JD Greears Megachurch Sues NC County For Religious Discrimination As It Seeks To Expand

Aged Southern Baptist Convention President J.D. Greear’s multi-campus The Summit Church in North Carolina has filed a lawsuit towards the Chatham County Board of Commissioners alleging non secular discrimination after it rejected the church’s quiz to rezone with regards to 100 acres of land to dwelling its Chapel Hill campus.

The 743-page lawsuit filed on Feb. 14 in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina and reviewed by The Christian Post, seeks to position in pressure the church’s “civil rights as enshrined in the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution and codified in the Spiritual Land Utilize and Institutionalized Folks Act.”

Greear’s imaginative and prescient for North Carolina’s Triangle build of living to verify other folks reside “no better than fifteen minutes from a thriving evangelical church” is highlighted. Summit Church currently has 13 campuses meeting in 12 locations, with every web web hosting between two and 4 services and products per week, in accordance with the court filing.

“Summit’s multi-build of living technique is a key half of its non secular prepare. Summit’s impartial is to originate obvious each person in the Triangle build of living lives no better than fifteen minutes from a thriving evangelical church campus the build the gospel is preached,” the lawsuit states. “Pastor Greear has described succinctly the significance of local church buildings to evangelism: ‘You would possibly per chance maybe per chance per chance drive forty five minutes to a church you’re alive to on, however that individual you appropriate met at Starbucks who doesn’t know Jesus obtained’t be as committed.’”

The church explained in its lawsuit that since launching the Chapel Hill campus in 2013, they’ve been meeting weekly at East Chapel Hill Excessive College, however the gap is no longer any longer ample for his or her wants. Roughly 800 other folks wait on services and products at East Chapel Hill Excessive College and a few 15% of those churchgoers trot back and forth from Chatham County.

In step with the lawsuit, closing twelve months, Summit Church obtained by an settlement the likelihood to aquire six parcels of land totaling 97 acres in Chatham County. The land used to be before the entirety earmarked in 2019 to be developed into an active-adult (55+) community called “Herndon Farms” however the approval for that community expired since the pattern plans weren’t submitted by the minimize-off date established by the ordinance.

In early December 2023, Summit Church obtained an passion in the six undeveloped parcels by an settlement with the property owner which grants them the likelihood to aquire the parcels by July 1.

Sooner than the church entered that settlement, their planning and originate representative, Qunity, PA, organized a pre-submittal meeting with analysis workers representing every stage of Chatham County’s rezoning task in October 2023. County workers came across the church’s conception to form the land to be per the county’s comprehensive land exhaust conception called Idea Chatham apart from to its Future Utilize Design.

As a half of its rezoning application to the County’s Planning Department, Summit Church used to be moreover required by ordinance to meet with the Chatham County Look Commission and preserve a Neighborhood Assembly. The church met with the Chatham County Look Commission on April 24, 2024, and held the community meeting on April 29, 2024, the build attendees “were angry to explore a project proposed that can again the community and restrict environmental impacts [and] density.”

About a month later, the church submitted its rezoning application that seeks to rezone three of the parcels or roughly 50 acres of land on the jap facet of the toll road to Conditional District-Assign of job & Institutional. The church moreover submitted a separate application to restore the last three parcels to their pre-2022 zoning, R-1, since the Church “has no plans to form them today” explains the lawsuit.

No matter the initial pork up for the church’s rezoning application at a public hearing on Aug. 19, 2024, then-Vice Chair Karen Howard of the Board of Commissioners called Summit Church “a unhappy fit for what we’re envisioning” and “antithetical to real rural personality preservation.”

“Vice Chair Howard moreover took discipline with outsiders—’overflow from in other locations’—worshipping in Chatham County. When Summit Church’s representative famed that the ‘most exhaust’ contemplated in the seek recordsdata from used to be in maintaining with weekly Sunday services and products, Vice Chair Howard wrongly concluded that this supposed that attendees ‘aren’t Chatham County residents . . . on yarn of other folks that are . . . seeking to search out community in a church aren’t appropriate going on Sunday,’” the lawsuit states.

Commissioners moreover raised discipline concerning the lack of tax earnings if the church can also honest serene turned into the recent owners of the land.

“Forward of the August 19 hearing, no elected expert or member of the planning workers had publicly expressed any discipline in the case of Summit’s rezoning quiz or its consistency with Idea Chatham. Certainly, the total consensus used to be that Summit’s proposal achieved Idea Chatham’s targets as successfully or greater than the Herndon Farms conception,” the lawsuit argues.

At a planning board meeting in September 2024, Chatham County residents many cases raised discipline concerning the presence of a megachurch in their neighborhood that “would be extra fitting in [an] metropolis atmosphere [,] no longer a rural county the build we impress start spaces.”

“Diversified commenters suggested that Chatham County residents must wait on ‘any of the different Baptist church buildings that are already here.’ As one resident acknowledged: ‘Now we occupy got the church buildings that are here, procure one of those runt church buildings and occupy fun with that,’” the lawsuit notes.

While it used to be famed by Planning Board member Tony Mayer that there weren’t any certain causes to object to the church’s rezoning application, the lawsuit alleges that the board’s Vice Chair Mary Roodkowsky argued that Summit Church “isn’t any longer esteem the different church buildings now we occupy in the County” and it used to be “greater suited in a extra metropolis atmosphere. It is no longer a rural church whenever you assert a rural church.”

The Planning Board did no longer vote on a recommendation for the church’s application at that meeting in September however chose to continue the matter in October 2024.

Summit Church states in the swimsuit that it sought to contend with concerns raised by members of the county’s Planning Board which bought public comments, a couple of of which branded the church as “a immense, mountainous alternate masquerading as a dwelling of adore.”

“Yet any other commenter added that ‘praising Jesus doesn’t in actuality require the pattern of a 50 acre, 88,000 sq toes, 3000 parishioner megachurch.’ One even suggested that building the church used to be a horrid act that will per chance maybe ‘trot towards the teachings of Jesus to adore your neighbor as yourself,’” the swimsuit adds.

Diversified commenters towards the church claimed that Summit Church doesn’t fit Chatham County’s “innovative, LGBTQ-friendly, and openminded ambiance.”

“The final public comments continue at dimension, in writing and in individual on the Planning Board’s public hearings. They consult with Summit Church as a ‘monstrosity.’ They accuse Summit Church of attempting to ‘colonize’ Chatham County. They divulge that ‘Megachurches’ esteem Summit achieve a ‘segregation attain’ that ‘contradicts the historic role of church buildings as institutions that compile diverse groups of other folks on equal footing,’” the lawsuit states while pointing to Summit Church and Greear’s successfully-documented dedication to ethnic cohesion.

The County Commissioners finally voted unanimously to reject Summit Church’s rezoning application despite the church’s “quiz being per Idea Chatham and the Future Utilize Design, and despite the Look Commission’s recognition of Summit Church’s out of the ordinary efforts to defend the rural personality of the region,” the lawsuit states.

The expert purpose given for denying the church’s application, in accordance with the lawsuit, is that it “used to be ‘no longer per’ Idea Chatham and used to be no longer ‘cheap and in the overall public passion’ on yarn of it did no longer ‘provid[e] a diversity in the tax earnings and doesn’t provide extra excessive-quality jobs for the region.’”

Summit Church’s lawsuit asks the court to “grant preliminary and permanent injunctive reduction requiring the County to approve Summit Church’s rezoning quiz and associated build of living conception; enter a Declaratory Judgment that the County’s denial of Summit Church’s rezoning applications violates RLUIPA, and is therefore void; award Summit Church its prices and charges, at the side of cheap attorney’s charges; the total damages to which Summit Church is entitled; and this kind of further reduction because it deems appropriate.”

Source:www.christianpost.com