By Steve Salyards, The GA Junkie
My most recent post was on “A Matter of Perspective.” Well, as I read the news from Texas yesterday there were certainly multiple perspectives, some might go as far as to call it spin, in the different accounts of a recent property settlement.
The news was that Highland Park Presbyterian Church and Grace Presbytery had reached a mediated settlement in a civil suit brought by the church that allows Highland Park to leave the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and join ECO: A Covenant Order of Evangelical Presbyterians with its property. The headline in the press is that the monetary portion of the agreement has Highland Park paying the Presbytery $7.8 million in the settlement.
What initially caught my attention were the statements from each side with each one having a favorable spin. The church’s statement begins:
After much deliberation and prayer, last night HPPC’s elders, trustees and pastors unanimously approved the settlement agreement previously approved by Grace Presbytery over the ongoing property litigation. This resolves once and for all that the congregation of Highland Park Presbyterian Church owns and controls the assets of Highland Park Presbyterian Church, free and clear of any claims by the PC(USA). This result achieves HPPC’s goal in the litigation of clarifying its exclusive ownership and control of its property.
The Presbytery statement (which is reproduced on the PC(USA) news page) lede is:
Highland Park Presbyterian Church will pay $7.8 million to Grace Presbytery in order to obtain both a release of its obligations under the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)’s trust clause and ecclesiastical dismissal from the denomination.
And as you might expect you will not find the term “trust clause” in the church’s statement although it is mentioned by the pastor in his video on that page.
1 Comment. Leave new
I read the linked article. My takeaway is that, sadly, the trust clause is not likely to ever be destroyed by litigation, at least in Texas. Presbyteries will continue to control real estate that was paid for, not by them, but by members of the congregations.
As Jim Caraher has noted, the only silver lining is that this type of arrangement will never again be agreed to by members of denominations that are not already fettered by such an arrangement.