On Wednesday night, the Temple Baptist Church in Greenville, Mississippi had a full parking lot as they held a radio church service for their members. All was going well during the service, until things sadly took a turn for the worst when police got involved.

Members of the church reportedly sat in their cars with their windows rolled up as they listened to Pastor Arthur Scott give his sermon on the radio. Lee Gordon, who has been a member of the church for 23 years, told the Delta Democrat-Times that the church has been broadcasting services for the past three weeks using a low-power FM frequency to broadcast the sermon.

“The preacher is in the church at the pulpit, and we are streaming the service live as well,” Gordon explained. “But a lot of our membership is elderly and [lacks access to streaming technology].” Gordon added that as he sat in the parking lot listening to the service with his wife, he thought he was adhering to social distancing guidelines that have been put in place due to the coronavirus pandemic. Unfortunately, he turned out to be wrong, as he said he and his wife were each issued $500 tickets for what they were doing.

“I think somebody called the police,” he said. “And we were just doing the same thing we’ve been doing the last three weeks.” Gordon went on to say that police “were respectful and just doing their job. They asked us to leave first, and those who stayed got a ticket.”

Video recorded by another Temple Baptist church member shows police issuing tickets in the parking lot of the church. “Somewhere right now in the city of Greenville, real crime is going on,” the man recording the city can be heard saying from his parked car. “They got half of the police squad at Temple Baptist Church. Seventy- and 80-year-old people…most of them never even had a speeding ticket. But this is a better use of Greenville’s resources.”