To Approve Or Deny? Youth For Christ Debate Gets Two Opposing Legal Opinions

Will this month finally see the culmination of Leland’s contentious Youth for Christ (YFC) debate?

Members of the Leland Township Planning Commission will tackle the subject once again tonight, armed with two opposing findings-of-fact reports from Attorney Tom Grier. Grier’s approach gives commissioners theoretically defensible legal pathways to approve or deny a Special Land Use Permit (SLUP) application from Apollos Properties. The LLC is seeking to use part of its property at 110 North Lake Street (pictured) as a youth club center for Leland LightHouse, a local branch of the multi-national YFC movement.

The planning commission has been weighing the application since late last year. The initial public hearing, scheduled for December 3, needed to be rescheduled due to overcrowding at the Leland Township Library. The hearing went ahead in January at a larger venue – the Northport Performing Arts Center Auditorium – but the board made no decision, opting to commission a full legal review of the application first.

A month later, questions about the validity and impartiality of that review prompted the board to seek a second legal opinion. The planning commission was expected to review the alternative legal stance at its March meeting, but a massive blizzard got in the way.

The question now becomes if tonight’s planning commission meeting, scheduled for 6pm at the Northport Performing Arts Center, will settle it.

Grier, a local attorney who “concentrates his practice on municipal, land use, civil litigation, and real estate law,” was brought in for the fact-finding process after another lawyer, Brad Wierda of Traverse City’s Smith & Johnson Attorneys, prepared a memo siding with Apollos Properties on the most-debated aspects of the SLUP application. Wierda’s memo was blasted for not exploring “potentially contrary interpretations of the law,” and Wierda himself was accused of bias due to his Christian background. Wierda is an alumnus of Calvin College, a Christian college in Grand Rapids, and previously served on the board for Traverse City Christian School.

Rather than steer planning commissioners toward one side or the other, Grier has prepared two competing fact-finding documents. The first makes a legal argument for approving the Apollos SLUP application, while the latter advocates for denying it. Both arguments wrestle with the key question of whether the Leland LightHouse represents a club use (as Apollos has argued) or a church use (as critics of the organization claim). The property is zoned village commercial district (C-1), which does allow clubs, but not churches or religious institutions.

Grier’s fact-finding documents are summarized below.

In favor of approval

On this side, Grier argues that Leland LightHouse’s religious basis neither classifies it as a church nor disqualifies it from being considered a club under township zoning.

“Article 2 provides that clubs may be formed for many purposes including ‘sports, arts, scientific, literature, politics, agriculture or similar activities,’” Grier writes. “Clearly a club which is formed around a religious theme would be a club formed for ‘similar activities.’”

Grier goes on to argue that the proposed YFC use “constitutes a club and not a church” because, while the LightHouse is planned as “a gathering place to discuss Christian principles and the Bible with young people…it is not intended as a place to conduct traditional Christian worship services on Sundays, Christian holidays, weddings, funerals, etc.” Provisions could be sketched out as part of the SLUP process, he adds, to prevent the LightHouse from becoming more of a church in the future.

In favor of a denial

Here, Grier revisits the club/church question and arrives at the opposite conclusion.

“Clubs have specific characteristics, like charters or bylaws, elected officers, regular meetings, and membership dues. And under section 2.02(A) [of the zoning ordinance], a club must be ‘open only to members and not the general public,’” Grier writes. YFC, he argues, has no such structure, “provides no information about what a member of YFC is,” and even claims on its own website that its programs are open to “every student.” These facets, he concludes, do “not establish that YFC will be open only to members,” bringing its club status into question as it pertains to Leland zoning.

Regarding the question of whether Leland LightHouse would be better considered under the umbrella of “churches and religious institutions,” Grier acknowledges some confusion because Leland’s zoning ordinance “does not separately define religious institutions.”

“But the Planning Commission finds based on common and ordinary usage that a religious institution is an organization established for religious purposes or to promote religious beliefs,” Grier’s argument continues. “Based on this common and ordinary usage, YFC’s proposed use is a religious institution, which is permitted in several districts listed above, but not in C-1.” Supporting this interpretation, he reasons, is YFC’s tax status (“YFC USA is considered a church by the IRS”) and its membership structure (“a ‘church’ and/or a religious institution have an unlimited membership related to evangelization activity”), among other factors.