Presbytery continues punishing churches withholding per capita
By John H. Adams, By John H. Adams, September 16, 2003
In what one of its ministers termed “short-sighted,” the Presbytery of Heartland (parts of Kansas and Missouri) has reaffirmed its policy of punishing congregations that don’t remit their full per-capita apportionments or meet other presbytery requirements.
Heartland policy
“[N]o congregation [shall] be considered eligible to request assistance from the presbytery in the form of mission support, shared grants or loan guarantees unless that congregation has demonstrated its full participation in the fiscal and ecclesiastical life of the presbytery including the paying of per capita, the making and meeting of a mission pledge, being current on Board of Pensions dues, the filling of annual statistical reports, and the annual reporting of the pastor’s terms of call.”
PCUSA’s highest court
“[W]e hereby reaffirm … that a church may neither be compelled to pay nor punished for failure to pay any amounts pursuant to such [a per-capita] plan.” General Assembly Permanent Judicial Commission July 12, 2003
But the Sept. 15 presbytery vote to rescind the policy showed a dramatic shift. In June, Heartland commissioners voted 102-76 (a 57.3 percent margin) to adopt the policy. At the September meeting, the vote was 92 to 58 (61.3 percent) to rescind it.
However, the vote on rescission required two-thirds approval, while the June vote required only a simple majority.
Tom Sparks, pastor of the 1,300-member Presbyterian Church of Stanley, one of the largest congregations in the presbytery, made the motion to rescind the policy.
“I think their action is short-sighted,” Sparks told The Layman Online after the Sept. 15 vote.
At the end of the presbytery meeting, Sparks joined a complaint, filed on Sept. 5 by the Rev. Kirk Johnston of First Presbyterian Church of Paola, Kan. The complaint asks the synod court to declare that the presbytery policy is unconstitutional.
But there’s a chance that the trial may be forestalled. Allison Seed, moderator of the 32-member Heartland Presbytery Council and one of the opponents of the policy, told The Layman Online that the council may consider it again at its meeting on Oct. 20.
Should the council recommend rescinding or amending the policy, its proposal could go to the floor of the presbytery meeting on Nov. 18 on the consent agenda. Approval of an item listed on the consent agenda requires only a simple majority.
“Our battle isn’t Armageddon,” Seed said on the presbytery floor on Sept. 15. “Sometimes it’s better to change a decision.”
Seed, who is a member of the denomination’s General Assembly Council, also said the policy has caused a “feud not leading to unity, but further division.”
She told The Layman Online that whether the policy is punitive “depends on which side of the bed you’re lying on” but that she opposes the idea of spending money and energy on a judicial case when the presbytery’s resources are limited.
The Paola congregation has been directly affected by the presbytery policy. Because the session of the growing evangelical congregation voted not to pay its General Assembly per capita, Heartland Presbytery will not approve the congregation’s application for a permanent loan to finance a building project that is now under way.
The congregation is paying interest on a construction loan while the work proceeds, but permanent financing for about $1.2 million will be needed once the project is completed.
Sparks and others mentioned the Paola case, noting that twice the highest court in the denomination had declared that sessions are not required to remit their per-capita requests and that local churches cannot be punished for that action.
“To me, it’s clear,” Sparks said, referring to court decisions in 1991 and 2003 and the 213th General Assembly’s vote against an overture to compel sessions to pay their per-capita apportionments.
But another commissioner at the Sept. 13 presbytery meeting argued just the opposite. He said he wanted the complaint filed by Johnston to go the full distance – all the way to the Permanent Judicial Commission of the General Assembly.
That will be money poorly spent, argued Sparks, noting that the presbytery policy could backfire, causing congregations to withhold per-capita payments from the presbytery, which is already financially stressed.
While the denomination’s highest court has upheld the voluntary nature of per capita, it has never ruled specifically on whether a presbytery’s refusal to cosign a loan is a “punitive” action.
Commercial lenders require presbytery approval of loans because the Constitution of the Presbyterian Church (USA) says all church property is held in trust for the benefit of the denomination. The constitution gives presbyteries the final say on how to dispose of the property, whether to release it to allow a congregation to leave the denomination and whether a local congregation may borrow money for a new building or expansion.
The presbyteries also collect per-capita payments to support the work of the presbyteries, synods and the General Assembly. In the Paola case, the presbytery asked the congregation for $12,805.24. Of that amount, the session at Paola is withholding $2,851 in per-capita funds requested to support the General Assembly.
Sparks argues that the presbytery policy is discriminatory because it affects only those congregations that need presbytery approval for loans. He also says the policy is hazy – what does it mean, for instance, to “make and meet a mission pledge? Can that be $1?” Besides, he adds, no punitive action is undertaken against a church that, for instance, didn’t update its records in a timely fashion, but doesn’t need to borrow money for expansion.
And, Sparks adds, the policy violates covenantal obligations.
“Even if you take the side of those people who voted for this punitive measure,” he said, “the high road would be to say, ‘Even though you are not faithful, we will be faithful.'”
He compared the presbytery policy to what often happens at a local church when a member doesn’t make a pledge. “We deal with all church members all the time who don’t make a pledge,” he said. “But we don’t check that before we go visit them in the hospital. We don’t take punitive measures.”
Dave Moore, pastor of a 200-member new church development in the presbytery and a member of the Heartland Presbytery Council, said the pros and cons in the debate over the policy were divided in some ways between those who believe in absolute loyalty to the institution and those who argued from a theological perspective.
Moore believes the theological reason to oppose compulsory per-capita payments has deep Biblical roots – from “God loves a cheerful giver” to matters of conscience about issues in which the denomination’s governing bodies have made decisions that run counter to the Reformed understanding of the Christian faith.
But Moore thought the presbytery vote, even though it fell short of rescinding the policy, showed a remarkable transition.
“There was a quite obvious and fairly sweeping change in the presbytery’s understanding of the motion from June to September,” he said.