Church LV opens second campus in Las Vegas Valley

In 2002, 27 people showed up for the first church service at Benny and Wendy Perez’s house.

Now, Church LV — a nondenominational Christian church — has more than 4,000 regular attendees and recently opened its second campus in the Las Vegas Valley. Its first campus is in Henderson’s Seven Hills.

“We just kept growing and growing and we outgrew our campus,” said Benny, one of the church’s pastors and founders.

The megachurch started using its new Green Valley campus — on East Sunset Road in Las Vegas — in October and held a dedication ceremony Jan. 26. Joel Osteen — a televangelist and pastor of Houston-based Lakewood Church — was the guest pastor at the dedication.

In 2018, Church LV bought an approximately 90,000-square-foot former Kmart building, and it took about 18 months to remodel the space.

While renovations were underway in March 2019, a fire broke out and caused an estimated $200,000 in damage to the roof.

The fire department did a great job of containing the fire and no one was injured, Benny said. “Lives lost or hurt is always our main concern.”

As a result of the fire, the timeline for renovations was delayed by two months. Now, the new church campus has been open for a few months.

The building includes an auditorium that can accommodate 2,000 people, a secure space for children’s classes and activities, a family worship room where parents and their children can watch the church service live on a television screen, and a lobby where attendees can mingle and chat. The church also plans to have a coffee bar.

Wendy — who’s also a pastor and founder of Church LV — said the bigger vision is for the space to be a “transformation center” that will be used nearly 24/7. As she talked on a recent Tuesday afternoon at the church, work was underway in the lobby preparing for a youth night that evening.

Phase II of the building remodel project — slated to wrap up later this year — will include basketball courts and a community center space that will be open to the public.

Starting a church

Wendy’s parents are pastors and Benny was a youth pastor in Southern California and then Seattle — the city where the couple met.

In the Pacific Northwest, Benny led “one of the nation’s greatest youth revivals,” according to the church’s website, and it led to forming an international ministry called Benny Perez Ministries.

Benny and Wendy travel to speak at churches. A couple of decades ago, one of their speaking destinations was Las Vegas.

“We kind of fell in love with Vegas,” Benny said. They didn’t know anyone when they moved to the Las Vegas Valley in 2001. But it was a convenient place to live, Benny said, due to many flight options and the ease of being able to travel.

After living in the valley for a year, “God really put in our hearts to start a church,” Benny said.

At the first worship service and Bible study at the Perezes’ house, the couple only knew two of the attendees. Children gathered upstairs in their home’s loft.

The couple continued to hold church services in their house. Once they reached 75 regular attendees, they needed to find someplace else to meet.

The church — at one point called The Church at South Las Vegas, which ran into financial woes during the recession — was officially formed in 2003. A series of moves happened during that time and at one point, the church was using the Regal Colonnade movie theater on South Eastern Avenue for services.

The Seven Hills campus opened in 2005.

Church LV today

Today, Church LV has 35 staff members — including seven pastors — and about 470 volunteers. Six of the 27 people who attended the first gathering at the Perezes’ house still attend the church.

Benny and Wendy — who’ll celebrate their 21st wedding anniversary in March — have three children, ages 19, 15 and 12. In 2013, Benny wrote a book called “More: Discovering the God of More when Life Gives You Less.”

Church LV is one of the most diverse churches in the Las Vegas Valley and is multi-generational and multi-ethnic, Benny said. “The spectrum is huge here, which we love.”

When people come to Church LV, they tend to be shocked by the diversity and make comments like, “Whoa; everyone’s here,” Benny said.

At Church LV, “we strive for authenticity,” Benny said. Everyone has challenges, and just because someone is a follower of Jesus doesn’t mean they’re perfect, he added.

Wendy said: “We don’t want to put on airs.”

The Perez couple told their congregation they were in marriage counseling and some people gasped, Benny said. “We’ll tell on ourselves and people love that.”

Benny said the church’s vision includes opening more campuses. And, he said, it would be amazing to have a campus on the Strip someday.

Contact Julie Wootton-Greener at jgreener@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-2921. Follow @julieswootton on Twitter.

If you go

Services: 9:30 and 11:30 a.m. Sundays. The Seven Hills campus also has a service at 5 p.m. Saturdays.

Locations: The Green Valley campus is at 3760 E. Sunset Road in Las Vegas. The Seven Hills campus is at 3051 W. Horizon Ridge Parkway in Henderson.

More information: 702-361-1579 or churchlv.com