I’ve gotten word from one of my regular readers that the second largest church in the Peace River Presbytery (PCUSA), Covenant Presbyterian Church in For Myers, Florida, has voted today to seek dismissal from the denomination. According to the church’s Web site:
Update posted on February 3 at 11:45 a.m.: The votes from this morning’s congregational meeting have been tallied. The motion to be dismissed from the PC(USA) was carried by a 76% majority. The members of Covenant Presbyterian Church have elected to be dismissed from our current denomination. Thank you to all of our members who participated in the vote.
The site also says that the congregational meeting today was to take up the question not only of dismissal, but of seeking dismissal to the EPC. There’s no indication whether both decision were made in this single vote, or if not, which way the vote went on uniting with EPC.
Covenant has a membership of 1492, with an average worship attendance of 885. It looks from their statistical report that they’ve experienced some decline in recent years (ASA going from 1074 in 2003 to the current level in 2006), but there may be a lot of different reasons for that, including, possibly, the association with PCUSA. The next presbytery meeting is February 28. Be praying for both the presbytery and Covenant as they go forward with what I hope will be an amicable process.
(Hat tip: Larry Rued.)
UPDATE: I received an e-mail this evening that indicates that Peace River isn’t going to play nice, and that the presbytery is already making threatening noises directed at the pastors, basically telling them to quit or be removed. Pray for them and the whole staff and congregation at Covenant–it looks like another presbytery has decided that property trumps everything.
Posted by David Fischler 
