Now that complaints with church courts have been dismissed and judicial stays have been lifted, seven churches are now members of ECO: A Covenant Order of Evangelical Presbyterians. All it took was for the churches to cough up more than $2-million above what they had already agreed to pay the presbytery.
The churches had all been dismissed from the Presbytery of Los Ranchos and were looking forward to their futures in ECO.
But a group of presbytery members – known as the Kindred Spirits – filed remedial complaints against each church, despite the fact that each one of them met the presbytery’s requirements for dismissal.
According to an earlier Layman Online article, the Kindred Spirits is made up of a small percentage of the presbytery and is vocal about its opposition to the joint solutions that have been approved to grant dismissal to the churches. The churches and their agreed upon financial settlement with the presbytery included:
- St. Andrews Presbyterian Church, Newport Beach, $1.7 million plus interest over a maximum of nine years.
- Trinity United Presbyterian Church, Santa Ana, $982,250 over five years with an interest rate of 5 percent annually on the unpaid balance
- First Presbyterian Church of Westminster, $98,786 in a lump sum within 90 days of acceptance of the terms of dismissal
- Christ Presbyterian Church, Lakewood, $101,070, taking into consideration property value ($77,000), continued tiered mission giving over two and a half years ($13,500) and continued tiered per-capita giving ($10,570).
- Christ Presbyterian Church, Huntington Beach, not available
- Good Shepherd Presbyterian Church, Los Alamitos, a lump sum of $240,000
- Community Presbyterian Church, Long Beach, a lump sum payment of approximately $1,113,000 upon close of sale of that property
The Synod of Southern California and Hawaii’s Permanent Judicial Commission (PJC) issued a stay of enforcement on the presbytery’s actions and the churches remained a part of the presbytery, despite the fact that joint solutions – which included monetary settlements from the churches for their property – were agreed upon by both the individual churches and the presbytery. 
On Sept. 26, the synod PJC granted the motion of the Kindred Spirits to dismiss the complaints, based on the new enriched settlement agreement between the complainants and the seven churches spelled out in the motion to dismiss. The PJC also vacated the stay of enforcement it had placed on each church.
In a Sept. 14 blog – 12 days before the PJC granted the motion for dismissal – Stated Clerk Forrest Claassen, wrote that, “The motion comes from an arrangement between the interested churches and the complainants. That arrangement does not require the presbytery’s approval, but in its current form it would bring additional funds to the presbytery.”
At this time, the exact amount of money has not been made public, but sources say that is approximately $2.7 million, and could be in the form of grants, so that the presbytery will not have to vote again on the settlements with the churches. Sources say that two other churches still have a complaint lodged against them, because the churches refused to negotiate with Kindred Spirits.
Only one church did not have its dismissal challenged.Wintersburg Presbyterian Church in Santa Ana, is a Japanese-American congregation of approximately 500 members. At first, the church was asked to make a lump sum payment of $100,000 and agree to a similar five-year reverter clause. However, the presbytery waived that amount based on the Presbyterian Church’s silence during World War II when 120,000 Americans of Japanese ancestry were imprisoned. The denomination adopted a resolution in 1981 saying that it should have done more to help in that situation and drafted a letter of apology.
The perspective of historical hindsight is not available to those involved in the current round of ecclesiastical internments.
17 Comments. Leave new
“kindred spirits” is the presbyterian version of ISIS, except without the beheadings, enjoy the money kindred spirits, because where you’re going it won’t do you any good!
It’s small consolation to churches victimized by presbyteries like Los Ranchos but the property situation isn’t totally bleak for churches leaving the PC(USA). Courts in half the states appropriately deem the PC(USA)’s trust clause to be unjust and they refuse to enforce it. So churches in those states are leaving with their properties and paying nothing to presbyteries. Colonial Presbyterian in Kansas City, for example, left with its two multi-million dollar campuses and paid nothing. The silver lining in all of this is that the behavior of presbyteries and Episcopal dioceses during this era of realignment in mainline denominations sounds the death knell of this kind of “connectionalism.” Never again will Christians be foolish enough to build buildings owned by some denomination. And presbyteries will suffer the humiliation over time of failing to accomplish much mission with the money they’re extracting because most of the money will be used to sustain presbytery salaries and overhead at inflated levels unnecessary by virtue of shrinking membership.
Godless pagans are godless pagans. Be they come with a knife or armies of lawyers. “Kindred Spirits” are indeed religious based terrorists who meet the classic definition of:
-Disrespect or denying the rule of law
-Use of fear, intimidation, threat, the tools of power to either control, dominate or change the behaviors of those whom they wish to dominate.
-Unshaken belief in the rightness of their actions, that they act for their “god” alone and they get to define ultimate truth and what is right.
-Inability to compromise or see resolution outside their own definition of “victory”
-The silencing of their opponents by the use of the tools of power.
Call them out when you see them. Just like the exposure of the EP of Tropical Presbytery caused her to go back into the dark, these folks cannot stand in the light of day.
The “kindred spirits” were never named, and still won’t come-out. Are they ashamed of what they have done “in God’s name?” What did they really accomplish?
Terry: All true but I do not think they are “ashamed”. Shame as a psychological concept implies the ability to feel guilt, remorse, regret, or a sense of wrongness about their actions. If they do remain in the shadows or do not reveal themselves it is because they are afraid of exposure, they are moral and ethical cowards, who like all cowards, passive-aggressive types, do an action and then run and flee from their actions, or deny responsibility of, met the same type of folks in Iraq. Their names do exist in the public domain, just need to go on the PCJ or Presby. data bases and there they are.
Here’s the thing about the Los Ranchos situation: All of the Joint Discernment Teams of the dismissed churches had Pastors and Elders on their team who were voted in by the entire Presbytery. Many of these were from churches that are staying in the PCUSA. The teams spent from December to May in joint discernment with reps from the individual churches and those voted in by the Presbytery (this was after the individual churches had done their 1-2 year discernment process). The process itself had also been approved by the Presbytery; yet these 16 people then joined forces to oppose every piece of every settlement and then file remedial actions. Bottom line – it was extortion. There isn’t any other word for it. To have seen the remedial actions through to completion could have taken us another 2 years and cost thousands of dollars. Nothing could have been fairer than the original process but apparently it just wasn’t enough money to satisfy those who have decided to remain. I will do my very best to hold them up in prayer – but so far I admit I’m struggling.
Thanks, Leslie, for that valuable insight. The scandal of this kind of behavior by “Kindred Spirits” is the deafening silence from Louisville. Mr. Parsons routinely issues position statements on issues of compassion, peace and justice in troubled places around the world on which he has zero influence. There’s nothing wrong with that. Compassion, peace and justice are important themes in the Bible and all serious Christians should engage those issues in the world around us. But somehow Mr. Parsons never seems able to summon the courage to speak out on peace and justice issues in his own presbyteries. I loved the comment by some wag on this website a few months ago, “We in the PC(USA) keep shooting ourselves in the foot. The problem is we’re running out of feet!”
And one other thought, Leslie. As painful as it must be for the churches to pay out the higher amounts, I’ll bet those churches fervently believe it’s worth every penny not to have to be in mission any longer with people like “Kindred Spirits.”
To your headline, I would add a good-natured “well, duh!”. The trust clause originated in greed. The dying beast is gorging on its only source of sustenance, postponing the inevitable day when the believers have gone, their property has been sold, and it survives only on endowments and the meagre take from notoriously stingy progressives. But I suspect the PCUSA will be around for a long time, an increasingly irrelevant network of local clubs representing themselves as “churches”.
You’re right, S Jones, that the PC(USA) will be around for a long time albeit in a woefully shrunken state. Membership is now shrinking so rapidly that some folks are making great sport of predicting when the last PC(USA) Presbyterian will turn out the lights. But those predictions fail to grasp that the PC(USA) will never disappear completely because of its great wealth. Eventually the PC(USA) will resemble a once prominent PC(USA) church in downtown Philadelphia where a well paid minister bravely preached to an empty sanctuary for years because the income from the endowment kept the doors open and the lights on. The PC(USA) will carry on in a shrunken state until Jesus returns living off the accumulated wealth of those who were foolish enough to believe that bequeathing their money to the PC(USA) would advance the cause of Jesus in American life and culture. The church/foundation world is full of heavily endowed organizations whose comfortable, well-paid staffs don’t come anywhere close to pursuing the missions their benefactors gave their money to.
The clearest way to understand these presbyteries, and to some extent their denomination is think of it like an organized crime ring. The Mafia never made money selling a product, as Hamas or a terrorist network never made money by offering a good or service to sell or trade. The PCUSA and these Presbyteries offering nothing that anybody wants to buy, sell or trade. They have nothing, save the power to intimidate, harass, shake-down, extort. The employment of fear and threat to control or modify behaviors.
That’s all. The Mafia eventually cracked because the old bosses got too old and the younger dons got too greedy. They could never keep the capos in line. You are seeing excess and greed on display now. Some Presbyteries are simply out of control, this, and a few others featured in the past. Greed and the lust for power, money and control never ends well. I suppose this story has the same conclusion.
“Godless pagans are godless pagans.”
another of my clean truthful comments was deleted by this website today.
One important point is, did I read that over half of the congregations have less than 100 members?
I’m in such a church. Our membership might be slightly above 100 but our weekly attendance is 40 or 50. Almost all elderly. We won’t leave the PC(USA). Instead we’ll keeping dying off, attending church with people we love, whose faith we believe in, with an apparently permanent interim pastor, who is a fine man. Barely paying our bills.
That means … because I think we’re typical…we’re at most a decade out from just turning out the lights….because probably 75% of our congregation is over 80 years old…half the church’s in the denomination with no pastor, and no will to evangelize for a church we no longer respect…certainly no endowment…will be gone soon.
Why would any young man or woman, excited about their faith, become a Presbyterian pastor. So our seminaries are empty, our pastors are aging, our doors will close.
All excellent insights, Mary. Yes, you’re right. The PC(USA) is a denomination of small churches. And many of those small congregations will close in the next 5-10 years because they’ve been unwilling to change worship styles and other church practices to attract younger people in the 21st century. And the pastors are aging and dying too. The median age of a PC(USA) pastor is 53 and that number will continue to increase as well. The shrinking PC(USA) has little appeal to talented young pastors called to ministry when they see vibrant, high impact, non-PC(USA) churches everywhere.
Mary: The actual metrics is that the median size of a PCUSA church is about 90 per church. At this time only about 65% of churches employ clergy in any capacity. The other 45% are lay or bi-vocational, or empty. Why? Simple supply-demand. There is a great oversupply of seminary educated “ordain- able” clergy about, working retail or Starbucks, who continually price themselves out of the market, assuming ever greater pay and benefits from the system, and too few churches able to afford them or what they assume. They carry 10s if not 100sK of educational debt to service. Need to do something. Not a good situation.
It is not that seminaries are empty, far from it. My old one Pittsburgh has more students now as when I was there in the early 80’s. The fact is most seminarians today study things other than a M.Div. or seek or want church based jobs. Most see themselves moving along in an academic career, get a P.hD., or doing something else other than church based.
Leslie, I saw your post via The Aquila Report. I am glad for you that your congregation finally decided to exit. I did it personally in 2006 & am now part of a tiny congregation in this rural community (Brown County, Indiana). However, our tiny congregation is more than half under the age of 18. At some point we may affiliate with a denomination, though right now it would drain our human resources too much. Financially, we are able to give to mission over half of what we receive: a great blessing.
Best wishes to your husband.
-Dan Reuter
Terry, in regard to the names of the Kindred Spirits, on the contrary, the names of those filing complaints from the Kindred Spirits were made public and available. The complaint, when filed, with names were sent out by our Stated Clerk. And also, before the agreements came to the Presbytery for a vote, a representative group of the Kindred Spirits met with representative from the discerning teams and presbytery staff to try and understand the gap between what the teams were recommending and what this group felt was lacking. False information and the dissemination of it is rampant in these anxious and full of passion times.
Others,
As one who was deeply engaged (on a discerning team) and deeply grieved by the very necessity of this process and yet grateful for the civility and graciousness of it in Los Ranchos experience, I am as troubled by the way people characterize other people in forums like this one as I am by the need for the process. In fact, I believe there is as much evidence of what ails us in these kinds of interactions, as there is in the dividing that is going on. Where in this is the “be kind and tender hearted toward one another”? Where is the “thinking of others as better than ourselves”? Where is the “by THIS will all people know that you are my disciples–that you love one another”? Where is the exhibit of the fruit of the Spirit–love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentelenss– in these conversations? I am deeply saddened by the lack of charity–the very mark of the One we say is the image that we are being conformed to and who is to be our Head. (Peter, really? Terrorists? This is an affront to those who are giving their literal lives for Christ’s sake in other parts of the world at the hands of terrorists.) Others–outside of our organizational walls and the ones for whose sake Christ our Head has called us together in mission–are watching and listening. Can we, even in these challenging times, work toward “grace and truth” that Jesus was charactized by? Do we really believe, that even in these times, Christ is building the kingdom and Christ will reign? What might that Christ want to do in each of us, and together through us, to advance that kingdom? I believe Jesus would say, “It really is all about the heart.” And that Christ knows each heart. Each will give an account of what we have said and done to that Christ, the one we claim to be serving. Jesus faced the injustice of the cross and the betrayal of his closest disciples and said, “Father forgive them.” What would happen if as remaining churches we turned our attention to these things? Used our words of influence, our public platforms, our emotional energy and all that we have as our vows dictate for building up? I pray we, in sheer and simply obedience to Christ, will find our way to this place.