This is the dumbest low-stakes church scandal ever

May 17, 2024

Given the kind of church scandals we’ve seen over the years, it’s always nice to see one so ridiculous—so absolutely unnecessary—that you start to think the leaders just can’t help themselves.

That’s what happened at Lakepointe Church in Texas last week.

The megachurch really wants the city to put up a traffic light near the south entrance to its Rockwall campus. Since it’s clearly for the benefit of the church, not the city, the church was planning to pay for the entire thing. (This is not a church/state separation issue.)

There’s also a selfish reason for the church to get that stoplight: Right now, before any given service, they have to pay officers to direct traffic. Getting a stoplight at a busy entrance would be cheaper for them over the long term since they wouldn’t need to rely on outside help.

In either case, though, city leaders need to approve that request, and they would only do that if there’s a steady stream of cars in the area. After all, why put up a traffic light when a stop sign will do the trick?

That’s why the paperwork involved in the process involves, among other things, an accurate count of traffic at the intersection. Lakepointe Church hired an engineering firm to take care of that. (We don’t know which firm they hired or if that firm has any connection to the church.)

Up to this point, everything was by the book.

But this is a Christian megachurch that wants a particular outcome. They’re not going to rely on the truth when they have the option of manipulating the truth in order to deceive people. (It’s what they do best.)

So, according to Bob Smietana of Religion News Service, the church then sent out an email to small-group leaders asking them to have their members sign up for time slots to drive in that area. In other words, in order to pad the numbers and convince city leaders that there were so many cars in the area that a traffic light was essential, they asked Christians to create more traffic over the course of the week that the engineering firm was taking its measurements.

“Each shift is a commitment to drive the prescribed route 10 times within that hour shift. It’s great if you make more than 10 laps within the hour, but laps are only counted toward that specific shift,” according to a copy of the email that linked to SignUpGenius.com.

What email, you ask? This email:

(Follow above article link to view photos/PDFs that accompany this article.)

Dear Life Group Leader,

Please make this announcement to your Life Groups this weekend:

Calling ALL Life Groups!

In an effort to ease traffic, better serve our city and provide a better experience for those who attend Lakepointe Church: WE NEED YOUR HELP to get a traffic light at the Ralph Hall entrance!

Life Groups can help by signing up for shifts throughout May 14, 15, 16, 18 and 19. Everyone in the life group can sign up for as many shifts as they'd like across the week (max one shift per hour).

Each shift is a commitment to drive the prescribed route 10 times within that hour shift.

It's great if you make more than 10 laps within the hour, but laps are only counted toward that specific shift.

Click HERE to sign up for your shifts now.

(Map of route will be distributed on Monday, May 13th)

Once you've signed up and are ready to begin driving, please begin your shift at the beginning of the hour. It's essential you keep your commitment within the hour you sign up for, if we miss one block of time we miss the entire exercise. 

It didn’t take long for the email and the sign-up page to leak to the public… and that’s when shit hit the fan.

The city said it wouldn’t use the traffic counts put forth by the engineering firm, the church leaders scrambled to deny responsibility, and former members took a victory lap because their instincts about the megachurch were proven correct.

“That decision was made without knowledge by senior executive leadership at Lakepointe and the sign-up list was immediately taken down as we were made aware of what occurred,” Tim Smith, senior executive pastor, said in an emailed statement. “We immediately apologized to our city leaders who made the decision to postpone the traffic count. We are in the process of reaching out to all the leaders who received the sign up and are apologizing to them as well.”

…

Church leaders told Religion News Service that the sign-up was an “unfortunate decision” made by a staff member.

That makes as much sense as Pope Francis denying sexual abuse allegations inside a particular Catholic diocese because he wasn’t personally made aware of it. The Rockwall campus sure as hell knew what was going on! Nicholas Costello is the pastor at that campus, and he was one of the people who immediately signed up for a driving shift, according to screenshots of the SignUpGenius page an anonymous reader sent me:

When a copy of the church’s email was posted in a private Facebook page for city residents, Chris Burkley, “Lead Pastor of Creative” for Lakepointe Church, explained that this was all the fault of a “zealous team member.” (Which, to be fair, is pretty creative.)

See, everyone? It was just a rogue team member! No one else knew about it! Even though the initial email was sent by someone that had access to the church’s account and could contact all small-group worship leaders… and even though people in church leadership signed up to boost traffic numbers… and even though the sign-up list had clearly been thought out enough that they knew exactly how many people were needed, and at which times, in order to get the results they wanted.

(By the way, Burkley says in that post that “city officials… understandably have made the decision to postpone the traffic count,” which, if true, suggests that the church was eager to move forward with the fake data had they not been caught.)

The church didn’t address how putting more unnecessary traffic on the roads could increase the possibility of an accident.

They clearly didn’t care about the environmental impact of making people drive for hours when they don’t have to.

They also didn’t mind that they were literally asking people to waste their time in hourly shifts.

All Lakepointe had to do was put up the cash and… that’s it. Let the chips fall where they may. They couldn’t do it. It was an unforced error in an effort to make the church look more important than it actually is.

It’s not even the only unforced error by the church in recent memory!

Just last month, Lakepointe’s lead pastor, Josh Howerton, made news after telling a “joke” about how women needed to obey their husbands sexually on their wedding night. “Just stand where he tells you to stand, wear what he tells you to wear, and do what he tells you to do,” he said in the punchline.

That “joke” was bad enough, but after he issued an apology, it was quickly discovered that he plagiarized the apology, nearly word-for-word, from another pastor. (Howerton then insisted he had permission to do it.)

The point is: This church has a habit of taking the dishonest path, never taking responsibility for it, all so they can tell their sheep how everyone else is immoral.

They know that being honest would work against their best interests. So they lie… or at least hope that their dishonesty goes undetected. If the leaders of an organization are supposed to set the tone for everyone else, then it’s clear that decent people shouldn’t want anything to do with this church.

These examples of manipulation don’t rise to the level of abuse as we’ve seen in other churches, but it’s clear they’re only upset at getting caught, not taking the low road in the first place.