Residents living within earshot of the controversial Revival Today megachurch gave Moon Township supervisors an earful Monday night as church officials continue pressing for the necessary permits to resume services on the property.
A half-dozen township residents voiced concerns regarding Revival Today’s track record in terms of noise when it was conducting services at its Coraopolis Heights Road property in 2024.
The comments came during a hearing before the Board of Supervisors to consider Revival Today’s application for a conditional use permit to resume services at 1442 Coraopolis Heights Road.
No decision was made Monday night; instead, the board heard testimony from residents, comments from Revival Today’s attorney and watched a video that a resident compiled from assorted YouTube sermons produced by Jonathan Shuttlesworth, one of the church’s pastors.
The hearing was continued until Tuesday, Oct. 28 at 6 p.m.
The church has been an object of concern since it erected an 18,000-square-foot tent in mid-2024 and began holding weekly services and the occasional revival there. Residents living nearby complained that the noise emanating from the church infringed on their peaceful neighborhood and lodged those complaints with township officials.
The township determined that the church was operating without the proper permits and the issue wound up in Allegheny County Common Pleas Court. There, Judge Chelsa Wagner issued a preliminary injunction in December 2024 prohibiting Revival Today from conducting services on the 35-acre former Baywood Conference and Lodging Center until it had the necessary permits. Moses Land LLC owns the property and leases it to the church.
Wagner’s order also said she fully expected the township and the church “to engage one another in good faith” regarding Revival Today’s pursuit of those permits needed to operate legally on the Coraopolis Heights Road property.
The church is proposing to build a second tent on the property to conduct services and said it would remove the original structure when the second one is completed. The church has submitted several studies examining the project’s potential noise, traffic, stormwater and other impacts, and those studies are part of a whopping 2,800-plus page packet that went before the board Monday night.
The potential noise issues dominated the conversation at Monday night’s hearing, and several residents said they doubted Revival Today would take the steps necessary to mitigate its noise issues even if the township did issue the required permits.
Harry Readshaw, who lives near Revival Today’s Coraopolis Heights Road property, told the board that the church had subjected him and his neighbors to an “unnecessary amount of noise that vibrated our homes. Nothing gives me any reason to believe they won’t cause the same amount of disturbance.”
Readshaw said that while church officials claimed they remediated the noise issues that generated complaints in 2024, “they never did. It actually became louder when the leaves fell.”
Readshaw told the board that if the township granted Revival Today permission to operate, it would change the character of the neighborhood and there would be “no way to reel them back in.” Readshaw said if the church wanted to conduct the types of services it conducted before the court put a halt to them, “they need to build an acoustically sound structure – not a tent.”
Nedra Tucceri, another neighbor, agreed. “If this is something that needs to be done on the church’s part, they need to build an enclosed structure and not infringe on other people’s rights,” she said.
Chris Rolinson, who has lived in the area since May 2016, said his neighborhood was a peaceful place until June 2024 when he began hearing loud yelling, drums, bass and other music emanating from the Revival Today property.
The noise rattled his windows “and outside wasn’t a pleasant place to be,” said Rolinson, who likened the noise to the late record producer Phil Spector’s famous “Wall of Sound.”
Rolinson said he and other neighbors have had to spend countless hours testifying at township meetings regarding Revival Today’s permits – or lack thereof – and that’s time that could have been spent working to improve the township.
“Never once did (Revival Today) operate with common courtesy and just turn the music down,” Rolinson said. “That was never in their plans. They thought the sound would draw us in. They were wrong.”
Richard Zollinger, who lives on Coraopolis Heights Road, said the church’s activities in 2024 generated significant traffic. “It caused traffic jams in front of my house that I never experienced before,” he said. “People were turning around in my driveway by mistake.”
Zollinger also reiterated his neighbors’ noise complaints.
“The noise was unbelievable,” he said. “They would wake my wife up in the evening – and she has a hearing problem. It takes a lot to wake her up, but they did it.”
Supervisors also watched a video made by Charles Zollinger – Richard Zollinger’s son – that featured Shuttlesworth commenting on what he characterized as the township’s unwillingness to grant Revival Today the necessary permits to operate.
“It’s not about the sound – it is a hatred for the church, which has come out in the open,” Shuttlesworth said in one portion of the video.
Alan Shuckrow, an attorney representing Revival Today who attended Monday night’s meeting, objected to the video being shown and said the comments that Shuttlesworth made “were not relevant to this proceeding. If there is any relevance, it’s very minor, and I don’t believe this should be put into this record.”
Shuckrow had little to say following Monday night’s proceedings.
“We’re trying to go through this process in good faith,” he said. “Whatever may have happened in the past we don’t think should be taken into consideration. We’ve been here in good faith, complying with everything the township has asked for.”
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