The Fellowship Parking Lot Feud – Cones, Confusion, and The Passive-Aggressive Ministry Of Parking Spot 7B

In Sequatchie Crossing, there are three things you don’t touch unless you’re spiritually prepared: someone’s potato salad recipe, their hymnbook annotations, and their assigned-yet-unofficial church parking spot.

It began innocently enough at First Unaffiliated Missionary Temple, where the newly repainted parking lot gave everyone a fresh start—and everyone hated it. The lines were straighter, the gravel had been redistributed, and more importantly, the natural organic flow of the congregation’s historical preferences had been violated.

The flashpoint? A spot labeled “7B.”

The Fellowship Parking Lot Feud – Cones, Confusion, and The Passive-Aggressive Ministry Of Parking Spot 7B

Historically, 7B belonged to Mabel Dean Ashcroft. Not officially. Not by policy. But by tradition, by seniority, and by her consistent arrival at 6:47 a.m. to “pray over the foyer coffee and judge the bulletin fold.” She had parked there since 1985, the same year she crocheted the church’s first communion table doily, which was later laminated for posterity and allergy resistance.

But with the new paint job—organized by Deacon Jimmy Ray “The Leveler” Harmon—the spots had shifted. What was once 7B now aligned differently due to “lot geometry optimization,” a phrase Clovis Strickland would later claim was “a UN codeword for Sunday surveillance.”

Enter Shelley Wexler, who, unaware of the unspoken territorial rules, parked in 7B for the first time during the Joint Fellowship Brunch and Hymn Swap. She claimed the spot “had good energy flow,” and said her Prius “aligned chakrally between the rose bush and the bell tower shadow.”

Mabel Dean arrived shortly after in her Buick Regal, saw the violation, and backed into the space adjacent to Shelley’s with millimeter precision—so close their side mirrors entered what local physicists would call a mutually assured dent zone.

Meanwhile, Trixie Jo Bartlett, dressed as the official Parking Angel, waved neon orange flags and distributed mini bookmarks that read “Back In With Grace.”

Shelley parked in 7B anyway.

Mabel Dean, wearing gloves and pearls, sat motionless in her Buick for 18 minutes, just staring. Then she backed out, drove around the block, and returned in a golf cart with a posterboard taped to the front:

“This is why we have division.”

Boot, trying to mediate, tripped over the cone, which had been chained to a concrete block by an anonymous party believed to be Pastor Peeler’s brother-in-law (a retired mall cop from Hixson).

That afternoon, an emergency church council meeting was called. The outcome:

• 7B was renamed The Grace Spot, designated as a “floating blessing zone” to be rotated weekly between congregants.

• A new laminated signup sheet was created, managed jointly by Shelley and Mabel, with Boot as the enforcer.

• All cones were banned unless “festively adorned or prayer-approved.”

Since then:

• Mabel arrives ten minutes earlier and parks in what was formerly 6C.

• Shelley alternates between spots based on “spiritual resonance and barometric pressure.”

• Clovis now publishes a monthly newsletter titled Pavement Watch with top-down drone photos and suspicious heat maps.

Pastor Peeler’s next sermon?

“In My Father’s House Are Many Spaces (and You Should Park In Them With Humility).”