Timbercreek Church builds first facility

Timbercreek Assembly of God recently moved into its own 25,000-square-foot building at 3953 W. FR 168, at the corner of James River Freeway and Highway FF.

The new, $1.2 million building seats 550 and includes 13 classrooms and an 8,000-square-foot children's facility where the church offices and a multipurpose room are located.

Godwin & Associates provided architectural and engineering services for the project, and Nabholz Construction was the general contractor.

The church, which has an average at-tendance of 850 to 900 on Sunday mornings, started with a congregation of 132.

It originally began meeting at the Pal-ace Theater, 2220 W. Chesterfield Blvd., in September 1999, and was meeting at New Covenant Academy prior to the move.

"We went from one to two theaters in the first week," Senior Pastor Paul C. Kirk said. "The adults had one theater and the kids had another one. We were at New Covenant for two years. After only five weeks of being in our brand new building, we had to go to two Sunday morning services because we ran out of room."

The new building originally was going to be built on five acres on West Bypass.

"But the church grew so fast, it didn't make sense to build there," Kirk said. Those five acres are now for sale.

Timbercreek was a dream of John Lindell's, the senior pastor at James Riv-er Assembly of God, which initially funded Timbercreek

Kirk moved to Springfield from Rose-ville, Mich., with his wife Kelly and their four children five years ago, so he could attend Central Bible College.

After attending James River Assembly for six months, Kirk became the church's discipleship pastor. Kirk said that when Lindell asked him to be pastor of Tim-bercreek Assembly, Kirk initially turned him down. "But over the next six months, God gave me a passion for Springfield, west Springfield," he said.

Kirk's goals for the church are to be "practical in ministry and relevant in our teaching. Another goal was to add more staff, which we've just done. We've hired a full-time children's pastor and a youth pastor and his wife, who will work as a team."