Big move, short distance for Madison Heights church

By Aaron Lee

Published: April 4, 2008

Five silver-plated shovels sat in the corner of the Rev. Gary Lee’s office, next to a box of hard hats.

On March 16, those shovels broke ground on what will be the new ScottZion Baptist Church in Madison Heights.

Lee is the sixth pastor of the congregation that started meeting 135 years ago and has met in the same church along Galt’s Mill Road since 1942.

Lee checks, almost daily, on the progress of a $1.5 million church being built across the road.

Samuel A. Jackson, 74, was raised and baptized at ScottZion.

He is now a deacon and remembers when the church would hold two services each month.

“He’s been able to reach them,” Jackson said of Lee, whom he credits with attracting a larger, younger crowd.

Issues with the current building include sub-par access for the disabled and parking lots that often cannot accommodate funeral services, Lee said.

“Most people walked,” Jackson said of the days when he was a youth at the church.

And then there’s the seating.

Lee estimates a total of 500 people regularly attend one of two services he conducts each Sunday.

On Easter Sunday this year, people spilled out of sanctuary pews into the aisles, while others listened to the service from the nearby choir room, Lee said.

“When people are uncomfortable, they won’t keep coming back,” he said.

Not that Lee, 46, who grew up at ScottZion, minds the attendance.

“Everywhere you could sit people, they were sitting,” he said. “It was great.”

The current church pews can accommodate roughly 200.

The new building’s pews will seat 400. It also will include a fellowship hall and a nursery.

Lee said the plan is to keep the current church and find a way to re-use it.

The new church is scheduled for completion by December.

“We want to be more of a service to the community,” Lee said. “We just don’t have the facilities.”