Home >  Local News

Sunday, September 08, 2002

By Tom Barnes, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

The world's most famous groundhog may be about to get religion -- or at least a new landlord.

	Handler Bill Deeley and Punxsutawney Phil in February. (Steve Mellon, Post-Gazette)

A group of Southern Baptists is trying to raise $530,000 to buy the Punxsutawney Sportsman's Club, a 93-acre property that includes Gobbler's Knob.

That's the home of media star Phil the groundhog, who pops out every Feb. 2 and either sees his shadow or doesn't, thus "predicting" how much more of winter is left.

But all you Punxsutawney Phil fanatics out there -- "Groundhog Day" star Bill Murray and all the rest -- don't have to worry about the Southern Baptists evicting the furry critter from the public eye.

If it is able to raise the money needed to buy the land, the Conemaugh Valley Baptist Association says it has no plans to do away with Phil and his annual hoopla.

"We want to be the best friend Phil ever had," quipped the Rev. Dr. Douglas Pilot, the ordained pastor of a small Southern Baptist congregation that's seeking to buy the sportsman's club land.

"We are very much in favor of letting Phil do his thing" at Gobbler's Knob, Pilot added. "We would like to develop the balance of the site as a church camp and conference center. But we'll still have the [groundhog] ceremony. People won't see any real difference with that."

Pilot is pursuing an ambitious, multimillion-dollar plan to build a large camp for youths and adults, with a facility to hold church conferences with nationally known speakers, plus a recreational vehicle park. The total cost of the project hasn't been determined yet.

"Phil will still be there," added Mitch Johnson, vice president of the sportsman's club, which is seeking new land in a more rural setting for its hunting and fishing activities.

The 93 acres have been for sale since October. Johnson said the club had to move because, "The town has encroached on the land too much. There are too many houses around it."

He said talks have been progressing well with the church, which he calls "a good bunch of people."

Still, Pilot's tiny congregation of 15 to 20 worshippers is still far from its fund-raising goal.

The congregation is less than a year old and now meets in a Punxsy senior-citizen center.

At first glance, the fund-raising task would seem to be impossible, but the small congregation is by no means acting alone.

First of all, said church member Rusty Barbe, there's God.

"To succeed, this has to be of the Lord," said Barbe, a retired newspaper worker from Pittsburgh. "We certainly aren't a group of charismatic fund-raisers."

And while the Punxsy congregation is small, it's part of a huge national church.

With 16 million members and 46,000 churches, the Southern Baptist Convention is the largest Protestant denomination in the United States.

And members in other states are already trying to help. Barbe said Southern Baptists in Alabama have pledged to raise $100,000 toward the land purchase.

One factor that should help hold down construction costs for the camp and conference center is that church members can do a lot of construction work themselves.

There are traveling missionaries, workers and volunteers from the denomination, a group called Campers on Mission that travels from state to state in recreational vehicles. They're called "church planters," meaning they help set up new congregations.

That's why -- after the land is purchased -- the first priority is to build a recreational vehicle park with hookups for electricity, water and sewer facilities so the traveling builders can come to Punxsy in large numbers.

Pilot said he and other church officials will meet in October with the sportsman's club to report on how the fund raising is coming along.

The church has already cleared the first hurdle, supplying $26,500 as a down payment.

"We are picking up some steam," Pilot said.

And in the effort to raise additional funding for the camp/conference center project, Pilot is getting the word out, through both the denomination's Web site and secular news media.

"We are delighted at the visionary, forward-looking perspective of our brothers and sisters in Pennsylvania, and we're praying for the success of their vision," said Bill Merrell, a Southern Baptist spokesman at church headquarters in Nashville, Tenn.

Pilot said the camp/conference center would be the first such Southern Baptist facility north of the Mason-Dixon line, but that in the South they're not unusual.

"There are numerous regional conference centers in the Southern Baptist Convention," comparable to the size of the Punxsy facility, Merrell said.

The denomination has two especially large centers that draw from a wider geographical area, one in Ridgecrest, N.C., and one in Glorieta, N.M.

Hundreds of people at a time flock to hear well-known speakers such as Franklin Graham (son of Billy Graham), media personality and Christian psychologist Dr. James Dobson and the Rev. Charles Stanley, a popular radio preacher from Atlanta.

Oklahoma has a church camp where 40,000 teens attend workshops and hear speakers every summer, Merrell added.

Pilot said his vision for the proposed Punxsy facility is for a conference center that could hold several hundred people at a time, with a winterized building to house campers, both youths and adults, and a large dining hall. Conferences usually last two to four days.

On its 93 acres, the sportsman's club includes a 31,000-square-foot building, which the Punxsy congregation would use for its church, vacating the senior center.

"This is the biggest thing I've attempted in my life," said Pilot. "It's kind of scary."

He's hoping to raise the $530,000 by the end of the year so he can buy the land and start work early next year on creating the RV hookups.

More information is available on the Web at www.byhisgrace.com/cvba or by calling Pilot at 1-814-695-6101 or writing him at 276 Maple Hollow Road, Duncansville, Pa. 16635.