Closing churches has been a source of angst and anger in the historically Catholic-rich city of Lockport for more than two years.

Now, though, the planned Easter Sunday opening of an evangelical Christian church has

heightened the sensitivities of some Catholics.

The Chapel at CrossPoint, an Amherst megachurch, will launch a satellite campus in April,

using the Palace Theatre and a former post office, both on Main Street in the heart of

Lockport.

At least one Catholic priest views the move as an effort to scoop up disenfranchised

Catholics in the community, and he's warned his parishioners about it.

"They practice a very heavy-handed form of proselytizing and have targeted mostly Catholic

Lockport at a time when people are still upset about the Journey in Faith and Grace," the Rev.

James Waite, pastor of St. John the Baptist Catholic Church, commented in a recent church

bulletin.

A. Waite's bulletin message about The Chapel in Lockport

The Chapel Pastor Jerry Gillis maintains the Amherst church is searching for people who

aren't regular churchgoers, not worshippers actively involved in a parish community.

"Our target is people who have no faith connection. We don't desire to trade sheep with

anybody," he said. "At St. John's, they have done a lot of wonderful work, and they're to be

commended for it."

The exchange underscores the subtle tension between the region's growing evangelical

movement and the Catholic community, which has been shrinking but remains by far the area's

largest faith group.

"I know that they're saying they're only going after the unchurched, but their definition

of unchurched includes a lot of people who are marginal Catholics and marginal Protestants,"

said Lorie Duquin, who coordinates an evangelization program for the Catholic Diocese of

Buffalo.

The diocese has spent the past three years closing churches and merging parishes. At the

same time, The Chapel and some other evangelical churches have been in an aggressive growth

mode. In 2005, The Chapel opened a mammoth $19 million worship center in Amherst, with 2,400

stadium-style seats.

Church leaders said they already need more space, and they're planning a new $4 million,

25,000-square-foot multipurpose building on the campus in CrossPoint Business Park. The Chapel

also "planted" a new church in Buffalo, initially holding services inside a movie theater,

before purchasing a former Catholic church on Hertel Avenue that had been closed in the

diocesan restructuring. In addition, the Amherst megachurch has fostered affiliations and

partnerships with 200 like-minded churches and organizations in Western New York.

Eastern Hills Wesleyan, a Clarence megachurch, planted an offshoot church in Lancaster in

2005 and plans to do others, as well. And The Tabernacle in Orchard Park has long been active

in forming new evangelical churches in Western New York.

Waite said he wrote the bulletin item after seeing a video of The Chapel's announcement of

its plans, in which Gillis made reference to "substantial need" in Lockport for a larger

evangelical presence.

"Ninety plus percent of the folks there are unconnected to what we would call a

Bible-teaching kind of church of whatever affiliation or denomination," Gillis said in the

video, taped during a January worship service. "We want to do something about that."

Waite questioned where The Chapel got its statistics, considering that the Buffalo diocese

still counts nearly 5,000 households — an estimated 15,000 parishioners — in three

churches in the City of Lockport. The greater Lockport area has about 49,000 residents.

"What it says is we don't count as a Bible-teaching church. That's what bothered me," said

Waite.

In Lockport, the diocese moved in 2008 to merge five parishes into two. One of the

parishes, St. Mary, continues to resist the mergers and has appealed to the Vatican to keep

open its church building.

"I think there still are a lot of hard feelings," Waite said of the mergers.

He also referred to Lockport as "one of the more unsettled places" in the diocese, which

shut down more than 70 worship sites in eight counties as part of the restructuring known as

Journey in Faith and Grace.

Duquin, who formerly worked as director of parish life at St. John the Baptist,

acknowledged that some Catholics already attend evangelical services, and she predicted there

will be plenty of curiosity about The Chapel at Lockport.

"They'll start going to both, and ultimately they have to make a decision one way or the

other," she said.

But Catholic roots run deep in Lockport, where families of five and six generations still

reside, said Duquin.

"My first reaction was that The Chapel is overestimating their potential in Lockport," she

said.

Still, Gillis maintained that religious affiliation and practice no longer gets passed down

from one generation to the next. Younger generations now make their own choices about what

they believe, he said.

"My concern is with the fact that there is a large population between Erie and Niagara

County that has no faith connectivity whatsoever," said Gillis.

Matthew Eisenhower, who will serve as campus pastor of The Chapel at Lockport, said he was

surprised by Waite's written comments and sent the pastor an e-mail "to see if we could talk

through it."

But Eisenhower said he is confident in the research on Lockport by a firm called Percept,

which does a lot of data gathering for churches and denominations.

"The truth of the matter is most people don't find churches to be influential in their

lives anymore," Eisenhower said.

Chapel members were busy renovating the long-vacant post office, which will be used for

children's ministry and administrative space.

The satellite campus expects to attract 300 to 400 people to its services and build from

there, said Eisenhower.

Waite's written comments were well received inside his church, as well as among some other

Catholics, including colleague priests. Another Lockport pastor, the Rev. Joseph Vatter,

reprinted them in the bulletin of All Saints Church.

"I thought it was spot on," Vatter said. "It just summed up everything."

Waite said he would use The Chapel's advances as a "kind of call to action" within the

parish, which will be looking at ways to be "more Catholic than ever," particularly during the

season of Lent. Waite planned to use more Latin hymnals during Masses, include apologetics

messages in the bulletins and offer more explanation of Catholic beliefs and rituals.

"We want to play up who we are as Catholics and make people know what we believe," he said.

A Lutheran pastor said he wasn't bothered by The Chapel's foray into Lockport.

"There's always new ministries that come into an area, and in this day and age there

certainly is a large number of unchurched people," said the Rev. Alan Bauch, pastor of Trinity

Lutheran Church on Saxton Street, which has a membership of about 750. "It's a sad fact that

people do become inactive. And certainly if they're not being reached by us, it would be good

if somebody reached them."