(By Leslie Scanlon, The Presbyterian Outlook). In late September, the World Communion of Reformed Churches convened a mediation session to try to ease the rancor and build a less fractured relationship between the Presbyterian Church (USA) and ECO: A Covenant Order of Evangelical Presbyterians.
At the heart of that difficult relationship: the reality that the PCUSA has dismissed 303 congregations, representing 121,383 members, over the last five years, including some of the largest churches in the denomination. Just over half (52 percent) were dismissed to ECO, and 43 percent to the Evangelical Presbyterian Church. Many of those departures came after the PCUSA voted to allow its ministers to perform same-sex marriages and to allow gay and lesbian pastors with partners to serve PCUSA churches.
Some of those departures have been relatively peaceful, others deeply contentious, involving litigation over property and the splitting of congregations.
In 2014, the World Communion of Reformed Churches decided to allow ECO, then a newly-formed denomination, to join the communion, after ECO applied for membership and the Christian Reformed Church in North America and the Evangelical Presbyterian Church endorsed that admission, “without any consultation with the PCUSA ,” said Robina Winbush, an associate stated clerk for the Office of the General Assembly and director of ecumenical and agency relations. The PCUSA had asked that any decision about admitting ECO to the communion wait until this year, concerned about the impact that decision might have on congregations considering leaving the PCUSA, she said.
The mediation session in September was held in Chicago and lasted two and a half days. At the end, leaders from ECO and the PC(USA) agreed that in the future, discussions about possible departures would be conducted ECO presbytery-to- PCUSA presbytery – not between ECO and individual PCUSA congregations – and that “as much as possible we covenanted to tell the truth” about each other, Winbush said.
Another point of the agreement: when congregations want to leave, ECO and the PCUSA would try to negotiate the terms presbytery-to-presbytery rather than turning to lawsuits. When previous departures resulted in litigation, often over property, “none of us felt good about that, and did not believe that glorified God,” Winbush said.
She described the outcome of September’s mediation as a “memorandum of understanding,” not a formal ecumenical agreement.
Representing the PCUSA at the mediation were Winbush; J. Herbert Nelson, the denomination’s stated clerk; and Laurie Griffith, an assistant stated clerk and the Office of the General Assembly’s associate director for constitutional interpretation.
The three described the outcome of the mediation during a session Oct. 15 at the Mid Council Leaders Gathering in St. Louis. Nelson thanked the mid council leaders for raising the issue of departing churches with him a year ago at the Fall Polity Conference (as the mid council gathering then was known). He said the pace of the departures seems to have slowed over the past year, but “even as we speak tonight there are court cases that are pending.”
Nelson also said PCUSA mid councils – particularly committees on ministry – need to be more vigilant in examining pastors who had served congregations that left and who are now moving to a new presbytery. “We have to strengthen on the ground our gatekeeping system,” so those pastors don’t seek to serve other churches and then lead those congregations out too, Nelson said. As presbyteries examine those ministers, they need to “at least put on the table a commitment not to take a congregation out.”
The PC(USA) also had raised concerns with the communion over ECO’s practice of sometimes accepting a congregation as an ECO member before the PCUSA presbytery of which that congregation was a part had formally dismissed the presbytery.
One piece of that: in the two denominations, “we have two very different understandings of ecclesiology,” Winbush said. “For the PCUSA , the locus of mission is the presbytery,” carried out through congregations. ECO has a different understanding – seeing congregations as the locus of ministry, and “presbyteries as a voluntary association of support.”
As a result of the mediation, an agreement was reached that if a PCUSA congregation expresses a desire to leave, “ECO would not negotiate with that congregation but in fact would contact the presbytery of that congregation’s membership and negotiate with that presbytery,” Winbush said.
Another point of conversation: what ECO described as “refugee congregations” that felt separated from their presbyteries and which ECO felt it needed to receive quickly, as a pastoral response, she said.
Mid council leaders grew restive with disagreement as she said that, with someone shouting “No!”
“Just, just, just – just breathe and pray,” Winbush responded.
She said later that ECO leaders explained that they had sometimes been approached by congregations that said: “The PC(USA) presbytery is just being so unfair and so unjust. Therefore we have to receive them.” The PC(USA)’s response: Before that happens, ECO needs to engage with the PCUSA presbytery that’s involved.
The pain of these departures was palpable in the room.
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11 Comments. Leave new
You can’t trust revisionist churches, it’s all about money power, not the gospel, I’ll believe this works when pigs fly and hell freezes over.
This “memorandum of understanding” seems to benefit only the PCUSA. It doesn’t benefit ECO at all and actually works to the detriment of congregations being called out of the PCUSA. The notion that ECO, when contacted by a PCUSA congregation, should report that congregation to its PCUSA presbytery reminds me of Jane Fonda handing POW pleas of help to the Viet Cong.
When I read the Outlook article two things struck me:
1. The agreement to negotiate Presbytery to Presbytery is commendable. But it also bypasses the legal protection of the departing congregation provided by the Jones vs. Wolff SCOTUS decision that church disputes are to be decided according to secular law (Articles of incorporation, Trust agreements, and such). It also provides an opportunity for a Presbytery to shut up the voice of a congregation. The effect is a tacit admission by ECO that the “trust clause” is legit. There is no doubt in my mind that both of these situations will occur based upon recent history. This is a win for the PCUSA because the effect of the mediation is a tacit admission by ECO that the “trust clause” is legitimate.
2. This statement made by Stated Clerk Nelson is highly problematic: “We have to strengthen on the ground our gatekeeping system,” so those pastors don’t seek to serve other churches and then lead those congregations out too, Nelson said. As presbyteries examine those ministers, they need to “at least put on the table a commitment not to take a congregation out.” This is a blatant attempt to bind the conscience to something other than Scripture. It is the first step in “Kenyonization.” The only answer a person coming before CoM or CPM should provide is: “I refuse to speculate about hypothetical future circumstances.” If pressed: “I belong heart, mind, and soul to Jesus Christ. I am determined to follow his will at all times and in all cases.” Or perhaps: “I will not permit my conscience to be bound to anyone other than Jesus Christ or to anything other than the Holy Scriptures interpreted by the Holy Spirit interpreted through the tradition of the Church.” A COM/CPM should be satisfied with that answer. But I doubt they will be.
How about the pcusa being honest, truthful and ethical by providing a leaflet, or posting a flier at every member church’s front door which plainly states its policies on gay ministers, gay marriage, ownership of church property and other financial forfeiture? Many PCUSA members conveniently still don’t know or understand what’s happened the past decade. It’s called fraud.
Correct me if I am wrong, the EPC and PCA, both reformed denominations, also have Presbyteries as well able to properly staff what the PCUSA seems to be suggesting. If I were the ECO I would smell this out in 15 seconds. It seems the PCUSA is seeking another, separate religious denomination to validate something internal and unique to their polity, which was the primary reason most said churches left them in the first place. The British have a term for this, “cheeky”.
The reason the property in trust clause is causing to be be such a poison pill for the PCUSA because when the denomination decided to ‘weaponize’ the concept to more or less a cash and asset confiscation program, they forgot bombs or instruments designed to destroy are agnostic by nature, apt to kill its creator as often as the intended victim. When the fear and intimidation factor embedded in the trust clause proved to ineffective to change people’s behaviors, they simply sought validation from an external source. As they say in my home town, that dog simply will not hunt.
As to EPC, PCA response to such an overture I am sure they could smell the paternalism and condescension from the PCUSA a mile away. Let us hope the ECO has matured to the point it does not need to accommodate or validate that which cannot stand on its own, and is without either a Christian or a Reformed frame of reference.
The PCUSA remains the only religious denomination certainly in American, and maybe global history to experience both a systemic and structural de-population collapse, and a classic theological schism concurrent at once. If there is one abiding or overriding sense of both the various 3 commissions as well as the mid-council gatherings it is one of desperation to the final Kublai-Ross state of acceptance.
I think you mean the EPC and the CRC, which sponsored the ECO’s admission to the WCRC. The PCA, which anchors the more conservative North America Presbyterian and Reformed Council (NAPARC), is not affiliated with the moderate-to-liberal leaning WCRC.
There may still be some PCUSA members who don’t know their denomination’s stance on gay issues. At this point, there’s really not much of an excuse on their part though. The news is out there. They are avoiding it, if they truly don’t know.
I, for one, would like to see ECO move toward old Princeton. I don’t think it makes sense to do so, however, until all the captives are freed, or ECO has been in existence for a decade or longer.
I believe this is a move in a positive direction in healing the animosity between the ECO and the PCUSA so ongoing ministry can happen in both denominations. Many ECO churches still support PCUSA missionaries and even various ministries. We need to work together in many areas and this Memorandum will help.
editorial note: paragraph 11 – I assume two words are missing here. It should end “had BEEN formally dismissed BY the presbytery.”
The ECO has recently published a letter on its website addressed to its leadership regarding the conversation with the PC(USA) mediated by the WCRC, and ECO Synod Executive Dana Allin has published his reflections on the mediation, in light of the Outlook article.