Ohio church dissolved from PCUSA with property by Eastminster Presbytery
By Patrick Jean, The Layman, May 16, 2008
About the parties
Stow Presbyterian Church was founded in 1960. It has about 300 members. The Rev. Dr. David Weyrick has been its pastor for 16 years.
Eastminster Presbytery had 55 congregations totaling more than 11,000 members in 2006, the most recent year for which PCUSA statistics are available. Its headquarters is in Mineral Ridge, Ohio. A northeast Ohio church that voted 19 months ago to disassociate from the Presbyterian Church (USA) has reached an agreement with Eastminster Presbytery to be dissolved as a congregation within the denomination.
Stow Presbyterian Church in Stow, Ohio, retains its name, property and assets in its covenant with the presbytery. Presbytery commissioners approved the covenant on a standing vote at their stated meeting May 13.
In exchange for its dissolution with property from the PCUSA, Stow Church will give $40,000 to several presbytery mission projects over the next five years.
“We wanted to do what we could to allow them to close their books on us,” said the Rev. Dr. David Weyrick, Stow Church’s pastor since 1992. “And we wanted any monetary thing to be mission-oriented, not property-oriented.”
Eastminster Presbytery still considers the property to be held in trust for the PCUSA, but will not pursue the matter as part of the agreement, said the Rev. Dr. Dan Schomer, general presbyter.
“The action to ‘dissolve’ the congregation effectively severs the ties of the church to the denomination and permits it to continue its ministry as an independent congregation,” Schomer said in a news release.
‘Everybody has a breaking point’
The agreement concludes a process that began Oct. 8, 2006, when the Stow Church congregation voted overwhelmingly to disassociate from the PCUSA.
Various points of contention with the denomination were cited in the vote, including:
- Claims that the PCUSA no longer upholds the Lordship of Jesus Christ and the infallibility and authority of the Bible.
- The decline of PCUSA involvement in world mission work.
“The congregation was at odds with the denomination, not so much with Eastminster Presbytery,” Weyrick said. “It just so happens Eastminster Presbytery is the only venue that we had. I had friends and colleagues, and it was difficult. But I personally felt I had to do that, and the congregation felt that they just reached the breaking point. Everybody has a breaking point.”
Weyrick said the PCUSA’s lack of emphasis on world mission remains a particular concern for him. “We’re a very mission-oriented congregation,” he said. “I’ve got four short-term mission trips just this summer.”
Schomer disagreed. “I continue to challenge the validity of such criticism of the PCUSA,” he said in an e-mail to The Layman. “The Lordship of Jesus Christ, the authority of Scripture and a commitment to mission continue to be hallmarks of the PCUSA. I speak with some knowledge of the PCUSA, given that I have just completed six years of service on the General Assembly Council.”
‘Worked through it with integrity’
Eastminster Presbytery set up two administrative commissions after Stow Church’s disassociation vote, Weyrick said: One to “work with churches that were not very happy,” and one to specifically work with Stow Church.
In December 2006, the Stow Church congregation empowered the church’s session to enter into negotiations with the presbytery to avoid legal action and reach a binding agreement, Weyrick said. No time frame was given for them to complete their work.
Since its vote was to disassociate rather than request dismissal, Stow Church no longer felt like it was part of the PCUSA during discussions with the administrative commission, Weyrick said. “We were gone,” he said. “We as a congregation said, ‘We’re gone.’ We made sure that that was understood in our discussions, and we felt that we had every right to do that being a corporation in the state of Ohio.
“It was a corporate side that disassociated through a meeting of the corporation, and that’s one of the things that right now is being tested [in court] with the Hudson Church to the north of us,” Weyrick said.
Hudson Presbyterian Church in Hudson, Ohio, voted 162-61 on Nov. 5, 2006, to disaffiliate from the PCUSA. It has been embroiled since then in a church property ownership lawsuit against Eastminster Presbytery. A judge ruled in October 2007 that the property belongs to the portion of the congregation that voted for disaffiliation, but the presbytery has appealed the ruling, saying the property belongs to those who voted against disaffiliation and now worship at a separate site under a different pastor as the “true” Hudson Church.
Weyrick said his church knew its legal rights “because we were so close to the Hudson situation. We were two congregations that are pretty close within proximity and close theologically. We were New Wineskins [Association of Churches] congregations. The pastor there is a good friend of mine, and we worked together on many things within the presbytery. So we were aware of the legal things, but we wanted to avoid the legal things.
“Through several meetings and through about 18 months, we came up with this covenant,” he said. “Every time we met with them, we held that we wanted to avoid legal action. And so did they.”
Discussions were cordial and professional despite “many points of disagreement,” Weyrick said. “We agreed that we would work together as brothers and sisters in Christ, and we did. … We worked through it with integrity.”
Schomer agreed. “I was pleased with the work of the commission that sought to do its work with integrity,” he said.
‘Doing fine and moving forward’
Stow Church didn’t have any representatives at the presbytery meeting where the vote on the covenant took place, Weyrick said. “We put it in the hands of the Lord,” he said. “If it passed, that’s fine. If not, we’ll see where we go from there.”
Weyrick planned to tell his congregation about the covenant next week, after papers were signed to make it official. But the Akron Beacon Journal reported the agreement Thursday, so he sent an e-mail to the congregation about it. He will also announce it at Sunday’s services.
Stow Church had 262 members at the time of the disassociation vote. Weyrick said 10 worshipers will join the church this Sunday, taking membership to around 300. The church averages 350 worshipers over three morning services each Sunday, he said.
“We’ve got a new sanctuary,” which opened April 27, “and a new building addition – classrooms and everything like that,” Weyrick said. “We’re doing fine and moving forward.”
Weyrick renounced his jurisdiction in the PCUSA at the time of his church’s disassociation vote. He is now a fully ordained pastor in his church, as is a commissioned lay pastor who belonged to Stow Church and resigned his commission at the time of the disassociation vote, he said.
Stow Church will remain independent for now rather than join another denomination. “I just think we didn’t want to have to deal with any more overhead bureaucracy for the time being,” said Wyrick. “We just felt that we could be on our own and have our connectionalism with other churches in other ways.
“We’re still part of the New
Wineskins Association of Churches; we’re just an independent church within the New Wineskins,” Weyrick said. “We felt it was kind of like, ‘We knew we couldn’t stay,’ but we also feel, ‘There’s really no place to go.'”
Jesus Christ’s comments in the Gospel of Matthew about not taking your brother to court was a source of strength for Stow Church throughout the disassociation and dissolution process, Weyrick said.
“We’ve held up, in the past five years, the importance of the fact that the Lord is our shepherd,” he said. “And sometimes the Lord leads the sheep to newer pastures. And we believe that He’s just now leading us to a different pasture. We’re there, and we’re going to do what He wants us to do.
“I think there’s a definite feeling of closure, which we’re very pleased about,” Weyrick said. Still, he said, “It was hard dealing with your friends and former colleagues in order to work this out.”
Schomer echoes that sentiment. “I am still saddened that the Stow Church requested to separate from the PCUSA,” he said. “The sadness and sense of loss is felt widely within the presbytery.”