ANOTHER SELMA CHURCH MOVING TO VALLEY GRANDE
6-2-08
For the 10th time in the past 2 years, Woodland Heights Presbyterian Church at the corner of Summerfield and Highland was burglarized Saturday night. Thugs and criminals have stolen nearly everything that was in the Fellowship Hall, including microwaves and food for the Food Bank in the latest burglary.
The Church had already made the decision to leave the City of Selma and move to the safe and growing town of Valley Grande. We commend them for their foresight in making this decision because the future for churches in Selma does not look any brighter than the future for the city. The mass exodus of people from Selma since the year 2000 has adversely affected most every church in the city. With a few exceptions, most churches are merely holding their own or more likely decreasing in membership. This is NOT unrelated to the lack of leadership of Mayor Perkins and especially the blind eye he has turned to PUBLIC SAFETY as a priority for his administration. To us, he seems content to see and intent on seeing Selma becoming another Uniontown.
Woodland Heights will become at least the 4th church to move out of Selma to the safety of Valley Grande. Central Baptist earlier moved and became Valley Grande Baptist. Calvary Assembly of God moved to become Living Waters. The First Church of the Nazarene moved to become the Praise Center and now Woodland Heights plans to move out of Selma. How many more churches and people will have to move until the remaining populace of Selma realizes that the city can not survive 4 more years of a Perkins administration? Meanwhile, until other churches leave Selma, we hope Perkins and Chief Riley will try to protect citizens and their property better than the city and police department have done since 2000.
