Next Youth For Christ Meeting Slated For February 18

The next step in the ongoing saga of a controversial local Christian youth ministry will happen later this month, at a recently-rescheduled meeting of the Leland Township Planning Commission. The board, which was scheduled to convene this Wednesday, February 4 for its normal monthly meeting, will now meet at 5pm on Wednesday, February 18 at the Northport Performing Arts Center Auditorium. A public notice of the change of date and meeting venue can be found here.

The February meeting marks the second time in recent months that the Leland Township Planning Commission has had to move to a larger meeting space. The commission typically meets at the Munnecke Community Room at the Leland Township Library, which only has space for 100 people. The board's December 3 meeting was slated to include a public hearing for the Leland Lighthouse, a local branch of the global Youth for Christ (YFC) Christian ministry. That group is seeking a special land use permit to open a new clubhouse in downtown Leland. An overcapacity crowd at the December forced the commission to postpone the public hearing and find a larger venue.

The public hearing ultimately took place on January 7 at the Northport Performing Arts Center Auditorium. The meeting saw a packed hall and more than two hours of public comment, with local residents speaking out in both support and opposition to the Leland Lighthouse’s permit application. Proponents of club claim it is having a positive influence on local teens, while dissenters have mostly argued that downtown Leland’s commercial zoning does not allow for religious organizations.

With the public hearing done, the next step in the YFC saga is a review of findings of fact for the SLUP application.

“That'll be in February, and that is generally pretty lengthy,” Township Supervisor Clint Mitchell told The Ticker last month. “It's a very deliberate process of just going line-by-line through applicable zoning. We'll also have a legal review from our attorney that we’ll make public before that [meeting], and that will also be incorporated with the findings of fact. I would venture to guess that the process is going to take the lion's share of the February meeting, and that [the planning commission] will want some time to digest that. So, probably a vote in March at the earliest. But that's just speculation.”