Greg Locke’s church moving to new location amid attendance decline
Global Vision Bible Church in Lebanon, Tennessee, which is led by controversial preacher Greg Locke and recently reported a sizable drop in membership, will soon be moving to a new location.
Locke told his congregation on Sunday that he had finalized the contract for the new location, which is off of Murfreesboro Road in Lebanon and was previously owned by a different church.
According to Locke, they are still working on getting the building ready, stating that “an amazing amount of work has been done, but an extraordinary amount of work is still to be done.”
“There’s a lot of things that are happening,” Locke said. “Paintings going on, carpets coming in tomorrow, just reconfiguring rooms, busting out walls, getting things ready for children, bathroom renovations, all of that.”
As the offering was about to be collected, Locke encouraged people to give to help pay for the various costs associated with the moving, explaining that “there is not really a goal or a surplus amount that we’re looking for.”
“We need to match the gas, it’s an all-hands-on-deck, full court press this week to get things done and, obviously, that costs money,” he continued. “There’s a lot of expenses that are going into the reality of transforming everything that we need to transform this week.”
Locke is hopeful that the transition from the current worship space to the new building could be mostly finalized by next Sunday morning.
Locke founded Global Vision in 2006, and the church grew considerably in the years that followed, with Locke himself garnering considerable attention for his social and political views.
For example, in 2022, Locke claimed in a sermon that Democrats were “God-denying demons that butcher babies and hate this nation” and that no true Christian can vote for them.
The message prompted calls for an Internal Revenue Service (IRS) investigation into whether Locke had violated the federal Johnson Amendment and thus could lose his church’s tax-exempt status.
For a time, Global Vision gathered under a large tent in Mt. Juliet in Wilson County, with the church facing a lawsuit in 2023 for alleged local zoning violations and "excessive noise."
In November 2024, Locke announced that Global Vision was moving from its Mt. Juliet location to a new 32,600-square-foot warehouse facility off of Maddox Simpson Parkway in Lebanon.
Dozens of federal agents carried out a pre-dawn raid on Locke’s house last month as part of an investigation into whether he had, among other allegations, misappropriated church funds.
The raid came as Locke was taking a six-week sabbatical from the pulpit after his 20-year-old son, Evan, died of a drug overdose in May. Locke maintains his innocence.
News of the move to a new building also comes shortly after Locke acknowledged that his congregation had declined from a peak of around 3,000 people to a few hundred.
“We are pastoring a few hundred truly dedicated people now. Three hundred. Maybe four hundred on a strong Sunday. And I am not less happy. I am not less called. I am not less anointed. I am actually more free than I have ever been,” stated Locke late last month.
“The anxiety of managing the appearance of greatness is gone. The performance is over. What is left is a remnant that actually wants Jesus more than they want a production. A people who will stay when the lights are dim, and the only thing left is the Word and the Spirit.”
