wfn.org | Northern Illinois Conference joins lawsuit on new church

["NewsDesk" <NewsDesk@UMCOM.ORG>]

Nov. 3, 2003 News media contact: Kathy Gilbert7(615)742-54707Nashville, Tenn.
7   E-mail: newsdesk@umcom.org 7 ALL{522}

NOTE: The following story may be used as a sidebar to UMNS #520 and UMNS
#521.

CHICAGO (UMNS)- United Methodists in northern Illinois are concerned that
unfair treatment has halted the building of a new church in Long Grove.

The denomination's Northern Illinois Annual Conference filed a motion in
October to join Vision United Methodist Church, a congregation of
predominantly Korean-Americans, in a $5 million lawsuit in U.S. District
Court alleging the Village of Long Grove has "maliciously" worked to stop
development of a new church.

Sam Witwer, counselor for the conference, filed with the U.S. District Court
in Chicago, requesting permission to intervene as an additional co-plaintiff
in the case. The court has taken the request under consideration.

"We're saying that we want to be involved in this lawsuit because we are the
basic unit of United Methodism operating in northern Illinois," Witwer said.

"Vision United Methodist Church is a member congregation. Any injury that is
experienced by Vision church as a result of the violation of their
constitutional rights is also, by necessity, experienced at the annual
conference level because we all have a common mission," he said.

"Any damage to Vision church's real estate interest is also experienced at
the conference level because we have an interest in the local church's real
estate, through the trust clause."

In June 1999, Vision United Methodist Church signed a contract to buy 28
acres of land in unincorporated Lake County on the condition that the Village
of Long Grove would agree to annex the land and approve the church's plans to
construct a worship facility.
 
In September 2000, after receiving an informal go-ahead from Long Grove's
Plan Commission, the congregation purchased the land at the corner of Gilmer
(Rte. 83) and North Kruger roads for $1.115 million. 

But after more than a year of negotiations, protests by residents, expensive
revisions to architectural plans, presentations and hearings, the Village of
Long Grove rejected the church's request for annexation and approval.

The congregation then applied to Lake County for a building permit. Just as
Lake County officials were finalizing approval of the church's development
plans, Long Grove began a forced annexation of the church property.

"They did all kinds of hurried steps that are needed to be done in order to
make possible an involuntary annexation," Witwer said, "including cooperating
with a developer on neighboring property to do a project so they could say
the church land was contiguous to the village limits."

He added that Long Grove then took steps that made it impossible to build a
facility that would comply with their criteria, including amending zoning
codes to require any church owning more than 20 acres of land to front a
state highway. Vision 's property is on a county road.

Vision's lawsuit charges that Long Grove violated the First and Fourteenth
Amendments to the United States Constitution and the Religious Land Use and
Institutional Persons Act of 2000.

Vic Filippin, with the law firm of Holland and Knight representing the
Village of Long Grove, claimed it is a matter of Vision United Methodist
Church not following the community's zoning ordinance.

"We have zoning regulations that apply both to churches and others," he said.
"We simply wanted to make sure the zoning regulations are satisfied."

United Methodist Bishop C. Joseph Sprague, Chicago area, called Long Grove's
action unconstitutional as well as "extremely hurtful to Vision Church both
financially and emotionally - financially, because of the thousands of
dollars they have had to waste in this process and emotionally in terms of
the energy that has been dissipated from ministry in order to pursue these
legalisms.

"We simply cannot sit by and either allow a congregation to be so mistreated
or allow a precedent to be set that will allow other congregations in other
settings to be treated in this way," Sprague said.

 
 

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United Methodist News Service
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