Pennsylvania church gets temporary injunction against administrative commission while it weighs leaving PCUSA
By Patrick Jean, May 14, 2007
For the third time in as many weeks, a Pittsburgh-area congregation is considering leaving the Presbyterian Church (USA) for the smaller, more conservative Evangelical Presbyterian Church.
This time, however, an administrative commission was authorized. But before commission members could even be named, the church went to civil court to protect itself.
Details
Washington Presbytery serves 62 congregations, with about 12,000 members in Greene and Washington counties, Pa. The Rev. Dr. David Bleivik has been general presbyter for six years.
Peters Creek United Presbyterian Church has about 600 members. The Rev. L. Rus Howard has been pastor for 11 years. A temporary injunction was signed May 9 that prevents Washington Presbytery from installing an administrative commission against Peters Creek United Presbyterian Church in Venetia, Pa. The order also enjoins the presbytery from “occupying, seizing or exercising control” over the church’s real and personal property and from interfering with the church’s “operations and members in any way until otherwise ordered by this court.”
Both sides are scheduled to appear in Washington County Common Pleas Court on May 30, when Judge Paul Pozonsky will hear the church’s motion for a preliminary injunction.
Peters Creek Church, which also filed a complaint seeking “quiet title” claim to its property, follows the lead of two Pittsburgh Presbytery churches: Beverly Heights Presbyterian Church in Mount Lebanon, which cast a 195-4 vote April 22 to leave the PCUSA, and Memorial Park Presbyterian Church in McCandless, which is scheduled to vote June 3 on whether to leave the 2.3 million-member denomination.
Peters Creek Church has not announced a dismissal vote date, but a congregational meeting is tentatively scheduled for June 10.
Problems with ‘denominational stuff’
The issue, according to the church’s pastor, arose out of Peters Creek Church’s plans to build a Christian education building. “We’re in a township where every church has great facilities except for us,” the Rev. L. Rus Howard said. “We have a great ministry, but young families are looking at this education building and saying, ‘Why would we want to do that?'”
Rev. L. Rus HowardProperty was purchased next to the existing facility. “We were moving along with all that stuff fairly well,” Howard said. “The denominational stuff was getting more and more problematic for our members.”
The denominational problems, he said, included:
- The 217th General Assembly’s approval of the Peace, Unity and Purity report that keeps the current ordination standards in the PCUSA Constitution, but allows those who choose not to obey them to declare them to be non-essential.
- The 217th General Assembly’s receiving a paper on the Trinity that proposes both the Biblical tradition for the names of the Trinity – Father, Son and Holy Spirit – as well as a number of alternatives never linked in Scripture as Trinitarian language.
- Denial of the affirmation of Jesus as Lord and Savior.
- Denial of the affirmation of the Bible as the inspired, authoritative, infallible Word of God.
Howard remained faithful that God would take care of the details. But last year’s revelation of “The Louisville Papers” – documents prepared by PCUSA lawyers that urge presbyteries to use aggressive measures when trying to claim local church property – turned off some donors from giving, he said.
“We don’t want to give our large gifts just to have the presbytery come in and seize it or in five years saying, ‘Now you’ve got to teach this stuff ’cause we fully control the church,’ ” Howard said he was told. “So, we realized then that we had to do some serious thinking about our denominational stuff.”
Efforts began last summer with an unsuccessful attempt to change Peters Creek Church’s bylaws and remove references to the denomination, Howard said. That was followed by congregational meetings in October in which the session presented four scenarios, he said.
“We can stay and play; we can stay and protest; we can stay and ignore; or we can leave,” he said. “… And stay and play was not an option, and people didn’t really like the leaving option. So they said, ‘Do some more homework.’ ” The church also hired legal counsel.
In the meantime, a final report was released by the strategy team for the New Wineskins Association of Churches, a conservative movement that has asked for the establishment of a transitional, non-geographic presbytery to receive groups of churches into membership in the Evangelical Presbyterian Church.
By the first weekend in March, Howard said, the session felt like its only option was to tell the congregation it should vote to request dismissal to the EPC and the proposed New Wineskins Presbytery. A series of six congregational meetings was scheduled after Easter to go through the recommendations, he said.
Howard said he approached the presbytery about the church being given clear title to its new land and the Christian education building that would be built on the property. But he claims he was stonewalled and told the session they would have to decide what to do.
Howard said a team of elders went to the presbytery and said, “We need to build this building for the long-term vitality of our ministry. And if we can get clear title to it, we can build it, we can grow, and that’s what we want to do.” But he said the general presbyter, the Rev. Dr. David Bleivik, told the elders no because there wasn’t a policy for congregations wanting to leave the denomination.
Peters Creek Church had said nothing about wanting to leave up to that point, Howard said, but the presbytery’s action fueled the session’s decision April 24 to recommend dismissal to the EPC. The congregation was told about the recommendation at a May 6 meeting that was attended by presbytery officials.
Can’t agree on proposed policy
Efforts to create a Washington Presbytery policy for churches that want to leave the PCUSA began after the 217th General Assembly “in hope of being pro-active,” Bleivik said. He called the final proposal “one of the most generous policies for leaving in the denomination.”
The proposed policy was presented at the May 8 presbytery meeting. Under the policy, a pastoral team would be assigned to represent the presbytery and work with the church session. The pastoral team would advocate for the church’s dismissal before presbytery commissioners if the church works through the process established by the policy.
Guidelines would have to be met for the pastoral team to recommend approval of a church’s dismissal request, including:
- At least 50 percent of the church’s active membership would have to participate in the congregational meeting.
- At least 75 percent of the congregation would have to vote for dismissal.
- A written ballot would have to be used.
- The church property would be “held in trust … based upon resolution of any outstanding debts and dedicated endowments.”
Second reading and approval of the policy originally was scheduled for the presbytery’s September meeting, but a July meeting was scheduled so approval could be done earlier for Peters Creek Church, Bleivik said.
The proposed policy also would require a church session to “commit to scheduling a congregational meeting for consideration of dismissal between four months and a year after their initial notification.”
Peters Creek Church first notified the presbytery of its intent to request dismissal in a letter dated April 10, Bleivik said. But Howard said the presbytery council told him the proposed policy wouldn’t be approved before July, so the church was asked to postpone its notification of dismissal until then. That meant the congregational meeting at which a dismissal vote could take place could not happen before November, he said.
The church session sent a letter to the presbytery saying the June 10 congregational meeting would remain on the calendar, but could be moved if the timeline for the process was negotiated.
“We feel like for us to wait until at the earliest Nov. 11, and maybe even to 2008, to have a congregational vote – after all we’ve done and where we are in the process, and what we’ve already told the congregation – would really hurt our ministry,” Howard said. “Visitors aren’t going to join if they think everything’s up in the air. Current members are going to get tired of it. … We have people saying, ‘We’re not going to wait until November. We’re just going to go to another church.'”
Howard said he expressed his concerns to the presbytery, but claims the presbytery council told the presbytery just before the May 8 meeting that Peters Creek Church had rejected the proposed timeline and recommended an administrative commission with all powers granted to it in the Book of Order – except the power to dismiss a church to another denomination. Bleivik said dismissal would have to come in the form of a recommendation to him.
“You and I both know what powers that means,” Howard said. “That’s an incredible amount of power given to them.”
Bleivik said the problem lies with the church, which on May 7 indicated a willingness to negotiate dates. “We had never presented this to the presbytery ’til last night,” he said May 10, “so it becomes difficult for the presbytery to back-date a policy that’s not in existence.
“They keep saying they want to negotiate,” he said. “It’s not that we’re trying to be hard, but how do you use a policy that’s not been approved?”
Who’s to blame?
Bleivik said Peters Creek Church is at fault for the authorization of the administrative commission. “I had said to the session on Sunday, ‘If you don’t want to go through our policy as presented, we have no choice but to use the traditional means in the Book of Order,'” he said.
The administrative commission has no timeframe to complete its work, and its seven members have not yet been appointed, Bleivik said.
Howard feels like the presbytery’s leadership hasn’t been totally honest about the process. “And all of this stuff just runs real deep on the theological issues in the denomination,” he said.
The presbytery forced the church’s legal hand when the administrative commission was authorized, Howard said.
“Our intention wasn’t to sue the presbytery,” he said. “Our intention was to get a temporary restraining order so the administrative commission wouldn’t come in here and put me on leave, remove the session, take over the finances and control the preaching and teaching and everything else here. We did it because we felt like the congregation has a right to at least vote and request dismissal. The presbytery has a right to decide whether they want to grant it.”
Bleivik insisted the church, not the presbytery, is the aggressor. “What boggles my mind is that they’re in such a hurry that they want to make it adversarial,” he said. “I don’t get it, but I don’t have to get it.”
“My only fear is their pushing their timeframe may threaten a wonderful policy that we thought would help us to work it through as brothers and sisters, and might even serve as a model for the denomination in a positive way,” he said. “We were trying to come up pro-actively with a way to avoid this kind of thing. And it seems now that we will not be able to. But I assure you that we’ve tried.”
Bleivik expressed disappointment that Peters Creek Church didn’t involve anyone from the presbytery in its congregational meetings that explored possible dismissal from the PCUSA. He also said some of the church’s fellow conservatives in the presbytery “really were disappointed that Peters Creek couldn’t wait and go through this policy.”
Howard expressed similar disappointment about the presbytery. “We feel like we’ve done everything we’ve been asked to do, and then we turn around and there’s a surprise or something works against us,” he said.
But Howard didn’t rule out the possibility of resolving the dispute outside of court.
“Our hope is that we negotiate everything with the presbytery,” he said. “All we want to do is get a timely and fair process. We’re willing to go through the process, but we can’t afford to wait until Nov. 10, or Jan. 10 or Feb. 10, 2008.”
Bleivik agreed – on one condition. “We continue to pray that they will consider to use the relational process we designed so that we could do this as brothers and sisters,” he said. “But the clock is running short – the minute they do a vote or commit that they’re going to do a vote for June 10, then they have declined that opportunity.”
Howard said he’s only willing to wait until August to vote. “If we can’t hold our vote now until November, or January next year, I can probably list 20 families that are going to be gone in two weeks,” he said. “And maybe 50 families.”
Patrick Jean is a staff writer for The Layman and The Layman Online. He can be reached at pjean@layman.org.