The kitchen door tells a story
You are explaining that the metal door on the East Side of the Bldg leads to the Kitchen?
"... why they would say "reached and opened"..."
SP used the NE doors near the dumpster and not the East Side metal door is why Spann said they "reached and opened" to gain entry into the Church. The NE double doors at the top of the exterior stairs are equipped with glass doors and panic bars. Thus, SP broke the glass, reached into the inside of the door and pressed the handle or panic bar to enter. To SPs immediate Lt that turns the corner for the S Wall is Door 7 for the Kitchen. Room 8 is on SP right hand side looking S along the E wall when standing at the entry point from the SE stairs from the Parking Lot.
I'm not sure what your exact point is. From the context of that LE statement being referenced (Apr 18 presser), and also in the context of the post of mine you quoted, both LE and us are definitely talking about the door near the kitchen, on the N side of the church. Neither LE originally, nor those of us conversing about it here, are talking about the NE doors.
Yes there was also damage to the NE doors. But LE doesn't think he entered there.
Why don't they think perp entered the NE instead? They didn't tell us their analysis, but my guess is that there is physical and/or security-lock evidence to support that.
As for your thinking that entering via the NE should have been easy, imo
the evidence says exactly the opposite. We have seen the damage to the kitchen door, which implies its panic bar was disabled but that the perp continued to labor to enter there. But it would stand to reason that perp would have preferred to enter NE via a panic bar if he could have, rather than having to wrestle with a lock on the kitchen door. Yet he had to pry off that kitchen door lock. I'd conclude that if one panic bar was turned off, all of them would have been, and especially the ones with so much glass.
IMO the damage to more than one door is evidence that the perp discovered that truth, that all the panic bars were disabled, via the hard way, and ultimately he had to pry off a lock to get in.