From the “This-Newspaper-Doesn’t-Have-a-Website Department”

By Clint Brewer
Lebanon Democrat, January 16, 2003
A Mt. Juliet church got a restraining order against its music minister Wednesday after he was charged with possessing illegal weapons.
Green Hill Church filed a temporary restraining order against Mark Lancaster to keep him from coming onto church property until the conclusion of any pending criminal investigation or prosecution, according to court documents.
Lancaster, 40, is charged with illegally manufacturing and possessing 15 machine guns in his Mt. Juliet home. He was arrested when the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms raided is Page Drive home Jan. 8 and found 15 unregistered machine guns. He is on suspension with pay from the church, but is in federal custody.
Larry Crain, Green Hill Church’s attorney, said the church decided to file a restraining order after learning Lancaster had fired a weapon on church property.
“That was new information for us as well,” he said. “That was a key point for us in deciding to pursue this order… Until all the facts were in, we decided it was prudent to do this.”
The ATF started investigating Lancaster after receiving a tip at its Washington, D.C., hotline. The called claimed Lancaster had “converted the Green Hill Baptist Church bus into a shooting rang,” according to the federal affidavit. But that was partly inaccurate, ATF spokesman Mark Leiser said.
“It was not converted into a shooting range,” he said. “It was a bus that had not been used…It’s not an old bus that was somewhere out in a field.”
ATF agents, however, did find a church bus with three bullet holes in it.
Green Hill Church also decided for the restraining order to ease parent’s minds about their children attending its day care.
“The nature of their (church member’s) concerns were that parents with children in day care that they take steps to ensure the children’s safety,” Crain said. “The day care is open to the public and has non-church members’ children in it as well.”
Crain said Lancaster has not had any contact with church leaders.
“Certainly, there are those who are awaiting the opportunity to meet and speak with him, but we have not been able to since he has been in custody,” he said.
The guns collected by the ATF were mainly war-era type. Lancaster had a federal firearms license as a collector of curios, but did not have the proper license to possess machine guns, Leiser said.
Lancaster is schedule for a detention hearing at 2 p.m. Thursday, assistant U.S. Attorney Phil Wehby said. Wehby’s office has filed to keep Lancaster in custody.