Missouri City pastor receives threats over church construction
MISSOURI CITY, TX (KTRK) -- A Missouri City Pastor says threats by neighbors of his church are driving parishioners away.
Dr. Rivers Glover at Graceland Community Church says those making the threats apparently are upset over the length of time it's taking to complete the church's new sanctuary.
Graceland Community Church broke ground on its new $1.1 million sanctuary at the end of 2014.
Glover says they sought all required permits from the city, but work was interrupted because the church didn't know it needed approval from the First Colony Community Association.
"When we started out with this, this was a joyful journey. Now it's become to us as if a deadly journey," said Glover.
The association required the church to revamp plans for the front entrance and now nearly $40,000 in steel framing sits unused on their front lawn. Still, Glover says the church will be what it is supposed to be. "It's not our vision, it's the vision of God that he's just given us to complete," Glover said.
Changing the exterior has delayed completion and the pastor says some in the neighborhood are frustrated it's not done, nearly two years after it began. Just last week he says a man who was agitated and using curse words confronted him outside the church and told him if the job didn't get done soon, he was going to finish it for them.
The man sped off in a truck, according to Glover, nearly striking a maintenance worker for the church. "Is he gonna try and do something to our building? What is he gonna do? What did 'finish' mean? I don't know," he said.
Glover says that startled him and has now stunned parishioners here. There was another incident in January where someone else entered the church's day care and was clearly upset about the construction also.
According to Glover the threats have scared people away from church on Sunday: turnout, he tells us, has been less than half what it once was. Fewer people in the pews means fewer tithing at the church. "We gonna see it through... its taken longer than expected.. so we just doing the work of God and i haven't seen anyone stop him yet," he said.
