A megachurch in Rockwall recently drew criticism online after an email from the church essentially asked congregants to “drive laps” around the site to manipulate traffic surveys.
Lake Point Church wanted to install a traffic light near its main entrance and commissioned a study to measure traffic in the area as part of its application to the city, the church said in a statement to WFAA-TV (Channel 8).
May 10th, Dallas Morning News An email was sent to church small group leaders, asking them to sign up for “shifts” of completing 10 laps of a designated route within an hour. “We need your help installing a traffic light at the entrance to Ralph Hall!” the email read.
“Each shift is obligated to complete 10 runs of the prescribed route within that one-hour shift,” the email added. “If you can complete more than 10 laps within an hour, that’s great, but the laps will only count towards that particular shift.”
The email was posted to Rockwall’s Reddit page and a Rockwall Facebook group, where it drew criticism from online commenters. The shifts were scheduled to begin May 14, but the church told WFAA it removed the sign-up form on May 11.
The church did not respond to several calls and emails. Dallas Morning News Please comment.
‘Unfortunate decision’
In a statement to WFAA, the church said that on the afternoon of Friday, May 10, “staff made the unfortunate decision to attempt to register people within Lake Point in an attempt to positively influence the count. The decision was made without the knowledge of Lake Point’s senior leadership, and the registration list was quickly removed (Saturday) upon learning what had happened.”
LakePointe also said in a statement that it would have paid the full cost of the traffic lights if approved by the city.
According to LakePointe’s website, the facility has more than 20,000 visitors per week across six locations in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.
according to Religion News ServiceSome church pastors applied for shifts on a sheet shared by email. Tim Smith, senior executive pastor at Lake Pointe, said: Religion News Service As for why church staff, including the Rockwall campus pastor, signed up to work the shifts.
I was asked for a comment. newsRockwall City Manager Mary Smith released a statement explaining the city’s response to reports that LakePointe tried to manipulate the traffic study.
“The City of Rockwall was informed of the City’s decision not to accept the findings of Lake Pointe Church’s investigation in an email sent to Lake Pointe Church members,” Smith’s statement read. “Lake Pointe Church has decided to discontinue its own investigation and postpone the project.”
“The City of Rockwall will revisit the issue for a new study later this year. The City will hire its own transportation consultant to conduct an independent study,” Smith continued.
Federal law requires that intersections must meet certain standards before they can be equipped with traffic signals, which is why government agencies frequently commission traffic studies at problem intersections, but anyone can hire a third-party engineer to conduct the study.
“The private sector can do whatever study they want, and the city may or may not take the recommendations seriously, but sometimes it leads to adding more traffic lights,” said Randy Makemel, a professor of transportation engineering at the University of Texas at Austin.
But if a traffic light is installed based on incorrect traffic data, it’s unlikely to stay up for long, Machemel said.
“if [traffic] “If, for any reason, traffic volume decreases in an area where a signal was once needed, the law would require that signal to be removed,” he said. Installing signals illegally or leaving them in places where they’re not needed could also expose the city to liability for crashes that occur at the intersection.
‘Terrible’ traffic jams after church service
“It’s just a sad story,” said Riley Leanne Dennis, who attends Lake Point Church in Rockwall. news “Traffic congestion around Lake Point is heavy after the service,” the Facebook message said, noting that it can take 30 minutes to get out of the area.
Police Officer Jimmy Graves, who lives in Fate, said he’s been coming to Lake Point for about three years. news“I would just be shocked to find out that they were actually directing people to drive around and inflate the numbers,” he said.
“If that were true, I probably wouldn’t go to church,” he added.
This isn’t the first time LakePoint has been the subject of controversy this year. In February, lead pastor Josh Howerton told an “old pastor joke” during a sermon about a couple having sex on their wedding night. The part of the joke in which Howerton tells the women to “stand where he tells you to stand, wear what he tells you to wear, and do what he tells you to do” drew a lot of criticism from women online.
Howerton was also criticized as plagiarizing his subsequent apology for the joke after social media users pointed out its word-for-word similarity to an apology by a Florida pastor in 2022. In response to the backlash, Howerton said the Florida pastor had called him ahead of time to help him with the apology.
Joy Ashford covers faith and religion in North Texas for the Dallas Morning News through its partnership with Report for America.
