By Charlie Brennan, Daily Camera News.
First Presbyterian Church of Boulder is the recipient of a surprise gift at the tail end of the holiday season as pastors from other area churches showed up this week with a significant contribution toward the $2.3 million needed to secure its downtown property.
The $48,000 was delivered in person to a church staff meeting on Tuesday. The cash gifts came from churches ranging in size from the massive Flatirons Community Church in Lafayette with its metro area congregation of roughly 20,000, to more modest-sized parishes such as Vinelife in Gunbarrel, Ascent Community Church in Louisville, Boulder’s Cornerstone church, Boulder Valley Christian Church and The Well in Boulder.
The unexpected windfall was highlighted in a Wednesday blog post by Carl Hoffman, associate pastor for spiritual formation and discipleship at First Presbyterian, who writes periodically on a blog called “Latte Life at the Crossroads.”
Jeff Hoffmeyer, who will assume a temporary post as senior pastor at First Presbyterian Church in Fort Collins in February and has long-standing ties to the First Presbyterian Church of Boulder, was part of the group making the surprise delivery.
“It was right before noon, and we knew they had a staff meeting and their whole staff was going to be present,” Hoffmeyer said. “We essentially crashed their meeting and surprised them. That was the fun part of it. It was an emotional time. Erik (Erik Hanson, lead pastor of First Presbyterian Church of Boulder) had tears in his eyes as he was responding.”
Hanson still sounded overwhelmed on Thursday.
“I think the first thing I’d say is I was astonished,” Hanson said. “It was just glorious. It’s an extraordinary expression of unity. Because of who we are as human beings, unity is a very hard thing to hold on to.”
Hoffmeyer said the money was merely the “tangible” expression of a deeper current of support from parishes throughout Boulder County for what the church is going through.
Read Carl Hoffman’s blog post: Epiphany’s Amazing “Aha!”
11 Comments. Leave new
This shows how much goodwill there is for the ministry of First Pres. and I will bet how much comtempt they have for the presbytery that’s black mailing the Church for its property.
It’s worse than blackmail—it’s theft. That property is not worth more than two million dollars. Disgusting.
Actually, the article says that the Boulder County Assessor valued it at $14 million.
Regardless, it is immoral that FPC is required to “buy” its property back from a presbytery and a denomination that unilaterally imposed its trust clause on said property, especially considering that FPC predates said trust clause.
…and they could have left with property at reunion under article 13 if they had wanted to? all you just remind me that haters gonna hate – if it is anything PCUSA, you all gonna hate, hate, hate
The beauty of what happened in Boulder is that this act of generosity displayed the best kind of honest-to-goodness ecclesiastical connectionalism. Those Boulder area churches are joined to each other in an organic and natural kind of way because all of them believe in and love the same Lord, and are committed to and involved in the same kinds of Gospel ministry. Their unity with each other is spiritual.
The PCUSA idea of connectionalism is at once artificial and unnatural. It attempts to hold together individuals and churches that do not believe in and love the same Lord, and are not committed to or involved in the same kinds of Gospel ministry, however much they may pretend otherwise. It is a unity that is forced and coerced, a unity held together by threats and lawsuits and extortion.
As Presbyterians, we believe deeply that the larger church Jesus intends for his followers is supposed to be like a family of inter-connected congregations sharing together a common faith and engaged in a common ministry, building up each other, supporting each other, coming to aid of and caring for each other, living a common life of superficial differences but also of deep internal similarities.
In the Boulder area and in the Presbytery of the Plains and Peaks of the Presbyterian Church (USA), two very different kinds of connectionalism are on display. It does not take a brain scientist or a rocket surgeon to discern which one of them more nearly approximates what the will of God for his people, and the connectionalism of the Presbytery of the Plains and Peaks does not even come close.
Donnie – “do not believe in and love the same Lord” —> please name the other Lord(s) that the PCUSA form of connectionalism uses to hold itself together – what are you saying? This is unclear for sure. I disagree with your thesis, the form of connectionalism (we stay if we like you and you talk/look like us) which you posit is shallow and subject to the whims of the time or culture. Get real…
If God is for us–Who can be against us?
HMMMM, pres says they could have left under article 13, I could be wrong, but I thought that only applied to the PCUS, the southern branch, I’m pretty sure that Colorado was in UPC territory in 83’….. either way this is stealing by any other name.
Donnie’s point seems pretty clear to me: the connectionalism that holds the PCUSA together is money, property and procedures; not the love and generosity that one would expect from fellow brothers and sisters in Christ. Pres, do you disagree?
The PCUSA continues to reap what they did not sow. That works for awhile. With membership cratering to about 1.5 million and no end to this trend in sight, the denomination will be a Trust Fund baby. Eventually, this spendthrift body will run out of money and members.
Does anyone know how many congregations will fold because they have become too small over the next 10 years? I expect that 2016 might be the last year for significant numbers of congregations to leave. And that leaves the back door which no Lawyer or Louisville bureaucrat can close.
Our church, New California Presbyterian Church in Union County Ohio received their gracious dismissal and of course and a ” demand for a gift to get the gracious dismissal” We a are a small conservative rural/suburban church and we could not be happier that we are gone. To the ECO I might add. For us it not a matter of should we leave PCUSA but when. We had a 98% affirmative vote from the congregation to leave. I had seen somewhere where PCUSA wanted to evaluate their positions on theology and dismissal policies. Don’t hold your breath. They done everything they could to delay and stall the dismissal and exacted a gift in exchange. I suggest they look up the definition of extortion. A short note about the dismissal. We do not miss them and are moving on doing what God guides us and not Louisville Kentucky. We were told by a previous pastor that our property belongs to the PCUSA and under the covenant of Christ and wrapped in the body of Christ. We told them that when Christ shows up in Louisville let us know and we will be there.