Staff Photo by Jeremy Belk/Chattanooga Times Free Press
As Birchwood Baptist Church has expanded over the years, some graves at the church are now very close to the church building. Church elders now are looking at moving some of the graves to the church graveyard.If you don’t watch your step walking out of the fellowship hall at Birchwood Baptist Church, you could stumble over one of the many gravestones encircling the church.
With some graves as close as 10 feet to the building, church elders are looking at moving seven graves they feel are too close.
Pastor David Delmotte said 120 to 160 people attend services each week. With so many coming and going from the small church, it’s commonplace to see people inadvertently walk over and between headstones, he said.
“I can’t stand seeing people walk over the graves,” Delmotte said last week as he looked out a window at three graves just outside the fellowship hall.
In November, Birchwood Baptist elders filed a petition in Hamilton County Chancery Court to move seven graves away from the walls but still in the cemetery. A legal ad published Dec. 24 in the Chattanooga Times Free Press gave relatives of the deceased 30 days’ notice of the proposed move.