Memorial Park Church files property ownership lawsuit, schedules vote to disaffiliate from PCUSA
By Patrick Jean, The Layman Online, January 11, 2008
The first church property ownership case of 2008 pits a large Pittsburgh-area church that is seeking to disaffiliate from the Presbyterian Church (USA) against Pittsburgh Presbytery.
About the parties
Memorial Park Presbyterian Church was founded in 1943. It has 1,675 members, the most of any church in Pittsburgh Presbytery. The Rev. Dr. D. Dean Weaver has been senior pastor since May 2006.
Weaver is co-moderator of the New Wineskins Association of Churches. In June 2007, the 27th General Assembly of the Evangelical Presbyterian Church approved a plan to create a non-geographic, transitional New Wineskins presbytery to receive congregations seeking to join that denomination.
Pittsburgh Presbytery has 43,850 members in 151 congregations. Memorial Park Presbyterian Church in Allison Park, Pa., filed a complaint for a declaratory judgment and quiet title Jan. 3 in Allegheny County Common Pleas Court. The presbytery is named as the sole defendant in the lawsuit, which seeks two orders.
The first order would:
- 1. Declare that “Memorial Park Church owns all the real and personal property titled in its own name as described” in the litigation.
- 2. Declare that “Memorial Park Church is entitled to the quiet, exclusive, uninterrupted and peaceful possession of the Memorial Park property without any interference of the defendant.”
- 3. Declare that “Memorial Park Church is entitled to sole possession and control over all of its personal property, including all cash and other assets in its possession or control or deposited in any financial institution, as described” in the litigation.
- 4. Award “Memorial Park Church its attorney’s fees, costs of suit and such other relief which the court deems just and proper.”
The second order would:
- 1. Grant quiet title “to the Memorial Park property as described” in the litigation “in the Memorial Park Church solely.”
- 2. Declare that “Memorial Park Church is entitled to the quiet, exclusive, uninterrupted and peaceful possession of the Memorial Park property.”
- 3. Declare that “neither the Pittsburgh Presbytery nor the PCUSA holds any property interest in the Memorial Park property, whether in trust or otherwise.”
- 4. Award “to the Memorial Park Church its attorney’s fees, costs of suit and such other relief which the court deems just and proper.”
The filing of the lawsuit came seven months to the day after the Memorial Park congregation voted overwhelmingly to ask Pittsburgh Presbytery to dismiss their church from the PCUSA to join the Evangelical Presbyterian Church. The 1,675-member church voted 951 (91.1 percent) in favor of seeking dismissal and 93 (8.9 percent) against.
‘We’re not playing a game’
Negotiations to allow the church to leave with its property followed, but never got anywhere after seven months, said the church’s senior pastor, the Rev. Dr. D. Dean Weaver.
“We worked after the vote on June 3,” he said. “We went for about four months in terms of negotiating what would be kind of a settlement offer or, from our end, a mission gift.
“About the middle of September, they basically came down as low as they felt they could and we came up as high as we felt that we could,” Weaver said. “And we said, ‘Look, we’re still pretty far apart. We recognize that this looks like an unlikely gap to close because, quite frankly, we can’t go any higher for it. We’re not playing a game. This is true. This is our max level.’ And they didn’t have any willingness to come even reasonably close to where we were. We were at $500,000. They were at $1.2 million.”
Memorial Park Church’s negotiators asked the presbytery’s negotiators to take the church’s final offer – $500,000, to be paid over 10 years – to the presbytery, Weaver said. The church expected the matter to come before the presbytery council, which then would make either a positive or negative recommendation for the full presbytery to vote upon, he said.
But October presbytery and council meetings, a November presbytery council meeting and December presbytery and council meetings came and went without the matter being addressed, Weaver said. “I had to call them, only to find out that they had taken no action,” he said.
“Now you’re three months into it, saying, ‘Well, gosh, if you ask your girlfriend to marry you and three months later she hasn’t given you an answer, it sounds like the answer is no.’ And we hadn’t received any reason, no clarification, no further direction.”
‘A different route to get there’
At that point, Memorial Park Church began working with its attorneys on pursuing immediate disaffiliation from the PCUSA, Weaver said. He said that, just before Christmas, he heard from the presbytery’s chief negotiator, who said he wanted to meet with the church’s chief negotiator. The presbytery’s negotiator offered binding arbitration to the church’s negotiator, Weaver said.
The church’s negotiator took the offer to the church’s session, which met Jan. 2 to consider it, Weaver said. “Session basically reasoned that a binding arbitration, quite frankly, likely wouldn’t even be possible with the church because how does a congregation, let alone a presbytery, vote on something that a judge binds legally in the courts?” he said. “That’s a hard one to figure out. Beyond that, we had already arrived at our maximum number. We weren’t doing that as some negotiating trick.”
Memorial Park Church’s session rejected the offer and reasoned that there was “no apparent willingness on the part of the presbytery to negotiate with us in earnest,” Weaver said.
The session also looked at the routes two of Sacramento Presbytery’s largest churches – Fair Oaks Presbyterian Church in Fair Oaks, Calif., and First Presbyterian Church in Roseville, Calif. – had to take to leave the PCUSA, he said.
Even if a settlement was reached, Weaver said he was told by Pittsburgh Presbytery’s committee on ministry that there were those in the presbytery who would appeal. That meant Memorial Park Church’s fight for freedom from the PCUSA would go through the time and expense of the denomination’s legal process, possibly all the way to the general assembly’s Permanent Judicial Commission, he said.
“We came to the conclusion that, unfortunately, that process had run its course,” Weaver said. “And if we were going to be favorable and faithful to the will of the church that voted seven months ago by 91 percent to go to the EPC, then we were going to have to take a different route to get there.”
That led to filing the lawsuit and scheduling the disaffiliation vote, he said. The vote, which also would align Memorial Park Church with the EPC, is scheduled for a congregational and corporate meeting to be held Jan. 19-20.
“This has been a very painful process and a deeply prayerful decision,” Weaver wrote Jan.3 in a letter to the congregation posted on the church’s Web site. “We have worked for the last year in good faith towards dismissal and now that this process has ended, we desire to move forward in faith and ministry. We have spent much time on our knees before the Father, and trust all things to His sovereign hands.”
Presbytery ‘saddened’
After Pittsburgh Presbytery is served with the lawsuit, it has 20 days to respond. Memorial Park Church also is waiting to see how the presbytery will respond administratively, Weaver said.
About a year ago, presbytery commissioners approved a process for churches seeking to leave the PCUSA. The process calls first for ongoing conversation, then a negotiated settlement, then legal and administrative action if a settlement can’t be reached or approved. Since efforts to settle Memorial Park Church’s dismissal request have ended without success, Weaver said he anticipates legal and administrative action – probably an administrative commission – would be next.
The next presbytery council meeting is Jan. 22, and the presbytery’s next stated meeting is Feb. 7. But the stated clerk can ask the moderator for an administrative commission without the presbytery’s approval before scheduled meetings, Weaver said.
The Rev. Doug Portz, acting head of staff for Pittsburgh Presbytery and its associate pastor for medium-size churches, did not return a call from The Layman Online seeking comment. He told The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that the presbytery was “prepared to use the ecclesiastical process according to our Book of Order to address future issues with Memorial Park Presbyterian Church.”
“Leaders in the Pittsburgh Presbytery have made every effort to keep such matters out of the civil courts,” Portz told the Post-Gazette. “We are saddened by the news that Memorial Park Presbyterian Church has taken this unilateral action to disaffiliate from the [PCUSA] without further talks with our negotiating team.”
Patrick Jean is a staff writer for The Layman and The Layman Online. He can be reached at pjean@www.layman.org.