Ohio congregation booming after property confiscated
By John H. Adams, The Layman Online, August 19, 2004
It’s been more than two years since most of the members of Norcrest Presbyterian Church were exiled to the dog pound by Maumee Valley Presbytery leaders, who wouldn’t let them amicably leave the Presbyterian Church (USA) with their property and resettle in the Evangelical Presbyterian Church.
Any chance of a peaceful settlement vanished when the presbytery made an unannounced early-morning visit, removed the pastor’s possessions, changed the locks and took over the property.
On April 4, 2002, the first Sunday after the presbytery raid, the minister, most of the church’s officers and about 90 percent of the Norcrest members banded together for a worship service hastily arranged at the Findlay, Ohio, dog pound. Because of news about the presbytery’s action, a number of newcomers also attended that impromptu service.
Conditions have improved since then. Now officially aligned with the more conservative Evangelical Presbyterian Church and renamed Gateway Presbyterian Church, the exiles from Norcrest are booming.
They still don’t have their own turf. They’re meeting in a school where they use an auditorium for worship and hallways for classrooms. But Ben Borsay, the pastor, says attendance has mushroomed to 700 people for the three worship services he conducts each Sunday and construction is under way on a $3.5-million complex located on 20 acres of land. Most important, he says, 26 newcomers this year have become Christians.
Borsay breathes with relief that the congregation will own the property – not hold it in trust for the denomination. The Evangelical Presbyterian Church, unlike the Presbyterian Church (USA), does not require that its local congregations, whose members pay for their buildings with their gifts, hold their property in trust for the denomination.
Meanwhile, the PCUSA remnant that remains at Norcrest – plus some new members – numbers 63, according to the latest (2002) PCUSA data.
The congregation does not have a full-time pastor, according to the presbytery, which is trying to generate more parishioners for Norcrest. The presbytery’s home Web page includes a promo for Norcrest, the only congregation highlighted in that style.
In its 2003 Vision Statement, the presbytery said, “Within the next year we will form a covenant relationship with the Norcrest congregation to negotiate the use of the Norcrest facility.”
Congregation Left PCUSA Exit cost Current affiliation Gateway
Findlay, Ohio April 2002 (Lost property)
$2 million (est.) EPCCircleville Circleville, N.Y. July 2002 $112,000EPCRivermont Lynchburg, Va. July 2003 $1.1 million EPCFirst Warsaw, Ind. Sept. 2003 $75,000EPCFirst Charleston, Miss. April 2004 $75,000PCA That’s a problem. For a small congregation, Norcrest has a huge debt, estimated at $800,000, the unpaid portion of money borrowed for expansion needed to keep up with the growing membership. (Before the exodus, from 1992 to 2001, the Norcrest membership increased 37 percent – from 362 to 497.)
The cost of retiring a $800,000 debt at a 6 percent interest rate would be $6,750 a month or $81,000 annually, according to an amortization calculator. That computes to an annual per-member share of about $1,285, nearly $400 more than the average annual gift of the PCUSA’s 2.4 million Presbyterians.
The exiles, by being forced out of church property valued at more than $2 million, may have paid the highest price of any of the five Confessing Church congregations that have left the PCUSA since 2002 to join more conservative Presbyterian denominations.
In hindsight, Borsay said in an interview with The Layman Online, the loss of the Norcrest property had its benefits. He quotes Joseph’s reassurance to his brothers who had sold him into slavery – “… you meant evil for me; but God meant it for good.”
From the outset, at that first service in the dog pound, “We were energized,” Borsay said. “What happened to us brought everybody together. The commitment grew stronger.”
He said he has no regrets. “Looking back, I was involved in renewal in the PCUSA, thinking it could happen. But I think we had become like the frog in the kettle” – unaware that it would slowly boil to death.
These days, Borsay says he actually looks forward to attending the Evangelical Presbyterian Church’s annual General Assembly (he’s been to three) and presbytery meetings. All ministers, along with two elders from their congregations, attend the General Assemblies.
“It’s delightful,” he said, unable to recall any major controversies. The dominant issues at General Assembly, he added, are “missionary emphasis, how do we grow. We don’t get bogged down about the deity of Christ – we already know what we believe.”