Illinois church schedules congregational vote June 24 on seeking dismissal from PCUSA
By Patrick Jean, June 20, 2007
With its pastor citing “25 years of accumulated frustration” with the Presbyterian Church (USA), First Presbyterian Church in Quincy, Ill., has scheduled a congregational vote June 24 on whether to request dismissal from the denomination.
Confessing church
First Presbyterian Church of Quincy, Ill., is a member of the Confessing Church Movement.
PCUSA church sessions that have adopted Confessing Church resolutions have affirmed three tenets:
- 1. That Jesus Christ alone is Lord of all and the way of salvation.
- 2. That Holy Scripture is the triune God’s revealed Word, the church’s only infallible rule of faith and life.
- 3. That God’s people are called to holiness in all aspects of life. This includes honoring the sanctity of marriage between a man and a woman, the only relationship within which sexual activity is appropriate.
“I expect it to pass, but the percentage I am unclear of,” said the church’s pastor, the Rev. Rodney J. Bakker. He said Great Rivers Presbytery, of which the church is a member, requires only a simple majority for a congregation’s vote on a dismissal request to be considered valid.
The Quincy church is the first to be addressed by the presbytery’s administrative commission. It was approved at the presbytery’s stated meeting Feb. 27 “so that the presbytery would have a response team ready if and when a congregation indicated that it wanted to begin discussing the possibility of leaving the denomination,” said the Rev. Dr. Jim Bell, moderator of the commission.
“We had met a few times just to get basic things in order, and then the Quincy session notified the presbytery that this was the action that they were going to recommend and showed us the timeline that they were going to follow,” he said. “And that’s when we became involved with them.”
Bakker and Bell aren’t sure what will happen after June 24, but both agree that they don’t want the matter to end up in civil court.
“It does appear that it is their desire to work with our congregation in order to allow us to make this transition, if this is the will of the congregation,” Bakker said.
Origins of dismissal request
Bakker, who has been pastor of First Presbyterian Church for about 13 years, cited two actions taken by the 217th General Assembly last year that steered the church on its path toward a dismissal request vote:
The first was the approval of the report by the Theological Task Force on Peace, Unity and Purity that keeps the current ordination standards in the PCUSA’s Constitution, but allows those who choose not to obey them to declare them to be non-essential. Several local meetings followed the general assembly, and the church session co-sponsored an overture asking Great Rivers Presbytery to affirm the constitutional ordination standards.
The overture failed on a 74-72 vote. “I tell you, if there was a straw that broke the camel’s back, that was it,” he said.
The second was the 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.
However, Bakker said, “In truth, it’s just 25 years of accumulated frustration that led the session to bring this resolution before our congregation.”
The session made a unanimous recommendation for the resolution at its meeting April 16. The June 24 vote will ask the congregation to resolve to ask Great Rivers Presbytery to dismiss the church to the Evangelical Presbyterian Church.
First Presbyterian Church is a member of 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 EPC. Bakker cited the New Wineskins membership, as well as recommendations in the final report released Feb. 9 by the New Wineskins strategy team, as factors in leading the church to pursue joining the EPC.
“They are a more conservative, evangelical Reformed body that does allow for the ordination of women,” he said. “And we have, obviously, half of our session are Godly, ordained Presbyterian women, and that seemed like the best option for us.”
He added, however, that one church elder has distanced herself from the session’s April 16 decision because of the issue of women’s ordination within the EPC.
Bakker said he was told by the presbytery that the church can’t be dismissed to a “provisional presbytery” such as the proposed New Wineskins Presbytery, so membership directly in the EPC is being sought through the June 24 vote.
The proposed New Wineskins Presbytery could come a step closer to reality just before the Quincy congregation’s vote – the EPC is scheduled to vote at its June 20-23 general assembly on a proposal to authorize the establishment of transitional, non-geographic presbyteries to receive groups of churches into membership.
EPC officials spoke to the congregation May 20 and the congregation met June 10 to discuss that, Bakker said.
Presbytery gets involved
Great Rivers Presbytery commissioners, acting on a recommendation from presbytery trustees, authorized an administrative commission Feb. 27. The seven-member panel, “if necessary, will ‘visit particular churches, governing bodies or other organizations of the church reported to be affected with disorder, and to inquire into and settle the difficulties therein,’ to the extent permitted by the Book of Order (G-9.0503a(4)),” according to the trustees’ report.
“The rationale for this action is the potential need to react promptly between assembly meetings if a particular church proposes actions which, if taken, would result in separation from the PCUSA and/or which are at variance with the Constitution of the PCUSA,” the report states. “The current volatility of the issues facing the presbytery and the larger church call for advance planning and preparedness for a variety of contingencies.”
The commission has had several meetings with the church, Bakker said. The panel has not been authorized to attempt to replace the session or pastor, he added.
The commission met with half of the church session at one point, Bell said, then met another time with “approximately the same number of people who did not agree with the session’s resolution.” He said he also has met with Bakker and/or session and congregation members at least three other times.
Bakker said the last meeting was May 6, when Great Rivers’ executive presbyter, the Rev. Susan D. Krummel, gave the sermon.
“Jesus didn’t say that everyone would know we were His disciples because we never had any disagreements. Obviously, we do,” Bakker said. “But how we conduct ourselves in the midst of times of disagreements – that, Jesus said, was the telling sign of whether we were His disciples.
“A book by Francis Schaeffer that always influenced me greatly as a young Christian was The Mark of the Christian, in which he took this particular passage (John 13:34-35) and he said quite simply that we, as Christians, are quite guilty of tarnishing the name of Christ by the way we disagree publicly in front of the world,” Bakker said. “That’s always been a guiding principle, and I was pleased that God led our executive presbyter to preach on that topic at the beginning of our process.”
Krummel said her presbytery hasn’t taken any official stand on the Quincy church’s dismissal pursuit since it’s still very early in the process. It’s the first time she’s dealt with a church possibly seeking dismissal in her tenure, she said, although the presbytery has a precedent with several churches leaving for the Presbyterian Church in America at least 25 years ago.
Bakker said he received a letter two weeks ago from the presbytery stating that if his church is dismissed with its property, the presbytery wants $550,000 in return.
“It surprised a number of people, the amount that was suggested by the presbytery,” he said. “The session has not yet met to respond to that, and I don’t think they will respond until after the vote.”
Hoping to avoid court
Bakker said he doesn’t want the matter to end up in civil court, but he can’t speak for the session. “It is my personal view that Christians should not take Christians to civil court, based on 1st Corinthians, Chapter 6,” he said. “Hopefully, if there is a need for such discussion, the presbytery and the leaders of First Presbyterian Church can sit down and come to some agreement. That failing, I would prefer as a way of keeping faith with the mandate of Scripture not to take other Christians to civil court, to agree to go before a Christian mediator and have that mediator help us resolve any differences.”
Bell, who is co-pastor of First Presbyterian Church in Normal, Ill., agreed.
“I think there was agreement that we wanted to attempt to do everything in such a way as to be Biblical and not disgrace our Lord,” he said. “Both sides agreed that we would attempt to do everything possible to avoid any litigation.”
The administrative commission, Bell said, can do one of two things after the June 24 congregation vote:
- 1. Call a special presbytery meeting.
- 2. Make a report and recommendations at the presbytery’s next stated meeting Sept. 11.
“There are very outspoken people wanting to leave. There are very outspoken people wanting to stay,” he said. “I think the vast majority of the people are in the middle, not saying too much. Many of them probably will go whichever way the majority votes. I think their primary concern is trying to keep their congregation as much intact as they possibly can, whether they remain with the PCUSA or whether they go to the Evangelical Presbyterian Church.”
Bakker and Bell both wish it hadn’t come to this.
“It’s a sad but, I think, probably necessary process for everybody concerned,” Bell said. “It’s unfortunate that we were not able to have conversations earlier, which I think possibly could have avoided a lot of this. But on the other side, I think there are those – I don’t know how many – who feel that their concerns and positions could not be heard or accepted by the denomination and, therefore, they’re feeling they have to leave. Until the vote’s taken, we have no way of knowing what percentage is in each camp.”
“It is our desire to seek dismissal rather than disaffiliation because we don’t want to dishonor the history that we have had with Great Rivers Presbytery, and we don’t want to dishonor our brothers and sisters [in Christ],” Bakker said of his 167-year-old church, which has about 400 members. “We want to do this in a constitutional way.
“Great Rivers Presbytery has made it clear that they are saddened at the thought of First Presbyterian Church seeking to be dismissed, and they wish we wouldn’t go,” he said. “But they have dealt honorably with our congregation up to this point.”
Patrick Jean is a staff writer for The Layman and The Layman Online. He can be reached at pjean@layman.org.