By Mark Collette, The Houston Chronicle.
Regional Presbyterian leaders voted Saturday to accept the exit of two Houston-area congregations in an ongoing schism fomented by social issues including gay marriage.
On a voice vote, the Presbytery of New Covenant, governing body for 95 Southeast Texas congregations, agreed to dismiss Memorial Drive Prebyterian Church in Houston and Missouri City’s Southminster Presbyterian, making them the 11th and 12th area churches to leave in recent years.
They will depart Presbyterian Church (USA), the largest contingent of Presbyterian churches in the country, for the more conservative ECO: A Covenant Order of Evangelical Presbyterians.
Saturday’s Presbyterian Vote May Pave Path for Two Churches’ Exit
By Allan Turner, The Houston Chronicle. (Originally posted 7/13/16)
No one in Houston Presbyterian circles is calling it a “divorce.”
But when regional denomination leaders meet Saturday, they will face the next worst thing: the demands of two dissident congregations to split from the Presbyterian Church (USA) to join the newer, more conservative ECO: A Covenant Order of Evangelical Presbyterians.
If the Presbytery of New Covenant, governing body for 95 Southeast Texas congregations, votes to “dismiss,” Memorial Drive Presbyterian Church and Missouri City’s Southminster Presbyterian Church will become the 11th and 12th area churches to leave the denomination in recent years.
As with other denominations nationally, social issues have divided Presbyterian faithful. PCUSA ordains gay and lesbian clergy and permits ministers to officiate at same-sex weddings; ECO does not.
Methodists have faced breakaway congregations spurred by perceived laxness in enforcement of church bans on same-sex marriage and ordination of gay clergy. Recent liberalization of Episcopal rules on same-sex matters brought rebuke from the denomination’s conservative Church of England cousins.
In Houston, dissenting Presbyterians also have complained of PCUSA’s purportedly heavy-handed, top-down management style. The liberal focus of the denomination’s social activism has left some believers uneasy.
With more than 3,700 members, the Memorial Drive congregation is PCUSA’s eighth largest. In 2014, another large Houston congregation, Grace Presbyterian, left the parent denomination for ECO. First Presbyterian debated leaving but fell 36 votes short of achieving the two-thirds congregational majority needed to depart. Smaller congregations in Houston, Galveston, Spring and Pearland also have switched.
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“Mike Cole, Presbytery of New Covenant’s top official, said he was ‘saddened’ by the ‘dismissal of about 10 percent of our congregations.’
“‘I respect the decisions of local leaders to find a denomination with which they are more aligned,’ Cole said. ‘My concern for the church as a whole is that splintering into “like-minded” enclaves will give the world the impression that the church of Jesus Christ is just as divided as other worldly institutions. We ought to do better than replicating the divisiveness of society.’”
Rev. Cole,
You mean that you want the world to see a purportedly Christian denomination constantly beset by harsh, invective, political in-fighting—just like we have in society—between two groups whose only commonality is that they both call themselves Christian, while believing two radically different things about what it means to be Christian, because one of these groups views the world through the lens of the Bible, whereas the other views the Bible through the lens of the world?
Besides, if you were really all that concerned about “giving the world the impression that the church of Jesus Christ is just as divided as other worldly institutions”, then maybe, just maybe, you should have done a better job of fighting to keep the world’s sexual morés out of the Church of Jesus Christ.
And it really doesn’t help your cause among those whom you are trying to convince not to leave your denomination when you publicly denigrated the scholarly work of a former PC(USA) pastor, who is now in the ECO, who was raised in the Muslim faith but came to put his faith in Christ alone for his salvation from sin and death, for calling your General Assembly Council to task for having invited a Muslim imam to pray to his idol at your latest General Assembly for the conversion of all those present to Islam.
Another church leaving the PCUSA which is their right, and I have this question? What is your plan for evangelism now in your new denomination in establishing daughter churches??? It is one thing to leave the PCUSA, another to keep reproducing after your kind. Or will it be business as usual without the gay issues??? For those churches that have left, there are gays of all kinds following, so be realistic, you may or will leave the PCUSA, but the gays are among you.