When a suburban Dallas megachurch commissioned a city-mandated study required to get a new traffic light near the entrance to its parking lot, church leaders hired an engineering firm to run it.
But the staff at Lakepointe Church in Rockwall, Texas, didn’t only depend on the engineers: To make sure the results justified a stoplight, the staff prompted church members to flood the road by the church with extra traffic.
On Friday, the church, one of the largest and fastest growing in the country according to Outreach Magazine, sent an email to small-group leaders, urging them to encourage group members to sign up for a driving shift during the five-day study in order to pad the numbers.
“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.
Among the first to sign up were two pastors.
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Not long afterward, everything fell apart. A copy of the email was posted on a local Facebook page, leading to outrage. A church staffer posted a note on that Facebook page, blaming the whole affair on an overzealous staffer and saying the church had the best of intentions.
Amanda Cunningham, a former Lakepointe member who left earlier this year, isn’t buying it. “They just believe we are so dumb,” said Cunningham. “It’s almost laughable how brazen they are.”
Cunningham, who became a Christian at Lakepointe in her 30s and went on to lead small groups for troubled married couples and newcomers, said the church taught her that leaders needed to be honest and ethical. But something has changed, she said, leading her to leave the church earlier this year.
The Rockwall campus is one of six locations run by Lakepointe, which claimed more than 16,000 worshippers each weekend in 2023, according to Outreach, which publishes an annual report on large churches.
Church leaders told media that the sign-up was an “unfortunate decision” made by a staff member.
“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.”
Smith did not address questions about why church staff, including the pastor of the Rockwall campus and another longtime leader, signed up for shifts. He said the church has the best interests of the community at heart and intends to pay for the stoplight if it is approved.
“We regret how this reflects on the Body of Christ and its impact in our community,” he added. “We love our city and have much respect for our leaders. We will continue to work with the city to make the traffic around Lakepointe as safe as possible.”
City officials said that they’d been made aware of the email about the traffic study and have spoken to church leaders. They also shared more details about the traffic study, which is now canceled.
Amy Williams, director of public works for the city of Rockwall, stated in an email: “The traffic study was scheduled to be performed by an engineering firm contracted by the church. If the signal is warranted, the church would be responsible for installing the signal.”
The traffic study snafu is the latest in a series of controversies at Lakepointe since senior pastor Josh Howerton succeeded a longtime pastor in 2020. Howerton has been accused of plagiarizing his sermons. making sexist remarks in his sermons and denouncing his critics as liberal from the pulpit.
Earlier this year, he drew fire for telling women how to act on their wedding night in order to fulfill their new husband’s desires. “Just stand where he tells you to stand, wear what he tells you to wear and do what he tells you to do and you’re going to make him the happiest man in the world,” Howerton said in a February sermon.
Howerton, who has repeatedly denied any plagiarism, later apologized, saying he was joking and claiming a cancel mob had come after him. Critics pointed out that his apology was copied nearly word for word from another pastor’s apology.
Kurt Paulsen, a professor of urban planning at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, said that traffic studies are fairly common practice before adding stoplights. The idea is to get a baseline of the traffic on a roadway, then to compare that to traffic at major events, such as megachurch worship services.
The study’s results often impact how much a property owner like a church might have to pay for a stoplight — and whether the light is approved. Getting accurate data is important, Paulsen said, adding that the church’s action in trying to influence the story was a head-scratcher.
“I have never heard of someone trying to game a traffic study,” Paulsen said.
Bob Smietana is a national reporter for Religion News Service.
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14 Responses
What are we doing people? It is estimated a traffic light is anywhere from $200,000 to $500,000 and that does not include the engineering and other necessary road work. Just think what that money could go toward. 85% of tithes and offerings in the average church go to fund the staff, building and programs, which in turn benefit the giver who is enjoying the professional speaker, professional band, youth programs, air conditioning, fancy building and free doughnuts. When Paul did ask the early church to collect money it was always for the poor and usually for the poor of other churches in other cities. The modern church is so consumer driven they always need money attract more givers, and it’s just a vicious cycle. Pastors are rich, church buildings grow bigger and bigger and the world watches as Christians chase after the dollar. Oh, and yes skewing the traffic study for their benefit is a great testimony for Christ. Funny how no one knows about this ploy when it becomes public, but some of the leaders actually signed up for a shift.
It’s interesting how people get on here and spew generalizations and word vomit (including the writer of this article) without knowing or just assuming the details of a story. I go to this church and I promise you God is doing a mighty work here! We are not perfect individuals that make up this church and we will from time to time make mistakes, but to say that Lakepointe is not 100% percent invested in reaching the lost all over the world, building new churches (not just the ones associated with Lakepointe), and feeding, clothing and ministering to the needs of the poor and broken on a daily basis is just wrong information. The devil is trying his very best to stop this work at every turn, but we will not stop! Josh Howerton is a devoted, Godly man and I know that he seeks Gods will and guidance over our church and his own life daily as well as the majority of individuals who attend LakePointe. I challenge anyone reading this to pray about this, attend Lakepointe without any preconceived ideas and see for yourself. You should be praying that a church who is reaching so many continues to do so, pray for the leaders, pray for the Pastor, pray that God will provide them with wisdom and power to do his will, and not seek to tear them down. I’m not saying that true issues shouldn’t be exposed, but in this instance and for this church, the devil is trying to stop a mighty work of God. Pastor Josh, if you see this, the Lakepointe body has your back.
Religious leaders and their followers also said Jesus was doing the work of the devil when they were called white-washed tombs and caring more about doing the work of religion than actually living like He would (ie: at minimum, not manipulating government and then lying about it).
If you immediately attack anyone raising actual concerns of behavior, you might have an idol and not a pastor.
Food for thought…
Amen Paula. As the article itself states: “the church, one of the LARGEST and FASTEST GROWING in THE COUNTRY according to Outreach Magazine…” Literally thousands worshipping God at every service, the church is growing like crazy with a tremendous amount of traffic, multiple wonderful police officers out there every weekend doing their best to manage the very awesome problem of having so many people coming together to worship God. I think everyone, including the non-churchgoers who are driving on that road, would appreciate the more efficient traffic management that a stop light would bring. If someone got overzealous or careless with their messaging can we give them a little grace and assume their intentions were not evil?
It certainly sounds like thousands of people coming to the church would warrant a traffic light.
Why then the need to manipulate the results? Sounds like an ends justifying the means mentality. Not Christ-like. How about this – bring this problem in prayer to God and ask him to provide the safe and efficient means for people to come to church? Taking things into our own hands is never the way we should run things. And if the church leaders don’t know that then there is a likely problem.
One reason they might want to manipulate the results– when a study like this is done, and the study demonstrates that the need for a traffic light only exists during church services, then the church would be required to pay for most of the costs of the traffic light. If the church succeeded in manipulating the study, it would look like there was enough traffic to warrant a traffic light all days of the week, not just during church services, and then the community would pay for a significant portion of the traffic light.
I don’t live in that city so I can’t say for certain if this was the case.
One thing is clear– honesty and integrity was not the motivation behind this scheme. These people are clearly showing who they are, let’s just hope the people attending this church finally start seeing it.
overzealous? Fine – but….it’s this for me:
Smith did not address questions about why church staff, including the pastor of the Rockwall campus and another longtime leader, signed up for shifts.
Everyone knew *exactly* what they were doing – this wasn’t one person going rogue all by themselves, and now the denial and avoidance is almost worse than the original event.
No humility, no repentence, no accountability. That’s not a church. That’s a business and a brand.
If the campus actually needs the stoplight so badly, why did they try to cheat on the study? And how is systematically soliciting people to sign up to participate in said cheating “careless messaging?” It seems like it was planned pretty carefully.
Many churches, when dealing with – what is quite likely an actual traffic issue, just hire an off-duty office to direct traffic at peak hours.
I love the pearl-clutching response from the church “oh my goodness – we had no idea!” …. yet senior staff had signed up to participate. This sort of PR spinning (**lying**) should be disqualifying and would make me, 100% want to leave. If they don’t just own that, goodness know what other dust they sweep under the rug.
This is known as putting your thumb on the scale. I read something about dishonest scales in a proverb once. But then if their narcissistic sociopath of so-called “pastor” can plagiarize apologies then this stunt should not come as a surprise. I have to wonder what a forensic accounting examination of their books would turn up. If any of these people who did this were on the clock, then you are also looking at fraud.
Oh it gets better, on Reddit they found the official church announcement (HT: Wartburg Watch)
Here is the Reddit Link: https://www.reddit.com/r/Rockwall/comments/1cqc3x2/shame_on_lakepoint_church/?share_id=RrVfNBHZLIfnHUzgDfq5E&utm_content=4&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=ioscss&utm_source=share&utm_term=1&rdt=41813
Just because someone starts an org. and then sticks a sign up on it that claims it is a “church” does not automatically mean it is part of Jesus body. Nor is the fact it might tickle somebodies ears either. Let’s actually look at the fruit. Did not Jesus say something sometime about that?
Wow! I mean “Well, we really want this light, please drive by when you can” is still going to throw things off, but hourly shifts with an expected quota, and specifically specifying more drives per hour don’t count toward other shifts? I’m just surprised they were that organized about it.
It looks more like gaming the system to me. Does the city need high traffic counts to justify a new stop light? No problem, we have ways to abuse our systems, organization, and people to make it happen. Do you see how easy it is to get people on the bandwagon? Apparently they nipped it at the bud before it got too crazy and found a suitable scapegoat.