PCUSA dispatches teams to advise synod officials on property issues
By Craig M. Kibler, The Layman Online, September 15, 2006
As the fallout continues over the “Louisville Papers,” denominational strategists are fanning out across the country to advise synod and presbytery officials on the denomination’s legal strategy concerning church property – especially in the wake of the adoption of the PUP report.
For more than a year, as court cases popped up all over the country over who owns a congregation’s property, the Presbyterian Church (USA) has been sending teams to meet with synod and presbytery representatives to ensure that “church corporation articles … state clearly that the church property is held in trust” for the denomination.
On April 26, 2005, for example, the Presbytery of San Gabriel in California approved the establishment of a task force, “appointed by the moderator in consultation with the Presbytery Council, to review promptly the By-Laws and church corporation articles of every church in the presbytery,” according to an Administrative Commission’s recommendation.
Another recommendation approved by the presbytery “implores each pastor and session to be certain that each church corporation has a written provision that in any future dissolution of the congregation that the property reverts to the Presbytery of San Gabriel.”
The Administrative Commission’s recommendation states that, “On April 26, representatives of our Presbytery met with persons responsible for legal and property issues from the Synod [of Southern California and Hawaii] and from several other presbyteries to confer with Mark Tammen [the denomination’s director of constitutional services] of the Office of the General Assembly and with Eric Graninger, General Counsel of the General Assembly Council.”
That meeting, according to the Administrative Commission’s recommendation, was a “consultation on church property” that involved the sharing of information “about recent court rulings in California and elsewhere.”
Since the General Assembly’s adoption of the PUP report in Birmingham in June, however, many churches have begun to take action regarding their property. Kirk of the Hills Presbyterian Church in Tulsa, for example, has voted to leave the denomination with its property, while First Presbyterian Church in Baton Rouge has gone to court seeking a declaratory judgment regarding the ownership of its property.
Other churches have left the denomination; the New Wineskins Association of Churches is working on a draft resolution for churches considering leaving the PCUSA; and other renewal groups are studying the issue. Twelve Presbyterian churches representing nearly 3,500 members in North Carolina have declared that some actions of the 217th General Assembly “collectively represent grievous error and a significant departure from the Biblical and confessional principles of the Christian faith.”
On Sept. 12, the Presbytery of San Francisco announced that Tammen will return to California soon for an upcoming meeting with moderators, stated clerks, executive presbyters and other officials in the Synod of the Pacific.
“The purpose is to discuss the PUP Report and its implications with regard to ordination and transfer of minister members,” the executive presbyter’s report said. “Advisory opinions of the OGA and other papers being circulated offering interpretations of the PUP report will be part of this consultation.”
Shortly before that announcement, on Sept. 8, in a letter to presbytery stated clerks, Stated Clerk Clifton Kirkpatrick discussed the PUP report, the ordination standards, per-capita and property issues. In a possible foreshadowing of the Synod of the Pacific meeting, Kirkpatrick reminded the stated clerks that:
“The Office of the General Assembly has worked to provide you with additional assistance related to the concerns raised in this letter, including recent advisory opinions (#18 on Discernment in Examining Bodies and #19 on the Trust Clause) and a constitutional musing (#11 on Examining Officers).”