Good for goose but not for gander
Commentary by Parker T. Williamson, The Layman, May 8, 2012
The session of 440-member First Presbyterian Church in Tecumseh, Mich., has filed charges against Maumee Valley Presbytery for failing to follow its own rules. Apparently, local churches seeking to exit the Presbyterian Church (USA) must obey the presbytery’s self-described “fair, clear and easily understood,” dismissal policy, but the presbytery itself does not. Tecumseh’s April 3 remedial complaint will be heard by the Synod of the Covenant Permanent Judicial Commission.
In 2007, the presbytery adopted a “Process for Separation” in which it promised to “follow the example of Jesus in setting the interests of others above our own” and, with respect to property, not “to use the threat of its seizure as a coercive instrument of the presbytery.”
Included in the document is the promise of “an open process” and that the team chosen by the presbytery to represent it in any negotiations with the local church will not be given coercive powers. “The team is not an administrative commission,” says the policy. “It has no authority to take any action regarding the property held in trust, pastoral leadership, session membership nor the moderator of the session.”
The policy states that if the local church follows the policy’s guidelines, the presbytery’s pastoral team “will support and recommend” the congregation’s request for dismissal when that request is presented to Maumee Valley Presbytery.
Dotting I’s and crossing T’s
Tecumseh church leaders say they followed the rules, and their complaint to the synod is replete with supporting documentation. In 2007, the session formed a task force to conduct intensive discussions regarding the theology and practices of the PCUSA. After the task force’s findings were reported, the session invited representatives from the presbytery to visit with them and respond to their growing sense of estrangement from the denomination. On the heels of that discussion, the session adopted and published a statement of Foundational Beliefs, making it clear where the session stood with respect to Biblical faith and morals.
In 2008, the session approved withholding the General Assembly portion of its per-capita contributions. It published a report of this action in the church newsletter, thereby notifying both the congregation and presbytery officials of this “act of conscience.”
In 2009, the session voted to begin a discernment process regarding Tecumseh’s relationship to the PCUSA. In May, the session invited the presbytery stated clerk to meet with the session and discuss its concerns. At that meeting the presbytery policy was distributed to the session and they were told that this is how it would be treated. In November, the session invited two representatives of the Evangelical Presbyterian Church to discuss that denomination’s faith and practices.
In 2010, the session launched a series of small group gatherings throughout the congregation in order to share and submit for discussion the conclusions it had reached during its discernment process. In April, the session invited the presbytery to send in a “pastoral team” for discussions as specified in the presbytery’s policy. In June, the session met with Maumee Valley’s pastoral team and informed the team that it intended to call a congregational meeting for the purpose of voting on a proposal to seek dismissal to the Evangelical Presbyterian Church. In September, the session sent a letter to the congregation, with copies to the presbytery, calling a congregational meeting for October 10. The presbytery’s pastoral team members were invited to attend the meeting and were assured that they would be given the right to speak.
About face
Acting pre-emptively on September 21, the presbytery did something that in its policy it declared that it would not do: It named virtually all of the pastoral team members to a newly created administrative commission with greatly expanded and coercive powers.
On October 10, the Tecumseh congregation gathered for its previously announced meeting. A quorum of the congregation as specified by the PCUSA Constitution and cited in the presbytery’s dismissal policy# was present, and 81 percent (150-31) voted to seek dismissal from the PCUSA, well more than the 75 percent specified in the presbytery’s dismissal policy.
Building an ersatz church
Although Maumee Valley’s policy requires that the presbytery pastoral team (now wearing the clothes of an administrative commission) support the congregation’s request for dismissal, the administrative commission initiated an offensive campaign to oppose dismissal. In contrast to Tecumseh’s documented transparency, commission members initially met with four of the 31 Tecumseh members who had voted against dismissal, and together they forged a plan to grow the minority faction’s numbers. Following that meeting, commission members met secretly with other persons no longer worshiping with the Tecumseh church. According to Tecumseh’s judicial complaint, they recruited inactive members and non-members who had not attended Tecumseh church services for as many as ten years, one of which was actively involved in an area Lutheran church. In addition, the presbytery’s interim executive set up an escrow fund for the group.
The presbytery’s clandestine campaign resulted in the addition of only four of Tecumseh’s active members to the group, but it brought out of the woodwork some 25 additional persons who at some time in the past had a relationship with the Tecumseh congregation. Now numbering approximately 60, the group, with support from the presbytery, named itself “the foundational group.”
Prosecution and eviction
Claiming to be the “true” First Presbyterian Church of Tecumseh, Mich., the approximately 60-member foundational group is demanding that Tecumseh’s pastor, Rev. Richard Mortimer, be removed from all pastoral duties, that the 440-member congregation turn over its sanctuary on Sunday mornings for a worship service led by a Maumee Valley approved minister, and that the majority congregation seeking alignment with the EPC vacate the church buildings now claimed by the foundational group.
Simultaneously, Maumee Valley granted its commission expanded powers, including “original jurisdiction” over the Tecumseh church, an act which claims to delegitimize the congregation’s elected officers and may seek to put the commission in charge of the church’s bank accounts and other assets. Given the elders fiduciary obligations to the congregation which elected them, this all but begs for a civil law legal challenge.
The presbytery also censured Mortimer, accusing him (without producing any supporting evidence and making no provision for a disciplinary trial in which he could defend himself) of fostering “a climate in which hate mail, threatening letters, or extortion is promoted and condoned.”
Tecumseh’s judicial complaint against Maumee Valley Presbytery requests that the Synod Permanent Judicial Commission order the presbytery to cease and desist in its destructive and unwarranted interventions into the life of the congregation, and that it honor its own dismissal policy which has never been rescinded by presbytery action. A trial date has not been set.
Déjà vu disputations
The Tecumseh experience appears to follow advice (“The Louisville Papers”) given by lawyers in the Louisville office of the PCUSA. In that document, denominational officials urged presbyteries to engage in hardball tactics, including removing session members from their governing role
, removing the pastor, seizing bank accounts, changing the locks on church buildings, and naming a minority group the “true church.”
A pattern of activities similar to that which Tecumseh has experienced has emerged in other presbyteries. The congregation’s plight mirrors developments at Fremont Presbyterian Church in Sacramento, Calif., where presbytery officials met secretly with a tiny minority of the congregation and provided presbytery services and an escrow account in order to beef up a “true church.”
Similarly, the Presbytery of Western North Carolina has attempted to concoct a Montreat Presbyterian Church lookalike, using a core of retired PCUSA ministers and their families to form a “true church” congregation.
In the wake of a flood of congregational departures, some denominational officials are apparently rethinking the Louisville Papers’ draconian strategies. Citing the history of Presbyterianism in the United States, a story that is replete with divisions, mergers and reunions, the Office of the Stated Clerk has recently urged presbytery officials to treat departing congregations more graciously, keeping the door open for possible reconciliations further down the road. But that advice has apparently not reached the ears of Maumee Valley Presbytery.