package in the fine print states that if a school wants to have access to any of the stimulus money they cannot have ongoing religious activities on the premises," Biggs said.

Biggs first had his eye on the old Nevada Division of Motor Vehicles building on East Basin Avenue but he said that would be a little small.

"I was at the corner of Pahrump Valley Boulevard and Calvada, and I was just saying, 'Lord, these are your people, where do you want your people to meet on Sundays?'" Biggs said. "I just really felt that I was supposed to come by the golf course," he said.

Biggs saw some of the disrepair around the golf course clubhouse. He stopped to visit an old acquaintance, Dan Simmons, who lives on the golf course. Coincidentally, Simmons was going to talk to the new owner of Willow Creek Golf Course, Ashland Capital owner Jim Scott, that afternoon about the pond in front of his house. Simmons broached the idea with Scott about letting the church use the clubhouse.

"I guess it's a symbiotic relationship in that it was just a matter of time before someone threw a brick through the window and people were sleeping in this place," Biggs said. "With the kids that were hanging around, it was just a short time before it would be tagged and it would turn into a tremendous eyesore at that point."

Besides Sunday services and Sunday school, Biggs said his church will host women's studies on Tuesdays, a mid-week study on Wednesday and youth activities on Thursday. Biggs and pastor Neal Owen from New Hope Christian Academy could finally have a location for a Friday night Christian fellowship gathering with coffee in the old Willow Creek bar and restaurant area, he said.

Biggs expects the church to occupy the building five to six days per week. The church will pay the utilities and has insurance, he said.

Church volunteers got the keys over the Fourth of July weekend and hit the ground running, sprucing it up.

"On behalf of the people that left the place, from what I saw there was no vindictiveness in their departure -- they didn't vandalize anything, there were no holes in the wall. The place was in very good shape it just needed to be cleaned up," Biggs said.

Shadow Mountain Fellowship is affiliated with Calvary Chapels based in Costa Mesa, Calif. Biggs said they teach the Bible verse by verse without espousing topical tangents.

But wait, wasn't that a golf cap on pastor Biggs' head while he directed the cleanup activities Tuesday afternoon?

Biggs admits he's a golfer himself. The cap advertising the Dumaguete Golf and Country Club was a souvenir from missionary work he performed in the Philippines.

"Now God has figured out a way for me to be out on the golf course every Sunday -- but not playing golf," Biggs said.

While he'd probably like to keep the clubhouse for church functions, Biggs said, "I told the owner when I spoke with him, I'm praying for both of us because I know he's got things as well. But I know God has a way of blessing us as well as the owner."