Departure price for
N.Y. church is $550K
By Edward Terry, The Layman, June 22, 2010
A two-year dispute between the Presbytery of Western New York and Lancaster (N.Y.) Presbyterian Church, is close to resolution. But first, the 500-member congregation must pay more than a half-million dollars to receive its official dismissal from the Presbyterian Church (USA) with its property.
Related Article
The Buffalo News article
on the settlement
The settlement calls for Lancaster, now affiliated with the Evangelical Presbyterian Church (EPC), to pay $550,000 to the presbytery by August. Former Western New York Moderator Donald L. Houck Jr., said the settlement covers a decade of unpaid per capita, the presbytery’s legal costs and a 10-percent tithe on the assessed value of the building.
Based on previous membership estimates, Lancaster is paying more than $1,000 per member to exit the denomination. To pay the settlement, the congregation has mortgaged its property, and is seeking an additional $175,000 to cover the difference. Depressed property values caused the church’s assessment to come in several hundred thousand short of what its leaders anticipated.
“We’re lifting it in prayer, keeping it before the congregation and the Lord is providing,” Pastor Kelly Negus said. “It looks like things are coming together.”
Houck said that the dismissal of Lancaster to the EPC, contingent on fulfilling the approved settlement, likely won’t come to a vote before the presbytery’s September meeting.
Lancaster, located near Buffalo, N.Y., left the PCUSA in 2008 to join the more conservative EPC due to disagreements over theology and Scripture. In the courts, Lancaster sought a declaration that it holds title to its real and personal property, as well as a restraining order to protect its property during court proceedings.
In December 2008, the New York Supreme Court (which is not the state’s highest court) ruled that an express and implied trust existed on the property for the PCUSA. Lancaster appealed two months later, and the appellate division of the court upheld the earlier decision. In December 2009, Lancaster requested an appeal to New York’s highest court, which decided on March 30 not to hear the case.
The presbytery had argued that the congregation’s membership in the PCUSA made it subject to the so-called trust clause of the denomination’s constitution. Lawyers for the Lancaster congregation argued that the clause was adopted long after its 1882 founding.
The presbytery’s legal bill was approximately $130,000, Houck said.
The congregation and presbytery’s administrative commission had worked during recent months to settle the matter. Even though it will cost the Lancaster congregation, it is ready for a resolution.
“It’s not in anyone’s best interest for this not to materialize,” Negus said. “The Lord has given us unanimous consent throughout this process. That has truly been amazing in the midst of the kind of pressure that has been brought to bear.”
Houck agrees that everyone is ready to put the dispute in the past.
“It’s too bad it had to go to court,” he said, adding that the presbytery had been willing to work with the congregation in the beginning, but fears that the administrative commission would try to claim the property caused the congregation to take pre-emptive legal action.
That “fear” is well founded.
In documents referred to as the “Louisville Papers,” presbyteries are encouraged to seize property, change the locks, freeze bank accounts, remove session members and defrock ministers of PCUSA congregations threatening to depart. In some cases, grace has been shown to congregations wishing to disaffiliate, but the PCUSA also has a history of following through on the suggestions outlined – leading to costly court battles and further damaging
Earlier this month, an administrative commission from Albany (N.Y.) Presbytery changed the locks at Jermain Memorial Presbyterian Church denying its members and longtime community service tenants access to the disputed property.