Texas megachurch hits the brakes after trying to skew a traffic study

[mwai_chat context=”Let’s have a discussion about this article:nn(RNS) — 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 (May 10), 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.
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 in …nnDiscussion:nn” ai_name=”RocketNews AI: ” start_sentence=”Can I tell you more about this article?” text_input_placeholder=”Type ‘Yes'”]