Vote to request dismissal 2 years in the making
By Patrick Jean, The Layman, June 4, 2008
An Ohio congregation’s vote June 1 to request dismissal from the Presbyterian Church (USA) was at least two years in the making, their pastor says.
The Rev. Jason Bantz, pastor for 11 years of College Corner Presbyterian Church (aka First United Presbyterian Church) in College Corner, Ohio, said he knew of the issues in the denomination and struggled with them before going to seminary and again before seeking PCUSA ordination.
He said he attended the Presbyterian Lay Committee’s Faith and Life Conference in 2006 before the PCUSA’s 217th General Assembly. He started sharing more with his congregation after that Assembly approved the report of the Theological Task Force on Peace, Unity and Purity – including a recommendation that kept the current ordination standards in the denomination’s constitution, but allowed those who choose not to obey them to declare them to be non-essential.
Bantz said his church has four issues with the PCUSA:
- 1. “The truthfulness of the Bible, the full truthfulness. Kind of a more conservative, evangelical reading of it.
- 2. “The singularity of Jesus to save.
- 3. “The sanctity-of-life issue, that all of life in the world is life.
- 4. “The issue of homosexuality and God’s design. We haven’t broken that one, but [we’re] just pushing all over it each General Assembly.”
College Corner Church had two “faithful options,” Bantz said: “One is to work for renewal, along with Presbyterians for Renewal, The Layman, New Wineskins [Association of Churches], or to seek to go to the EPC. And we didn’t have the leadership support to work for renewal.”
Bantz attended the New Wineskins convocation in Sacramento, Calif., in October 2007 and looked at the Evangelical Presbyterian Church and other denominations, like the Presbyterian Church in America and the Evangelical Covenant Church. “The EPC was the best fit, especially after I got to meet some PCUSA churches in New Wineskins out there and heard Dean Weaver and Gerrit Dawson,” he said.
Weaver and Dawson are the New Wineskins co-moderators and, respectively, the pastors of Memorial Park Presbyterian Church in Allison Park, Pa., and First Presbyterian Church in Baton Rouge, La.
Bantz did research on the Internet and said he felt a match with the EPC’s beliefs, particularly its emphasis on mission and local option on women in leadership – Bantz’s church has women deacons and elders.
Bantz said he had meetings with the interim executive presbyter of Whitewater Valley Presbytery in November after returning from the New Wineskins convocation. His church’s session met two months after that, with a church meeting in February.
“We did take about a year on our own to kind of work through the issues and didn’t bring things up to presbytery,” he said. “We saw the ‘Louisville Papers‘ and I shared with the advisory team of the presbytery, ‘You know, those are threatening words.’ And we realize all presbyteries wouldn’t do that, but it seems as we move forward, some of the things that came away from that, they’re doing.”