ROYAL PALM BEACH — One of the fastest growing churches in Palm Beach County has found a permanent home — a vacant discount department store.

The leaders of Christ Fellowship Church signed a contract Monday to purchase the Target building on State Road 7 and Southern Boulevard, also making the church one of the largest in the area.

Located in the commercial hub of the western community, the store is expected to be transformed into a house of worship by early 2006.

"We're exploring a variety of plans, including raising the roof a little bit and raising the roof quite a bit," said Associate Executive Pastor Dave Lonsberry. "Our plan is to use the existing walls."

Lonsberry said he couldn't discuss the purchase price because the church entered into a confidentiality agreement preventing the terms of the deal to be discussed until the closing in July.

Christ Fellowship, which is holding on to its original base church in Palm Beach Gardens, expanded to the county's western reaches in August after discovering that many families were commuting to the church.

"It was a 35-minute drive," said church member Sue Kuoppala of Wellington. "It was difficult."

Four months after moving into temporary space in Wellington, about 1,300 people were attending one of three weekend services being held at the auditorium at Polo Park Middle School. Now, 1,600 people attend services there.

"We've been growing steadily," said Lonsberry who estimates that Christ Fellowship has 10,000 church members in both locations.

The church encourages families to create small groups to stay connected and has 26 such groups meeting in the western communities.

The Wellington church has a pastor who leads each service before a taped message from its charismatic leader Pastor Tom Mullins is delivered to church members. Once the 116,000-square-foot store is transformed into a church, plans include replacing Mullins' taped sermons with a live-feed from the Palm Beach Gardens church.

Christ Fellowship is exploding in growth and ambition. Describing it as a church for all people, church leaders want to open a church in every corner of the county.

The idea is masterminded by Mullins, who founded the nondenominational church, and came up with the aggressive expansion operation he called "Impacting Faith."

The vision: To take churches into neighborhoods where churches are lacking and development is booming.

The expansion west is part of that vision, which also includes plans to open houses of worship — or regional campuses — in the Treasure Coast and southern Palm Beach county. And in addition to having a pastor at each church, live video feeds featuring Mullins would then be piped into each location.

Next month, Christ Fellowship will begin offering church services at the Harriet Himmel Theater in CityPlace. The church intends to target college students.

Expanding church services to multiple locations is a tested method, said Lonsberry, who along with Mullins and other church leaders visited churches throughout the country that are applying the multi-campus strategy.

"We want to try to go to them (people) in practical ways. That means we have to go beyond the walls we have at the church on Northlake Boulevard," Lonsberry said.

The expansion could make Christ Fellowship one of the largest in South Florida, rivaling Coral Ridge Ministries, the Fort Lauderdale-based broadcasting empire of the Rev. D. James Kennedy. Kennedy leads the 10,000 member Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church, which has about 12 ministers and employs almost 100 workers in its various ministries, along with hundreds of volunteers.

"We like to say we're one heart, one church, meeting in many locations," Lonsberry said.