“We Don’t Want You or the Muslims”

This last week we had to approach the municipality of a nearby town regarding zoning rules on the building we hope to acquire for a new worship center. The agent working on the sale approached the mayor on our behalf who seemed positive regarding our purchase possibility. However, the mayor deferred to his colleagues before giving approval.

On our part, we have accomplished everything legally over the last 22 months of work on this project. We have been instructed that we can only purchase commercial property and that we meet the requirements.

What mildly surprised us was two days later when we were informed that the mayor had said “No” to our purchase. His reasoning was, “We’ve had requests similar to this from the Muslims and if we say yes to you then we have to say yes to everybody else.” The answer to that is “yes you do if we’re legal!”

There are other major fallacies in his response. The first is that Italy is trying to pride itself on religious toleration and we obviously see this as religious discrimination. The second is that if this is the standard — “all or none” — then they have to kick the Catholic churches out of their own city.

Last Sunday we assembled a prayer task force of 7 people to take this special request up before the Lord for 30 days. We hope to see a breakthrough and we have a meeting on Tuesday, the 12th, with the municipality.

The “ROE” (rules of engagement) are different out here.

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