Education about church property issues urged
By Craig M. Kibler, The Layman Online, July 21, 2006
TULSA — An attorney urged more than 600 people at the second New Wineskins Convocation to educate themselves about the law that applies in resolving issues concerning local church property ownership and control.
Lloyd Lunceford, a partner in the law firm of Taylor, Porter, Brooks & Phillips in Baton Rouge, is the general editor of a new book called A Guide to Church Property Law: Theological, Constitutional and Practical Considerations. He stressed that he neither advocates that local churches sever their ties with their respective denominations nor remain forever fastened to them. Rather, Lunceford said, the purpose of his presentation was to provide local decision makers “with accurate legal information which, in consultation with their local counsel, is required in order to make informed decisions.”
In a detailed presentation that cited state case law and rulings by the U.S. Supreme Court, he told the audience that there are four main steps in the process — education, evaluation, documentation and implementation.
“Many people have read the text of their denominational constitutions, which assert a trust in favor of the denomination over local church property, and they may have accepted at face value such assertions as binding,” Lunceford said.
“Likewise, many people have read the provisions in denominational constitutions that assert a right by the denomination to determine the ownership of local church property and assumed that such provisions always were conclusive,” he said. “As you have seen, however, the law has much to say about whether such assertions and provisions are legally enforceable in different states and under different scenarios.”
For the four steps, he urged the audience to do their homework regarding church property issues, specifically:
- Additional, state-specific research.
- Share financial responsibility.
- Avoid focusing exclusively on the issue of a property trust. Winning a property trust battle is small consolation if one loses the ownership war.
- Apply the law to the facts at hand.
- Cost-sharing issues/attorney-client privilege.
- Gather all local church property-related documents.
Those documents, Lunceford said, include, but are not limited to, the current articles of incorporation and corporate bylaws and any prior versions of the articles of incorporation and bylaws that no longer are in force; abstracts of title or title insurance certificates and all property deeds showing precisely how each parcel of real estate is titled and whether there are any reversion, remainder, or trust provisions of record; and any minutes of trustee, session or congregational meetings at which resolutions were proposed, decisions made, or actions taken concerning denominational affiliation or disaffiliation, property ownership or use, or the adoption, rejection or application of property-related provisions in the denominational constitution.
“It is the hope of all who are present that the theological discord that has roiled the American mainline church would subside and in its place would arise a more unified church that is grounded in consensus around the historic doctrines that have defined the Christian Church for two millennia,” he said.
“If that hope becomes unrealistic, then those congregations that adhere to the traditional doctrines of the faith may be compelled by events beyond their control to take affirmative steps to protect their vested property rights and clarify the competing claims to ownership and control of local church property.”
Lunceford said that some denominational actions may have the effect of placing a cloud on an otherwise marketable property, “therefore prompting local church trustees — in fulfillment of their fiduciary obligation — to obtain civil court declaratory relief or quiet title remedies and obtain a binding judicial declaration of the rights of the respective parties.”
In providing some background on the Presbyterian Church (USA), he said that the two denominations that merged to form the PC (USA) never had an express trust clause in their constitutions — “until they were amended on the eve of the 1983 merger.”
At the time of the merger, Lunceford said, “rank and file Presbyterians for generations had been accustomed to denominational life without the assertion by the denomination of an express trust over local property in favor of the denomination. Many likely were unaware that the constitutions of the denominations to which they were subject immediately prior to merger had, on the cusp of the merger, been amended to include trust language. Ignorance of the newly confected trust clauses was compounded by uncertainty over their meaning due to the ambiguous language in some portions of the new clauses.”
In summation, he said that the resolution of church property disputes “includes the consideration of the laws of the state in which the local church property is situated — in particular, state trust and corporation law.”