Two large Sacramento Presbytery churches request dismissal to EPC
By Patrick Jean, The Layman Online, October 22, 2007
Two of the largest churches in the Sacramento Presbytery of the Presbyterian Church (USA) are requesting that the presbytery dismiss them to the Evangelical Presbyterian Church.
Fair Oaks Presbyterian Church in Fair Oaks, Calif., the presbytery’s largest congregation with 2,286 members, and First Presbyterian Church in Roseville, Calif., the presbytery’s third-largest congregation with 1,143 members, held congregational votes Oct. 14 on seeking dismissal.
About the parties
Fair Oaks Presbyterian Church was chartered in 1952, but has roots dating back to 1903.
First Presbyterian Church in Roseville was founded in 1873.
Sacramento Presbytery has 43 congregations totaling more than 15,000 members. At Fair Oaks, 1,179 voted to request dismissal and 39 voted to stay in the PCUSA, the church’s Web site stated. About 1,700 members were at the worship service that preceded the vote and 1,218 of them took part in the vote, said Bill Cole, an elder and spokesman for the church.
At First Presbyterian in Roseville, 750 voted to seek dismissal and 10 voted to remain in the PCUSA, said the Rev. Dr. Jim Barstow, the church’s senior pastor. About 900 members were at the meeting and 760 of them took part in the vote, he said.
“When you look at what happened last Sunday, it was likely the biggest single voice that’s occurred, certainly, in the years,” Cole said. “We had two churches representing 3,500 members or so, and the votes were 96.8 and 98.7 percent. Those are huge statements of our desire to follow Christ wherever He’s leading and calling us.”
Presbytery representatives will meet with representatives of the two churches to determine if an agreement can be reached on the terms of dismissal, said Robert H. Johnson, a Sacramento attorney and spokesman for the presbytery. The presbytery’s next stated meeting is Dec. 4, but the presbytery will only act “when and if it is satisfied that it has fully met its obligations under the Book of Order,” he said.
Lawsuits preceded votes
Dismissal from the PCUSA also could result in the resolution of property ownership lawsuits that the two churches filed against the presbytery. Fair Oaks’ complaint and First Presbyterian Roseville’s complaint were filed March 5; each seeks quiet title to the church property, along with declaratory and injunctive relief.
“We were told by their lawyer that they could only discuss the property issue in view of our leaving (the PCUSA). And we were told that right away, back in March,” Barstow said. “So, it’s always been in their mind that the only way we can have a discussion on property, any sort of negotiations on property, is if we were to be dismissed. I’m hoping they’ll live up to their word.”
Johnson said that, “If the parties are able to reach an agreement, then I would expect the suits to be dismissed with prejudice. If not, I would expect these suits to be tried next spring, and in that event, I would expect the courts of this state to uphold the trust clause in the PCUSA’s Constitution.”
Barstow said his and Cole’s churches chose to sue before seeking dismissal because “we felt the property was ours. We didn’t know if property then would be a point of major contention with the presbytery. We wanted to clean that issue up before we went further in whether or not we would leave the denomination.”
Before the suits were filed, the two churches approached the presbytery with a legal document asking that their pastors be protected while they discussed property ownership, Barstow said. “We wanted to engage in a dialogue on the ownership of property, but we were concerned that if we even began to approach the subject, then the presbytery would turn on us,” he said.
The presbytery refused to sign the document, Barstow said. The churches asked again for the signature, but the presbytery declined again and the churches then went to court to protect themselves while they explored the property ownership issue, he said.
Concerns go back years
Fair Oaks’ denominational concerns date all the way back to the 1983 merger that formed the PCUSA, Cole said. In response, the church created a “church and society commission” 13 years ago and an in-depth study group five years ago, he said.
After more than five years of study and discernment, town hall-style meetings began a year ago, Cole said. The meetings, he said, began around the same time the church session expressed “very deep concern” in a letter to the congregation about two actions taken by the denomination’s 217th General Assembly in June 2006:
- 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.
- 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.
The Fair Oaks session concluded its discernment in September, followed by more town hall-style meetings that resulted in the session’s recommendation Oct. 4 that the congregation vote for seeking dismissal from the PCUSA, Cole said.
First Presbyterian in Roseville began its own “intense season of discernment” in fall 2005 when the initial PUP report was received, Barstow said. A congregational meeting on the final PUP report followed in November 2006, he said.
“We hoped PUP would solve our problems, the fact that we are a split denomination,” Barstow said. “We hoped that they would come out with a courageous way of dealing with this. When PUP came out the way it did and was approved, that was the last straw. That was our trip wire.”
Roseville church representatives met with Fair Oaks church representatives in November 2006 and were introduced to the New Wineskins initiative, Barstow said. The Roseville church joined the conservative movement, of which the Fair Oaks church was a founding member, Cole said.
“Both churches have always struggled with the progressive leanings of the Presbyterian Church (USA),” Barstow said. “We’ve, I think, valiantly fought against it. In the last seven years, we have put more and more efforts into our presbytery and the General Assembly. We have full representation at all of the presbytery meetings. We’ve sent a commissioner to the General Assembly. We have people involved in committee meetings from the presbytery up to the synod. So, we worked really hard at trying to bring reform.”
The frustration extended to the presbytery and synod levels, too, Barstow said. The Roseville church set up guidelines in September 2006 that Sacramento Presbytery wouldn’t receive an ordination candidate who declared a scruple in opposition to any ordination standard in the PCUSA’s Constitution, but the Permanent Judicial Commission of the Synod of the Pacific ruled the guidelines unconstitutional in June 2007. Since then, he said, the presbytery has approved an “absolute, outspoken progressive” as an ordination candidate.
“These things have just come along as final nails in the coffin. … Our presbytery is really struggling with this, and we’re just seeing that it’s not a place to seek evangelical reform,” Barstow said.
His church’s town hall-style meetings were followed by the session’s recommendation Oct. 4 that the congregation vote for requesting dismissal from the denomination, he said.
What’s next?
Presbytery representatives were given “voice and time” at each Fair Oaks congregational meeting to make the case against seeking dismissal, Cole said. Presbytery Moderator Barbara Farley attended every town hall-style gathering and was “very gracious” in her talks despite points of disagreement, he said.
“They have told us that if we had a quorum of 10 percent and if the majority voted for dismissal, then they would work with us toward gracious separation,” he said. “We are hoping that that will hold true.”
At its stated meeting Sept. 22, Sacramento Presbytery approved guidelines for churches seeking separation from the PCUSA. Although the guidelines take effect after the Fair Oaks and Roseville churches’ dismissal requests, the churches and the presbytery will try to hold to the spirit of the guidelines, Barstow said.
“They worked hard at the document and tried to be very fair,” he said. “The committee they put together was, I thought, a fair committee. I think they worked hard at creating a document that was fair and it tried to seek gracious separation.
“The presbytery, on the floor of the presbytery, has said time and again that they want a gracious separation,” Barstow said. “We have doubt that that is the staff’s view,” he said, although Farley and members of the presbytery council have expressed their desire for a gracious separation.
The Fair Oaks and Roseville churches will join the EPC directly, then will request that the denomination place them in the New Wineskins transitional presbytery from there, Barstow said. Sacramento Presbytery does not recognize the New Wineskins/EPC Presbytery, he said.
“We’re just very much looking forward to the journey with the EPC and being a very active part of the New Wineskins presbytery,” he said.
Both churches will make efforts to provide for members who don’t want to leave the PCUSA, Cole said. Pastors from other PCUSA churches will be brought in to meet with them, he said.
As for the lawsuits, the next court date is Nov. 13. That’s when a hearing will take place on a Sacramento Presbytery motion to transfer the Fair Oaks case from Sacramento County Superior Court to Placer County Superior Court, where the Roseville case was filed, and consolidate the two cases.
Both churches are willing to drop the cases if Sacramento Presbytery quits its claim on the church properties, Barstow said. But if negotiations on dismissal from the PCUSA break down, the lawsuits will continue – and both churches are willing to appeal an unfavorable ruling all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court if necessary, he said.
“We believe we have a very, very strong court case,” he said. “We believe our lawyer has secret dreams of busting the trust clause. He feels that strongly about our court cases. But that’s not what we got into this for – we just want our church and people and our mission. We want to be equally yoked, so we would love to end this quickly.”
Patrick Jean is a staff writer for The Layman and The Layman Online. He can be reached at pjean@layman.org.