Evangelical Churches Are “Planting” in Public Schools Across Kentucky
Citing cheap rent and "recognizable" buildings, fledgling churches are holding worship services in taxpayer-funded space.
The parking lot of Madison Middle School in Richmond, Kentucky fills up quickly on a Sunday morning, with families spilling out of SUVs and minivans in their dressy-casual best then making their way to the purple-curtained auditorium to find a seat. But these families aren’t gathering for an eighth-grade production of Hello, Dolly! or a PTA meeting on the future of vending machines in the hallways: they’re headed to worship services at Covenant Community Church.
Over the past 15 years, the concept of “church planting” as a means of expanding the reach of particular Christian denominations and individual churches has soared throughout the United States as congregations attempt to tendril-out their evangelical reach into new regional communities. Quite often, these fledgling extension churches get their start by holding worship services inside public school buildings during non-instructional hours, often renting the taxpayer-funded spaces at a fraction of what they would pay to use a privately-owned space.
A megachurch using public school space to conduct worship services for a “plant” first floated across my radar in February 2020, when I received a mailed-to-everyone-in-town postcard inviting me to attend Southland Christian Church’s new “Richmond campus” at my old high school, Madison Central. There was no disclaimer that the church was renting the space, simply a photo of the exterior of the WPA-era school building with an ad for a private religious institution Photoshopped overtop. I was baffled. After reaching out to Dr. Dustin Brumbaugh, head of human resources for Madison County Schools, I was informed that (among other things) while Southland would be “restricted” from posting signage at the school about their ministry, a school employee was required to be on site during the worship service—perhaps as a volunteer, perhaps paid—each Sunday. What about the separation of church and state? Is this legal?
While local laws may vary, in Kentucky, church planting in public schools is very much legal—and common.
(Southland Christian Church touts their “AWESOME” relationship with school administrators at Madison Central High School in the same breath as they ask for an offering.)
“Like it or not, the fusion of church and school…is an increasingly common phenomenon in the United States. Indeed, a number of national and international franchise networks are dedicated to planting churches in public schools across the country, sometimes providing services that fill in the vacuum left by the government underfunding of public education,” writes Katherine Stewart for The Nation in 2015. “A 2007 national survey by LifeWay, a Christian research agency, found that 12 percent of newly established Protestant churches met in public schools. Today, that number is surely higher.”
But first, a little bit more about church plants.
Church plants are often structured a little bit like franchises of a central church: similar how to if a Chipotle is successful in Lexington, an enterprising employee might try to open up a Chipotle (or Chipotle-like restaurant) in, say, Winchester, and see if enough people show up to keep it in business. It’s essentially the same deal with church plants—only instead of build-your-own burritos, it’s a specific brand of evangelical Christianity. The Kentucky Baptist Convention has an entire team dedicated to church planting, describing the work as an effort “to help current churches multiply our Kingdom efforts by planting healthy, Christ-centered, Gospel-believing churches.” Southland’s go-forth-and-multiply mentality has led to church-plants-turned-extension-campuses in Richmond (where they planted, as I mentioned, in Madison Central High School), Danville and Georgetown, where they planted in Lemons Mill Elementary School for four years (!) before constructing their own elaborate campus. Southland is now working on an initiative to plant churches across Appalachian Kentucky they’ve dubbed Together for The Mountains, helmed by former Saving Our Appalachian Region (SOAR) Executive Director Jared Arnett.
When Eli Gemstone gave Uncle Baby Billy the chance to operate an off-shoot Gemstones church in an abandoned mall during Season 1 of The Righteous Gemstones? That’s classic church planting.
And then there’s the more academic road to church planting. Two universities in central and eastern Kentucky offer degrees specifically in church planting. University of the Cumberlands confers a bachelor’s degree in church planting, hyping up potential majors by touting the spiritual—and monetary—benefits of such a career. “Ever wonder how a church begins? How a church is planted in new areas, neighborhoods and cities? If so, your future—your calling—just might be in church planting,” the website reads, quoting a salary range between $40-45,000 for the work. “You’ll gain the strategies, tactics and real-world skills you need to serve in the U.S. and around the world in fields of church planting, evangelism and discipleship.”
Asbury Theological Seminary in Wilmore offers a Master of Arts in Intercultural Studies (with Church Planting emphasis), Master of Divinity in Church Planting and Doctor of Divinity in Church Planting as part of their Asbury Church Planting Institute, with 97 students across the three degree programs. “The starting point for launching these programs was an Asbury Seminary priority of resourcing pastors who were considering planting a new church and providing the best training for those pastors. We also offer a number of non-academic training events and resources,” says Carson Daniel, Coordinator of Church Planting at Asbury, noting that since 2015, 14 new churches have been planted by graduates.
He also goes on to say that while planting in public schools isn’t “recommended” per se, it’s a common occurrence. “Given [that] most county school systems have some of the largest networks of usable buildings, many new church planters find it economically viable to meet in a school for a period. Schools also have underutilized buildings, are familiar to the local people and sometimes are the largest employers in the area (especially in small towns),” Daniel explained via email. “Some of the reasoning is economic and some is perhaps the respective church does not feel the need to put substantial funds towards a building. Renting a space is often much cheaper.”
Job Juarez, church planting group leader for eastern Kentucky as part of the Kentucky Baptist Convention (KBC) sees planting in schools as a logistic—and evangelical—strategy. “There have been three KBC churches meeting at schools in eastern Kentucky since 2015. The schools were chosen for various reasons. They may have been the only meeting places available that were large enough, there may have been an existing relationship with someone at the school or the church may have been able to provide a helpful service or ministry to the students.”
But should churches that house their worship services in a public school also be providing ministry to students on school grounds? It’s a dicey—and heavily litigated—topic. For opponents of the ever-growing occupation of public schools by church plants, the easily visible legal and ethical pitfalls of evangelical Christians holding worship services inside a public building are numerous. First of all, the reason that public schools are able to offer space at such a discounted rate is because they’re taxpayer-funded, meaning that, by proxy, taxpayers are subsidizing a specific church. Public schools are usually empty on Sunday mornings, which gives evangelical Christians easier access to discounted space for worship services than other religions (Muslim, Judaism) that hold their worship meetings during instructional times.
(The church “campus address”? Surprise! It’s a public school that you might’ve attended.)
And perhaps it goes without saying, but if members of a non-Christian religious group were gathering for a holy ceremony in Kentucky public schools each week, there would be plenty of outrage from local parents and Christian churches alike. How do school administrators think it makes students from non-Christian backgrounds feel when they know their school is hosting—and, in their minds, maybe even tacitly endorsing—a particular strain of Christianity?
Then there’s that old constitutional chestnut, the separation of church and state, which church planting in public schools just threads the needle of not-exactly-violating. The Supreme Court-backed consensus is that if a school district allows other community groups to use its facilities in off-hours, it can allow religious groups to use school property for meetings during non-instructional times, like Sundays, as well. Some school districts go to great lengths to ensure that people don’t misconstrue hosting a church as endorsing a church by requiring a disclaimer on any advertising materials sent out by the congregation…but I’ve yet to see that on any media here in Kentucky.
On a national scale, church planting in public schools has primarily been litigated through the avenue of the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause, which (among other things) prohibits actions by the government that unduly favor one religion over another. When it comes to church plants, the government takes the form of our (once again, taxpayer-funded) public schools, which—in the eyes of many—are clearly favoring the branches of Christianity they house each week over other religions by providing them space to pray, worship and tithe.
And while the Supreme Court has never ruled that it is unconstitutional for a religious organization to rent space inside a public school facility, it did let stand (denying certiorari without an opinion) the decision made by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in the case of Bronx Household of Faith v. New York City Board of Education in 2011. In this case, the court ruled that a school board could deny the use of district property for “religious worship” if it so desired.
“The Board could also reasonably worry that the regular, long-term conversion of schools into state-subsidized churches on Sundays would violate the Establishment Clause by reason of public perception of endorsement,” writes Senior Judge Pierre N. Leval in the majority opinion. “During these Sunday services, the schools are dominated by church use. Because of their large congregations, churches generally use the largest room in the building, or multiple rooms, sometimes for the entire day. Church members post signs, distribute flyers and proselytize outside the school buildings. In some schools, no other outside organizations use the space. Accordingly, on Sundays, some schools effectively become churches. As a result of this church domination of the space, both church congregants and members of the public identify the churches with the schools. The possibility of perceived endorsement is made particularly acute by the fact…schools used by churches are attended by young and impressionable students, who might easily mistake the consequences of a neutral policy for endorsement.”
Just because schools can allow religious groups to meet in their facilities doesn’t mean that they necessarily have to do it. Though some Kentucky public schools are perhaps in a position where they need the rent money from church groups (and beyond) to keep the air conditioning working, a local school board could, in theory, bar any and all religious groups from renting school space for worship purposes. If they wanted to be a little less potentially controversial, they could put a rule in place that specifies no community groups can rent public school space, or that only school-sponsored groups can rent public school space outside of instructional hours. There are many ways to go about it.
In Kentucky, though, church planting by evangelical Christians in public schools shows no signs of slowing, blurring the line between church and state—and perhaps even impacting students’ understanding of, and appreciation for, this constitutional right. Because if their schools won’t practice what they preach (er, teach) in civics class, why should they?
We’ll be back late Friday—or early Saturday—with one of our final legislative superlatives of the session, given that bills are sliding through left-and-right after, ahem, regular business hours.
Also, I finally got fed up enough with a style of “journalism” about eastern Kentucky I loathe to do a little thread on Twitter. (Warning: mild ranting ahead.)
And our thoughts are with the family of coal miner James Brown, who was killed earlier this week when the roof collapsed where he was working more than two-and-a-half miles underground at the Darby Fork Mine in Harlan County.