LOUISVILLE, Ky. – The superintendent of Bullitt County, Ky., Schools has banned youth ministers from joining students for lunch. Ministers from Little Flock Ministry Center say they had eaten with students in the public schools for 17 years.
According to The Courier-Journal, the church is now rallying its members and others to protest outside the schools and to crowd into the next school board meeting in protest of the decision.
"This is the most blatant First Amendment violation in years," said Little Flock's senior pastor, Rev. Ronald Shaver.
Church members are characterizing the situation as a change in "longstanding policy." School board attorney Eric Farris said there was never a policy and that school administrators were simply unaware of the practice of the ministers eating lunch at the schools until recently.
Farris said because public schools cannot prohibit or espouse religious activity and because lunch is mandatory for students who are a captive audience in the cafeteria, the ministers' visits were inappropriate.
Chris Jones, the church's senior youth pastor, often met with kids, including his own, at lunch.
"We don't pray. We don't preach. All we do is hang around our students," Jones said.
But Farris said that was beside the point. "We don't know exactly what's going on," he said. "They may be discussing the weather, but it's the appearance that's the issue. The problem comes when you have someone presenting themselves as a representative of a religion."
Students circulated a petition calling for the return of the ministers.
"I'm not against Christians mentoring our children," said school board member Karen Wood. "But I'm bound by law not to allow it to happen in our schools." Wood also attends Little Flock.
"I don't think any child in Bullitt County should feel like they have to leave their religious beliefs at the doorstep," said Layne Abell, chairman of the school board. "But what we can't allow, as a school system, is for outside people to bring their religious beliefs into the school."
