Former Southern Baptist Convention President J.D. Greear’s multi-campus The Summit Church in North Carolina has filed a lawsuit against the Chatham County Board of Commissioners alleging religious discrimination after it rejected the church’s request to rezone nearly 100 acres of land to house 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 enforce the church’s “civil rights as enshrined in the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution and codified in the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act.”
Greear’s vision for North Carolina’s Triangle region to ensure people live “no more than fifteen minutes from a thriving evangelical church” is highlighted. Summit Church currently has 13 campuses meeting in 12 locations, with each hosting between two and four services each week, according to the court filing.
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“Summit’s multi-site strategy is a key part of its religious practice. Summit’s goal is to ensure that everyone in the Triangle region lives no more than fifteen minutes from a thriving evangelical church campus where the gospel is preached,” the lawsuit states. “Pastor Greear has described succinctly the importance of local churches to evangelism: ‘You might drive 45 minutes to a church you love, but that person you just met at Starbucks who doesn’t know Jesus won’t be as committed.’”
The church explained in its lawsuit that since launching the Chapel Hill campus in 2013, they have been meeting weekly at East Chapel Hill High School, but the site is no longer sufficient for their needs. Approximately 800 people attend services at East Chapel Hill High School and some 15% of those churchgoers travel from Chatham County.
According to the lawsuit, last year, Summit Church acquired through an agreement the option to purchase six parcels of land totaling 97 acres in Chatham County. The land was initially earmarked in 2019 to be developed into an active-adult (55+) community called “Herndon Farms” but the approval for that community expired because the development plans were not submitted by the deadline established by the ordinance.
In early December 2023, Summit Church acquired an interest in the six undeveloped parcels through an agreement with the property owner which grants them the option to purchase the parcels by July 1.
Before the church entered that agreement, their planning and design representative, Qunity, PA, arranged a pre-submittal meeting with review staff representing each stage of Chatham County’s rezoning process in October 2023. County staff found the church’s plan to develop the land to be consistent with the county’s comprehensive land use plan called Plan Chatham as well as its Future Use Map.
As a part of its rezoning application to the County’s Planning Department, Summit Church was also required by ordinance to meet with the Chatham County Appearance Commission and hold a Community Meeting. The church met with the Chatham County Appearance Commission on April 24, 2024, and held the community meeting on April 29, 2024, where attendees “were excited to see a project proposed that will benefit the community and limit environmental impacts [and] density.”
About a month later, the church submitted its rezoning application that seeks to rezone three of the parcels or approximately 50 acres of land on the eastern side of the highway to Conditional District-Office & Institutional. The church also submitted a separate application to restore the remaining three parcels to their pre-2022 zoning, R-1, because the Church “has no plans to develop them at this time” explains the lawsuit.
Despite the initial support 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 poor fit for what we are envisioning” and “antithetical to real rural character preservation.”
“Vice Chair Howard also took issue with outsiders—’overflow from somewhere else’—worshipping in Chatham County. When Summit Church’s representative noted that the ‘maximum use’ contemplated in the study was based on weekly Sunday services, Vice Chair Howard wrongly concluded that this meant that attendees ‘aren’t Chatham County residents . . . because people who are . . . trying to find community in a church aren’t just going on Sunday,’” the lawsuit states.
Commissioners also raised concern about the loss of tax revenue if the church should become the new owners of the land.
“Prior to the August 19 hearing, no elected official or member of the planning staff had publicly expressed any concern regarding Summit’s rezoning request or its consistency with Plan Chatham. Indeed, the general consensus was that Summit’s proposal accomplished Plan Chatham’s goals as well or better than the Herndon Farms plan,” the lawsuit argues.
At a planning board meeting in September 2024, Chatham County residents repeatedly raised concern about the presence of a megachurch in their neighborhood that “would be more fitting in [an] urban environment [,] not a rural county where we value open spaces.”
“Other commenters suggested that Chatham County residents ought to attend ‘any of the other Baptist churches that are already here.’ As one resident stated: ‘We have the churches that are here, find one of those little churches and have fun with that,’” the lawsuit notes.
While it was noted by Planning Board member Tony Mayer that there weren’t any clear reasons to object to the church’s rezoning application, the lawsuit alleges that the board’s Vice Chair Mary Roodkowsky argued that Summit Church “is not like the other churches we have in the County” and it was “better suited in a more urban environment. It is not a rural church when you picture a rural church.”
The Planning Board did not vote on a recommendation for the church’s application at that meeting in September but chose to continue the matter in October 2024.
Summit Church states in the suit that it sought to address concerns raised by members of the county’s Planning Board which received public comments, some of which branded the church as “a large, big business masquerading as a house of worship.”
“Another commenter added that ‘praising Jesus does not actually require the development of a 50 acre, 88,000 sq ft, 3000 parishioner megachurch.’ One even suggested that building the church was a sinful act that would ‘go against the teachings of Jesus to love your neighbor as yourself,’” the suit adds.
Other commenters opposed to the church claimed that Summit Church doesn’t fit Chatham County’s “progressive, LGBTQ-friendly, and openminded atmosphere.”
“The public comments continue at length, in writing and in person at the Planning Board’s public hearings. They refer to Summit Church as a ‘monstrosity.’ They accuse Summit Church of attempting to ‘colonize’ Chatham County. They assert that ‘Megachurches’ like Summit create a ‘segregation effect’ that ‘contradicts the historical role of churches as institutions that bring together diverse groups of people on equal footing,’” the lawsuit states while pointing to Summit Church and Greear’s well-documented commitment to ethnic unity.
The County Commissioners ultimately voted unanimously to reject Summit Church’s rezoning application despite the church’s “request being consistent with Plan Chatham and the Future Use Map, and despite the Appearance Commission’s recognition of Summit Church’s extraordinary efforts to protect the rural character of the area,” the lawsuit states.
The official reason given for denying the church’s application, according to the lawsuit, is that it “was ‘not consistent with’ Plan Chatham and was not ‘reasonable and in the public interest’ because it did not ‘provid[e] a diversity in the tax revenue and does not provide more high-quality jobs for the area.’”
Summit Church’s lawsuit asks the court to “grant preliminary and permanent injunctive relief requiring the County to approve Summit Church’s rezoning request and associated site plan; 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 costs and expenses, including reasonable attorney’s fees; all the damages to which Summit Church is entitled; and any such further relief as it deems appropriate.”
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