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Hey all! New church building dittos!

Gotta share this:
Our church, Laurel Baptist Temple, was located in Laurel, MD for 25 years. We sold our building in February for $800K, which was appraised three years ago for $250K.

We figured we would sell it, and move into a new building that suited our size more. Sounds reasonable.

EXCEPT TO A ANTI-CHRISTIAN CITY COUNCIL that passed an ordinance a few years ago that prevented churches from neither building new structures nor moving into locations that were not already housing churches.

We had several places in mind, and some fell through because as a church we had to meet and vote to buy property. THat meant we had to react faster. So as a church, we gave authority to the pastor to sign intents topurchase, and require the church vote at the final signing.

We finally got a decent place, only to find out that the above ordinance prevented us from making the purchase. Something about the fact that churches do not pay taxes.

However, the city(I wanted to write something that sounds like city but more accurately describes the contents of their skulls, but that would be wrong) council failed to realize that many of our congregation are not Laurelites, but rather come as far away as 20 miles to attend.

Now, we found a place in an area that has no such ordinance. What does that mean?

It means the $10K each person spent in Laurel, on average, annually, for gas, food, and shopping at the mall and Walmart, are now going to a town five miles away.

Thanks to Laurel’s lack of insight, they just lost a lot more taxable income than they would have taken in by a for-profit business. Also, now God has much more leeway to go Sodom and Gomorrah on them.