Florida County Wants to Force Churches to Stay Small
by Wendy Cloyd, assistant editor
Commissioners seek to amend zoning laws to ensure new churches have limited pews.
Pastors and concerned citizens in Palm Beach County , Fla. , are protesting as both unrealistic and unconstitutional a proposed amendment to zoning laws that would limit the size of future church-building projects.
County officials maintain residents in some communities have complained about the noise and traffic associated with church expansion. The only way to solve the problem, they maintain, is to keep churches small.
Palm Beach County commissioners have requested that the Planning and Zoning Department draft an amendment to the land development code that would severely limit the size of any future church to a scale based on the density of the neighborhood population.
Steve Stewart, senior pastor of Church in the Farms — a conservative Southern Baptist congregation — was one of many who spoke at a public meeting on the matter this week.
"We strongly encouraged them to find better ways to accomplish the same thing," he said. "If they wanted to accomplish some traffic congestion issues, some better traffic accommodations, you can do that with a slightly different code."
Current zoning is divided into three tiers: low-density, medium-density and high-density population areas. Under the proposal, a church in a high-density area could cover 75,000 square feet and have 750 seats, while a medium-density area could have 50,000 square feet and 500 seats. Buildings in low-density areas would be limited 25,000 square feet with just 250 seats.
"That 250 seats means everywhere (in the building)," Stewart explained. "If you have a fellowship hall with 100 seats, you can only put 150 in the auditorium."
Churches, he said, would be discouraged from buying property in low-density areas because they couldn't develop it.
"If this is happening in Palm Beach County , it could be happening in other quickly developing counties throughout various states," Stewart said. "We can't let this become a legal precedent — if this became a precedent, my word, what it could do."
At the public meeting, he asked planners to consider what would happen if a church was a highly effective at ministry.
"What if we deliver relevant sermons, we have great worship, we have great children's and youth programs, we have great addiction therapy — we have great ministry, and people drive over from other neighborhoods?" he asked. "And here was their response: 'Well, they can go to church in their own neighborhood.' "
Proponents of the amendment say they simply want churches to fit the size and look of their neighborhoods and want to avoid traffic problems every Sunday morning.
"We are totally sympathetic to that," Stewart said. "We understand that we have a responsibility in a county to beautify it and to keep the problems to a minimum. Not one pastor I know would argue that. We have a responsibility to be good neighbors.
"But at the same time we have a responsibility to our communities, and if a church happens to be effective at ministry, they are going to attract a crowd."
The proposal doesn't just affect Christian churches, either.
"This affects synagogues, mosques, every house of worship," Stewart said. "They are trying to say this is for all nonprofit assembly, but interestingly it is not for schools or anything commercial. In other words, it doesn't apply to anything they would get tax income from."
http://www.family.org/cforum/news/a0039952.cfm
Florida County wants to force worship places to stay small (mosques, synagogues, etc) 
