by Joe Snyder
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One Sunday morning, in a small town, a lady drives to a convenience store where she muses over the recent increase in new construction that she fears will ruin her town’s quietness and calm. No, there weren’t any Wal-Marts, big office buildings or new factories coming in. What she feared was that a promised new church will ruin her town’s peace and quiet.
The focus of her fear was that "we already have enough churches and the spread of the spiritual is just another part of development sprawl. We already have too many churches in town. Now more are coming and all they will bring is traffic and noise."
Folks, this really happened in Seminole County, Florida where residents lost a battle to restrict the building of two additional churches there. One of the churches, River Run Christian, is building a 500-seat sanctuary which will include a gym, athletic field and pre-school.
"The old concept of a church like the one on Walton Mountain that people walk to once a week and then go home is a thing of the past," said the lawyer who represents the residents who want to stop the new church. "Being a successful church today means being a growth-oriented, seven-day-a-week operation."
However, new churches in rural and suburban areas are prompting opposition from homeowners in increasing numbers.
"There’s a nationwide epidemic of churches being mistreated when they want to expand," says Eric Stanley, a lawyer with the nonprofit Liberty Council, based in Orlando. His group has fought proposed restrictions on 108 churches since 1999. "It requires a lot of litigation and it takes a lot of negotiation," Stanley says. "A lot of people who live in quiet, rural areas perceive a new church as a hassle."
"People move to rural areas because they want some personal space at a reasonable price," says Ed McMahon, a senior fellow at the Urban Land Institute in Washington, D.C. "Churches are doing the same thing. They see rural areas as the new ‘Promised Land’ but folks in most small towns don’t care too much for change."
To many rural folks, a new church is just another big building with a parking lot. More noise and more traffic.
In a few rural areas back east, townspeople put in a "no commercial kitchen clause" which actually meant kitchen areas will be kept small so church dinners will become rare and the number of events the congregation might hold will be reduced. It appears the opposition might not be aware of the First Amendment and the Federal Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act of 2000, which prohibits regulations that impose a "substantial burden" on churches.
Not everyone is taking the "live and let live" approach. Chasing churches to other locations may not stir a "not-in-my-backyard" attitude, but obviously churches ought to have some priority in where they want to locate. Personally, I’d not want to belong to a church that feared to make a little noise in God’s behalf.