As I’ve been watching the slow-moving train wreck that is the PCUSA, it’s become clear that something is happening, something that speaks ill of the denomination’s leadership, something that is just wrong. It seems the more paranoid elements in the PCUSA have the upper hand, and are determined to stop what they think is the EPC “raid” on their congregations at all costs. Call it the Berlin Wall approach.
In a report that we received at last weekend’s Presbytery of the East, we heard this from EPC Stated Clerk/Executive Pastor Jeff Jeremiah:
Our relationship with the PCUSA is deteriorating. In the early fall, a PCUSA constitutional body declared that presbyteries are not to dismiss churches to our Transitional Presbyteries. After Thanksgiving, PCUSA leadership began complaining to our GA office that representatives of the EPC are “initiating contact, soliciting and recruiting” PCUSA churches to come to the EPC. In addition, they are displeased that we have received churches into our presbyteries before they have completed their constitutional dismissal process (that is, we’re receiving churches that have disaffiliated from the PCUSA). I replied that we do not initiate contact, solicit or recruit churches and leaders outside the EPC. We respond to inquiries and invitations from the spiritual leadership of congregations who want to learn more about the EPC.
This month I received notice that a draft overture to the 2008 PCUSA General Assembly had been received calling for a severing of the “in correspondence” relationship of the PCUSA with the EPC. As more churches seeking to leave the PCUSA find that dismissal is untenable and disaffiliate, I anticipate the momentum within the PCUSA to sever ties with us will increase. I would note to you that PCUSA leadership does not acknowledge that anything is happening in the PCUSA that would cause a church to want to leave. Their position, as represented to us, is that it is because of our actions that their churches want to depart.
In the meantime. we will continue to keep “the main thing the main thing,” and pursue the missional future we believe our Lord has for us. And we will continue to do what we’ve done for the last twenty-seven years–in response to struggling and hurting congregations and leaders looking for help, we will offer God-honoring counsel, comfort and encouragement.
In other words, because PCUSA leaders have deluded themselves into thinking that everything is hunky-dory, and that after the 2006 General Assembly “nothing changed” (despite the recent evidence that the fears of conservatives were in fact well founded), they’ve also convinced themselves that there is no reason why any church would want to leave PCUSA, which means that it must be the fault of the EPC–we’re feeding them false information, or bribing them, or something. What EPC could possibly offer churches to go through the misery so many of their presbyteries are putting them through as they try to leave that would make it worthwhile, when they still have a warm, snuggly, oh-so-orthodox home in the PCUSA, I can’t even begin to guess. But when leaders start thinking this way, no amount of logic or evidence is likely to sway them.
As to the delay/disrupt tactics that Dr. Jeremiah refers so, here’s a bit of confirmation. Bill Crawford, a member of the blog Consistory, is a guy I trust, and the fact that his information lines up with the Jeremiah report convinces me of its reliability. His correspondent wrote:
It seems that Louisville’s new strategy is this:
Get the presbyteries to delay any action on dismissal until after GA, by any means possible (bury in committee, stretch out the process from one presbytery meeting to another, file disciplinary actions against pastors and churches who leave, etc.)
Arrange for an overture that will end PCUSA relations with the EPC to be brought to GA. That overture is in process now in at least one presbytery—expect to see it reported soon.
Pass that overture this summer, based on false accusations that the EPC is actively recruiting loyal PCUSA congregations away from the denomination.
Then presbyteries will be able to say, “We cannot dismiss you to the EPC (including New Wineskins) because we no longer have relations with them,” leaving no acceptable place for churches to land.
This strategy is being seen all over the country with delay after delay after delay. This is why so many churches who were very near dismissal (even months ago) have seen their progress reversed or stopped.
There’s plenty of evidence out there that this is the approach that’s being used. (One situation that immediately comes to mind is out in Sacramento, where two churches were given the presbytery’s leave to go, only to have things held up at the last minute by a church filing an objection that strikes me as having little merit, but will almost certainly delay things until after the 2008 GA and the passage of the “nuclear overture.”) And certainly the legalistic approach is one with which the folks in Louisville are well acquainted.
B ut you know what? The wonderful things is that nothing Louisville, or its minions in the presbyteries, does can keep people from being faithful to God. They can deprive them of their property, perhaps, but they can’t prevent them from following the vision that the Lord has given them. I’ll keep praying for all the folks temporarily trapped behind the PCUSA Berlin Wall, confident that the Lord will bring that wall tumbling down, too.
UPDATE: Welcome to those who are coming from the Layman Online. If you didn’t start at the top of my blog, you might want to go here for the latest.
Posted by David Fischler 
