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Long before anyone could have

imagined a place like Peachtree City, Line Creek Baptist Church was already

here, sitting high atop a hill at the crossroads of what would eventually

become state highways 54 and 74. In fact, the Line Creek congregation

staked claims to a piece of western Fayette County 90 years before Peachtree

City recorded its first resident.

Since its founding in 1869,

the church has seen more than a lifetime of change come and go past its

doorstep, and now the doorstep itself is threatened.

Commercial development has

enveloped the church property, and its members are made more handicapped

Highway 74 intersection and the Coweta County line.

The church doesn't exactly

stand in the way of state DOT plans to widen Hwy. 54, but if it stayed,

the northern edge of the roadway would come within eight feet of the front

doors to the fellowship hall. Clearly, the church doesn't have much choice

but to move if it wants to survive, said its pastor, Bobby Carpenter.

"Where we're at is not

real conducive to a residential area, and that's where a church should

be located," he said.

Down the center of the church

sign fronting Hwy. 54, a DOT survey crew has painted a big red slash to

show how far the widened roadway will encroach on the property. As if

a confirmation from above, the visual aid makes it obvious to Carpenter

and the members of the church that it's time to move on.

"You can't get into the

church at all coming from Coweta County unless you turn into Home Depot,"

the pastor said. And then, members must maneuver up a rough, gravel driveway

cut through the front of what's left of the property.

That's a significant inconvenience

considering that about 75 percent of Line Creek's nearly 500 members,

including Carpenter,live in Coweta. Their outside-Fayette residences played

in the church decision to purchase 15 acres on Bob Smith Road off Lower

Fayetteville Road for a planned 20,000-square foot complex to include

a 450-seat worship center, recreation and fellowship space and classrooms.

The church is making payments

on the Bob Smith Road land with regular tithes, until a DOT offer of $300,000

for an acre slice fronting Hwy. 54 is closed (the church thinks it's worth

more than that). RAM Development, the company that has developed the Wal-Mart

and Home Depot tracts, has offered to buy the roughly seven acres that

remain.

But the church holds four separate

titles to the land, and legal questions regarding the wishes of the original

landowners, obviously long dead, have delayed any agreements and is forcing

the issue into the courts.

"It is an old church property,

and it's been in the church family here for years," Carpenter explained.

"We'd have 2.5 acres donated by one family, another acre for the

cemetery, another acre from someone else. "We've had to be careful

and let people know we're not dismantling the church, just relocating."

And then there is the issue

of the cemetery, which the church will continue to own and maintain. As

part of its contract offer, RAM has proposed spending thousands of dollars

to build retaining walls and preserve the grave sites, which sit at the

highest point of the church property. The rest of the land would be cut

down to the level of the highway, leaving the cemetery high on a mesa

or Indian mound-like hill, Carpenter said. An access road to the cemetery

would be built from the rear, near Home Depot.

A bank, restaurants or speciality

grocer are among the tenants RAM is considering for the church's plot.

It will also allow for cutting a cart path under a widened Hwy. 54 to

the Wal-Mart area.

But before all that can take

place, the church must move out. And nobody knows how soon that can happen.

A court date hasn't been set for a judge to hear the church's plea to

annul some of the conditions set forth in the 130-year-old property deeds.

"We don't know exactly

the time frame, but we will not be relocated by November," said Carpenter

Monday, as mid-afternoon traffic backed up both directions on Hwy. 54.

"We will have to meet somewhere."

Church leaders are scouting

for temporary quarters, such as a school.

"If everything works right,

Lord willing, we hope to move to the Bob Smith area and be debt-free,"

Carpenter said. "We could get a loan and start building, but we don't

want to do that. Our biggest fear is that we start building and then the

economy goes under again or the land purchase falls through."

For Carpenter, a longtime Line

Creek member and former youth minister who took over leadership in January

after the retirement of Pastor Franklin Treadwell, preserving as much

of the tradition and history of the congregation is important.

"The new location is only

about 3.5 miles from where we are now," he said, stressing that the

name Line Creek Baptist Church will absolutely remain as the church moves

west across the creek that gave the church its name.

"That hasn't even been

brought up for discussion," he said.

But clearly, there is bittersweet

sentiment attached to leaving a place, even if the new place will provide

so much more opportunity for growth and service, said Carpenter.

"We've seen this coming

for awhile, and I don't know how we'll do it," he said. "But

we'll try to move on without losing contact with where we came from. We

want the older people to know we still need them, and that's one of the

reasons for the transition: How difficult it is for our senior citizens

to get in and out of here on a Sunday morning."

"We realize that if we're

going to continue to go on as a church, we've got to find a place to go,"

Carpenter said.

"But we don't want to

stay here."

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