David Fischler, an EPC pastor and blogger has an encouraging story of a church split “done right.” We Episcopalians can only dream of reading such stories. Sigh.
This Is the Way to Do It
The congregation of Middle Sandy Presbyterian Church in Homeworth, Ohio has been dismissed to the EPC by the Muskingum Valley Presbytery with its property and without the necessity of a payoff. Instead, the congregation agreed to honor its mission commitment to the presbytery for the remainder of the year and to take a “love offering” for the presbytery. According to a press release issued jointly by the church and the presbytery:
In a time when church disputes often generate animosity and public suspicion, we believe God worked among us to seek a better way. On April 21st, the Muskingum Valley Presbytery appointed an Administrative Commission to respond to the request of the congregation Middle Sandy Presbyterian Church in Homeworth, Ohio, to be dismissed to the Evangelical Presbyterian Church. Representatives of the congregation and the presbytery worked together to develop an agreement which will move forward the ministry of Jesus Christ”¦.
In keeping with traditional Presbyterian practice of making decisions through ordered processes which seek God’s guidance, a Commission elected by the Presbytery met with the Middle Sandy Session in a time of Bible study, prayer, and listening so that together they might discern how God’s mission could best be accomplished. The groups mutually agreed that they were led by the Holy Spirit to focus on furthering the mission of Jesus Christ rather than on claims of being right or wrong.
Subsequently, a small group of representatives of each party worked out terms of mutual agreement which concluded with the dismissal of Middle Sandy Presbyterian Church to the Evangelical Presbyterian Church on July 12, 2007.
Certainly these is morality here not seen in the Episcopal Church litigation strategy. But there is also practicality also absent from the Episcopal Church’s litigation strategy. Here the presbytery realized the ultimate futility of litigation, as here there was not a “market” for two churches–especially when the empty church they had would have an ASA of, well, two. For some reason the practical results of litigation in the Episcopal Church haven’t been very well thought through. One has only to look at the vacant churches in Howard’s domain to see the results of this inanity. And then those parishes that stay are funding not only litigation, but upkeep of empty property, and diocesan funds for priests-in-charge (because the parishes, such as they are, can’t afford to pay staff). And, yes, the properties can be sold, but that’s a bit disingenous after you’ve told everyone that the reason their offerings were used for lawsuits was to “preserve” them. David Booth Beers may well win, but it will be the essense of a phyrric victory.
Regarding the “sigh”, I was not aware that this was a blog devoted to dividing the Episcopal Church. I thought it had more to do with an opposing vision (reassertion in Kendall’s terminology).
John, I think you are confused. This blog, if I may say so, is about keeping the Church together under the traditional and biblical teachings of the Church. It is against the opposing vision which seeks to do what ever it wants to in spite of the desires and wishes of the rest of the Church (reappraising in Kendall’s terminology).
Hope that helps…
John, the sigh is mine (elfgirl). It’s not that I want to see churches leaving ECUSA. Splitting is not a goal in and of itself. But given the conflict we are already in, and the fact that congregations and clergy and individuals ARE leaving, I had hoped and prayed to see more of this kind of amicable split. And once it seemed we had some hope of that. But in the last 8-10 months, that hope of amicably negotiated settlements such as the one described here has all but vanished. That’s what the sigh was for.
–elfgirl
If only Bishop Peter James Lee had followed his own protocol instead of going to court…
An’ here I sit so patiently
Waiting to find out what price
You have to pay to get out of
Going through all these things twice.
William,
Who created the protocol? It wasn’t Lee.
Plainparson,
You are correct, it wasn’t Peter Lee who created it — that’s my shorthand — the Lee Protocol or you could call it the Virginia Protocol. [url=http://www.thediocese.net/News_services/pressroom/docs/special_committee_report.pdf]Here is a link to the (.pdf) report[/url] of the Special Committee to Bp. Lee recommending a Protocol for Departing Congregations.
wm.
[i]”You may call me Bobby, you may call me Zimmy”[/i]
Here are the people who created it:
Hugo Blankingship, The Falls Church- Now CANA
The Rev. Andre Merrow, St. Mary’s Arlington ECUSA
Russell Palmore, St. Paul’s Richmond ECUSA
The Rev. Caroline Parkinson, Grace Church, The Plains ECUSA
The Rev. John Yates, II, The Falls Church – Now CANA
Thomas Yates, Truro Church- Now CANA
plainsparson, you are taking this thread off topic. This has nothing to do with who wrote the VA protocol.
But for the record, and to close this tangent, Russ Palmore is Bishop Lee’s Chancellor, and the Bishop was very engaged in the protocol process.
The_Elves,
Sorry, but William brought it up. Why didn’t you call him on it?
William Said:
“If only Bishop Peter James Lee had followed his own protocol instead of going to court…”
And also for the record, Russ Palmore was a member of TEC’s Executive Council at the time.
His and Lee’s agreement with the Protocol up to the point of a buyout amount was in the spirit of conciliation, more akin to the agreement between the presbytery and Middle Sandy church in the post above than to what Beers, Sauls, and 815 suddenly forced on the Dio of Va.
w.w.
[roll eyes]
Yeh, that’s right. A committee of the diocese of Virginia, of which Lee is the bishop, comes up with a protocol which is abandoned for lawsuits — but Bishop Peter Lee had absolutely nothing to do with any of it at all.
You know, like when a CEO has a committee that comes up with a protocol, but he has absolutely nothing to do with it at all.
Why can’t we split like Presbyterians? Because we believe in bishops!
We don’t believe that the local congregation is the primary ecclesial authority. When one groups in a church gets their underpants twisted, they can’t up and leave. We are all bound together by apostolic succession, by the authority of the episcopacy, and our common life together in the sacraments.
Presbyterians, and Reformed theology in general, doesn’t share this understanding of what the church is. The fact that we don’t easily split like Presbyterians is a blessing. The notion that an easy split is a good thing is a horrific notion that disavows so much of our Anglican heritage and falls into the lure of free church theology.
If you want easy split and free church theology, be my guest, but don’t think for a moment that it’s an Anglican thing; go join a Reformed congregation, you may be happier there.
Oddly enough, Mr. Jones, the Presbyterians don’t believe in bishops, but they do seem to believe in church discipline.
TEC believes in bishops, but don’t want anything to do with church discipline (except for those who hold to the Catholic doctrinal tradition).
I want a jurisdiction that has BOTH, thank you very much.
I must say it’s always struck me a bit that a church founded by breaking with a prior, hierarchial church which was percieved as having become corrupt and fallen away from the true faith should now make the counter argument. By the same logic which dictates that departing churches should leave their property behind, Canterbury Cathedral should be deeded to Rome forthwith. Blindly following apostasy simply becuse the apostate in question wears a funny hat and is called “Bishop” would be seen as very strange by Cranmer and his contemporaries.
Re #15: However, Cranmer and his contemporaries would have seen the notion that individual persons or local congregations get to decide what apostasy is, or who is apostate, equally strange. They insisted that each national church, like each national government, should be able to make and enforce its own decisions. They provided elaborate arguments at the time as to why the Church of England was not hierarchically subject to the Church of Rome, so that the decisions made in Rome were not binding in England. However, they were in no doubt that decisions made by the central authorities of the Church of England were binding on every parish in the realm.
The focus on national autonomy is why the Church of Scotland and Church of Ireland were not part of the Church of England—these were separate nations, even if they had the same king. That is why the duty of episcopalians in the newly-independent United States to organize their own church independent of the Church of England was universally recognized, and why the Protestant Episcopal Church in the Confederate States of America was formed and dissolved according to the fortunes of the nation it served. It is why the colonial churches became autonomous provinces as their countries became independent.
Part of the problem today for Anglican ecclesiology is that nobody is really comfortable anymore with the nationalistic idea that each country should have its own church. Somehow, all the churches need to be tied together in mutual responsibility and interdependence by “bonds of affection” perhaps, but by bonds nevertheless. Since at least the Anglican Congress in 1963, the Communion has been transitioning towards a more unified existence with a single Focus of Unity and central Instruments of Communion with more than just advisory authority.
Several of the provinces (including TEC and Nigeria, among others) have been kicking against that process and insisting on their right to act independently based on their own reading of the Gospel. The difficulty is that once one concedes the notion that national churches should be subject to an international authority, how does one justify the Anglican rejection (from 1530 to date) of the most obvious international authority, the Papacy.
However one might solve that problem, it was never the case that any Anglican divine until about the last decade ever suggested that individual parishes could act as independent arbiters of orthodoxy. The Anglican understanding of who gets to make those decisions has been very different than the understanding of most other Protestants, which is why splits within Protestant groups (like the Presbyterian churches here) are usually a lot less acrimonious.
It strikes me, though, that the current brouhaha is very like the Arian controversy, in which there was quite a bit of ecclesiastical anarchy — and the central authority figure (the Emperor) supported the losing side. There are also similarities (in both the methods and the milieu) to the Methodist movement, though mostly to its American incarnation…
As for “individual parishes [acting] as independent arbiters of orthodoxy,” by and large said individual parishes are seeking discipline from the larger Church to keep them on track.
It’s a calumny to suggest that said parishes are saying, “we know better than [all] bishops!” They are making a judgement that the vast majority of bishops (as represented by both the Tradition and the tally of bishops not-yet-translated-to-Judgement) are to be preferred to the local bishop, who is (in TEC) very likely to be teaching a novel theology.
It’s also helpful to remember that Cramner and his contemporaries got the idea of national churchs from the Orthodox autocephalous church model. Anglican reforms had a lot to do with the cross polination of Orthodox thought rather than simple nationalism (though the emergence of the modern nation-state certainly did play a role in the schism with Rome).
And the role of the Basileus in Orthodox theology played well to Henry VIII’s view of kingship, which also helped the sales pitch.