Presbytery’s vote not to affirm marriage overture was turning point toward leaving the PCUSA
By Patrick Jean, May 10, 2007
At French Camp Presbyterian Church, a small congregation in Mississippi, there had been talk of leaving the Presbyterian Church (USA). But they were occasional grumblings, said Fred Davenport, a church elder.
Timeline
- Aug. 10, 2006 – French Camp Presbyterian Church session sends letter to St. Andrew Presbytery requesting to be “graciously” released from the PCUSA with its property.
- Oct. 3, 2006 – The presbytery appoints task force “to relate to the French Camp congregation and to lead the presbytery in its consideration of the French Camp Presbyterian Church session’s request.”
- Dec. 6, 2006 – French Camp congregation votes to request dismissal to the ARP Church. Updated dismissal request letter is sent to the presbytery.
- March 26, 2007 – The presbytery votes to request recommendation and report from the task force at the May 1 stated meeting.
- May 1, 2007 – Presbytery commissioners vote to dismiss the French Camp church from the PCUSA with its property, in exchange for a $30,000 gift.
- May 3, 2007 – Church sends $30,000 gift to the presbytery.
Then came Feb. 7, 2006. That’s when St. Andrew Presbytery debated an overture from the French Camp session, approved in May 2005, asking the presbytery to overture the 217th General Assembly “to reaffirm that the church, as salt and light in society, bears witness to the timeless truth that marriage between a man and a woman is ‘a gift God has given to all humankind for the well-being of the entire human family’ (from clause W-4.9001 in the Book of Order).”
“Therefore,” the overture stated, “no sexual union outside the bonds of marriage, such as in domestic partnerships or same-sex unions, is within the will of God or approved by this body. The matter is so serious, and of such great import in our own time, that we urge our churches to provide loving and consistent teaching in this area and to call erring members and leaders to repentance. We direct our national offices to uphold and urge this historic understanding of marriage in their communications with both church and society.”
The overture was voted down, 35-21. “At that point, we started to say, ‘What’s going on here?’ ” Davenport said.
“We didn’t do it as an acid test, but we just wanted to reaffirm marriage as being one man, one woman – exactly what the Book of Order said – and when that did not pass, we started to scratch our heads,” he said.
There also was concern within the congregation about the Peace, Unity and Purity report to be presented at the 217th General Assembly. It was when the report passed, Davenport said, that “we realized that things had changed drastically and this was not really the same denomination that we had been a part of in the past, and the thinking wasn’t the same. So, at that point, it became more and more clear that our thoughts were different from the thoughts of even the presbytery.”
On Aug. 10, 2006, the French Camp session made a written request to the presbytery to be “graciously” released with its property. Presbytery commissioners voted May 1, 2007, to dismiss the 94-member church from the PCUSA with its property, in exchange for a $30,000 gift to be “placed in an appropriate fund.”
$30,000 was church’s idea
The French Camp congregation initially asked to be released with their assets and property, Davenport said, but a presbytery task force felt they could not make that proposal.
The task force’s report and recommendation for the church’s dismissal at the May 1 presbytery meeting included a suggestion that the church pay $75,000. During the debate on the recommendation, an amendment was offered to reduce the gift amount to $30,000.
Davenport said the $30,000 figure was the brainchild of the French Camp congregation. The presbytery had loaned $18,000 to the church, he said, when it hired its first full-time pastor who wasn’t also president of French Camp Academy, a Christian home and school for young people from families in crisis.
“We compounded the interest on that and came up to about $30,000, and that was our offer,” Davenport said. Since the proposal came from the church, he said the money “was really more for what we felt like we owed the presbytery, but not for the property.”
The amendment was approved by voice vote. Davenport said the money was sent May 3 to the presbytery.
The task force recommended using the money for one or both of two things:
- A new pool at Camp Hopewell, the presbytery’s Christian education, camp and retreat center in Oxford, Miss.
- Living Waters for the World, which trains people to install water filtration and purification equipment in developing countries. It’s a program run by the Franklin, Tenn.-based Synod of Living Waters, which is comprised of 12 presbyteries in Alabama, Kentucky, Mississippi and Tennessee, including St. Andrew.
There was an unsuccessful motion at the presbytery meeting to give the $30,000 to French Camp Academy, Davenport said. “Some of us from French Camp felt a little bit funny about that,” he said, “but we appreciated their love and concern for the academy.”
Relationship with school should improve
Leaving the PCUSA will improve French Camp Presbyterian Church’s relationship with French Camp Academy, Davenport said.
“We had come to a point where we had no church growth there” at the church, said Davenport, who is a house parent for the school. “People were attending and they were tithing, but they were not joining.”
Many employees of the school, which Davenport said became religiously independent in the 1960s, haven’t joined the church because of its PCUSA affiliation. “I think we’re going to see a number of folks from the academy join the church, so I see it strengthening the relationship,” he said.
The academy was born out of the church in 1885. “They’ve had a wonderful working relationship through the years,” Davenport said. “That will continue – even though we are two separate entities, we are in a sense very closely bound there.
“Many of the members of the church work at the academy. A number of the elders work at the academy,” he said. “On a given Sunday when you’re standing there, you’re preaching to the congregation of the French Camp Presbyterian Church, but you’re very much aware that you’re also addressing the entire academy. I don’t see that changing at all.”
ARP Church ‘fit us real well’
The 160-year-old French Camp church will be received into the smaller, more conservative Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church next month.
“When we were looking at leaving, we were told by the presbytery that they would not release us to be independent,” Davenport said. “We would have to go with another Reformed body. We had planned all along to go to another denomination of the Presbyterian Reformed body, but what we did was we narrowed it down because of the folks that live and work here at the academy and that attend the church pretty much fall in” three denominations: the ARP Church, the Evangelical Presbyterian Church and the Presbyterian Church in America.
“And, of course, looking at the logistics of the churches that are in this state, those were the three that we felt like we needed to look at,” he said.
Representatives from each of the denominations spoke at the church, Davenport said. “We really felt like of the three – all three excellent denominations – we really felt like the ARP was a little bit more of who we are and what we are about,” he said. “We’re a smaller group, and we felt like that fit us real well.”
On Dec. 6, 2006, the French Camp congregation voted to request dismissal to the ARP Church. Elders attended a meeting of that denomination’s Mississippi Valley Presbytery in March, Davenport said, and commissioners voted to receive the French Camp congregation pending its dismissal from the PCUSA.
St. Andrew Presbytery of the PCUSA will send a letter to Mississippi Valley Presbytery of the ARP Church with official notice of French Camp’s dismissal. The French Camp church will be received into the ARP Church at that denomination’s 203rd General Synod June 5-7 at the Bonclarken Conference Center in Flat Rock, N.C., Davenport said.
French Camp elders also will have to attend an elder training program, he said.
New pastor, session moderator needed
February 2006 was a turning point for the church because of more than just the marriage overture. That’s also when the pastor, the Rev. Lane Stephenson, left to become pastor of J.J. White Memorial Presbyterian Church in McComb, Miss.
Four church members, including two elders, are preaching on a rotating basis. A search committee has put together “what we’re desiring in a pastor and what our church is about,” Davenport said.
“Once we are officially affiliated with the ARP, then we will be searching for a pastor,” he said. “And those men will continue to preach until we have actually called a pastor.”
There’s no timetable to complete that hiring, Davenport said.
The church also is looking for a new session moderator. St. Andrew Presbytery at its May 1 meeting approved the temporary appointment of its executive presbyter and stated clerk, the Rev. Dr. Gregory A. Goodwiller, as moderator. The resignation of the previous moderator – the Rev. Rusty Douglas, pastor of First Presbyterian Church in Greenwood, Miss. – was accepted.
Goodwiller’s appointment was rendered moot with the church’s dismissal from the PCUSA, Davenport said. A new session moderator will be selected from within the church membership, he said.
Preparing for more members
The French Camp church’s first letter to St. Andrew Presbytery requesting dismissal from the PCUSA was sent Aug. 10, 2006. The 12-member church session sent an updated request letter following the congregation’s vote Dec. 6 to request dismissal to the ARP Church.
But while everyone in the church wanted to leave the PCUSA, not everyone wanted to join the ARP Church, Davenport said. Three members of the congregation voted not to join the ARP Church, he said, and one abstained.
Attendance has held steady despite the vote and the months of uncertainty that followed, Davenport said. But he expects an increase in membership soon.
“We have a number of people who are waiting for us to be dismissed from the PCUSA,” he said. “I know of at least one couple that have their letter in hand, ready to join, and there are numbers of others who are going to join as soon as we are affiliated with the ARP.”
State of grace
The church’s original dismissal request letter asked the presbytery to “graciously release the French Camp church with its property so that the mission ministry of this community and campus church can continue unabated.”
Davenport feels the dismissal process was handled gracefully by the presbytery. Even the task force was not adversarial, he said.
“It was a very gracious spirit” at the May 1 presbytery meeting, he said. “It was one of those things that you had to be there to really experience it, to understand it. There was a lot of kindness on the floor at presbytery.”
Some did not agree with the dismissal request and voted against it, Davenport said. And “there were several there in the presbytery who did stand up and say, ‘I just have a hard time letting you go because we want you to stay in and fight with us.’ And your heart really goes out to those folks who want to stay and fight.”
“That’s why we stayed in for so long. We really wanted to make a difference, but it came to a point that we just saw that that wasn’t going to happen,” he said. “We really felt like we needed to move on.”
There were other examples of kindness, Davenport said, such as the commissioner who said the church should be dismissed for $1. Emotions poured out after the presbytery meeting, he said.
“There were many tears shed at the closing of that presbytery meeting, on both sides of the church and the presbytery,” he said. “It has been a long and historic affiliation, and it was hard. Of course, I think that’s what happens when we go through times like this.
“We left because we had become really disillusioned with the way the denomination was going,” he said. “We felt like it was leaving the biblical principles that we hold so dear. But it was still very hard in leaving.”
Patrick Jean is a staff writer for The Layman and The Layman Online. He can be reached at pjean@layman.org.