| Santa Barbara Presbytery approves plan for union presbytery that would welcome both PC(USA) and ECO congregations |
| Written by Leslie Scanlon, Outlook national reporter |
| Sunday, 03 June 2012 17:45 |
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The Presbytery of Santa Barbara has voted to approve a plan to become a union presbytery – affiliated both with the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and ECO: A Covenant Order of Evangelical Presbyterians. At its June 2 meeting, the presbytery voted 73 percent in favor of making the move, more than the two-thirds majority needed. For the change to take effect, the proposal still needs approval from ECO’s Presbytery of the West and from the PC(USA)’s Synod of Southern California and Hawaii. If the union presbytery is approved, both congregations that remain in the PC(USA) and those that join ECO could become members. Before its vote, the presbytery considered a report from the presbytery’s council about whether ECO meets the standards for being a Reformed body with which the presbytery could form a union. That report states that Pueblo Presbytery in Colorado, Central Florida Presbytery and Olympia Presbytery in Washington already have decided that ECO is a Reformed body to which congregations can be dismissed. “The current estimate is that approximately 200 churches nationwide are presently at some stage in the process of coming into ECO,” the report states. “This is five times the number of churches involved in starting the Presbyterian Church of America (formed in 1973) . . . ” The council determined that ECO did meet the requirements of being doctrinally consistent with the essentials of Reformed theology and of being governed by a polity consistent in form and structure of the PC(USA). Some council members did have concerns about whether ECO was too new to be considered sufficiently permanent – “to ensure that the local congregation is not being dismissed to de facto independence,” as the criteria state. However, the council determined that the union presbytery would still be connected to the PC(USA) even if the fledgling denomination were to fail, so “there is no risk for a congregation to be abandoned.”
A memorandum of understanding spells out some of the rationale for the change. It states that some congregations have expressed a desire or intention to leave the PC(USA), while still wanting to remain part of the Presbytery of Santa Barbara. “This plan seeks to allow individual churches to follow their conscience while staying in union with the presbytery and partners in its mission and ministries,” the memorandum states. “The alternative, as seen nationally, is a contentious separation causing damage to congregations, breaking of relationships, and threatening the viability of congregations, presbyteries and their mission. Our goal is to avoid this.”
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Comments
If a significant number in any given presbytery choose to without money then may I say that is a matter for that local presbytery to address, with the first question being "why"?
As far as the "throw then out to the outer darkness school", deny vote or floor at Presbytery or deny Pension credits to those who do not bow to the party line or line up in obedient orthodoxy to the ruling elite, why do you think they neither trust you, or seek alternative structures of relationships and organization. Again, the ECO was not invented all because a group of folks were bored one day and had nothing else better to do.
We seem to be collectively in that end of relationship phase called "anger". Where we tend to forget or ignore the more positive or productive times in a relationship and just focus on the pain, the hurt, the rage. And wish ill on the other. Very sad indeed. And now the only matter before us is just how to divide assets, who gets to visit the baby and dog on weekends, and rules of engagement going forward.
We can do better and we should. As I have stated many times prior. The real witness of the PCUSA now, and maybe our last is how we treat each other and to what degree we apply the virtues of grace, compassion, understanding, and listening to one another going forward. And those are not liberal or conservative or political concepts.
Welcome to postmodernity and the birth pangs of an Integral Christianity. For too long, the fight between Modernist Liberals and Premodernist Fundamentalists have been playing out in every church - but that is where the fight resides. Even such fundamentalists as the SBC and Churches of Christ are in decline. Rather than admit that people aren't returning to church as a part of a larger movement away from hierarchical Christianity, writers such as Gregory continue to blame the progressive church movement which is actually ministering to the generations of Christians leaving both Fundamentalist and Liberal churches. Progressives haven't left the church, despite the accusations from the right, they have been reconfiguring the faith for the changing landscapes of those leaving fundamentalism, and the spiritual but not religious.
The departure of PCUSA churches to the EPC or the ECOP is a movement away from connectional polity, and toward a congregationali sm that has been inherent within the standard operating procedures of these congregations for decades. You can't withhold funds from your local Presbytery (who is liable to pay your Synod and GA apportionments) , and then contend that your participation with such a group is proof of their unsuccessful nature. Your very act of withholding is unbibilcal.
Sure, we need new ways of doing church. But holding your sisters and brothers hostage isn't a Christian way of doing so.
This is exactly what I see happening with such votes as that occurring in Santa Barbara, CA. It's not enough to create a way for churches to leave to the ECO (and perhaps these were churches that should have left with the EPC, but desire greater standing for women in ministry). If such congregations desire to leave graciously, they should have done so long ago. Now, they want to create a union presbytery, where they can live by a constitution pre-10-A, and then retroactively attempt to force presbyteries to live by that former constitution (according to business before this GA). This "have my cake and eat it too" position is interesting, given that this is just what many on the right have argued against as they have attempted to enforce their own theology across the whole church. Now that the church's constitution has restored the freedom of conscience to presbyteries, they seek to stifle one of our historic Presbyterian hallmarks again - and to make it easier for churches outside their bounds to do so as well. How Presbyterian is it, after all, to allow a single presbytery to become a denomination unto itself?
Religious progressive have always made the error that one address biblical, confessional, or doctrinal stress or fracture by institutional governance. That if one could only get the polity and process right, or enforce some sort of management structure based upon control of financial assets of property and own the levers of governance, then one folks will more or less fall in line with the party message and standard. The new buzz word is "missional"
That we may not agree on matters of what the Bible says, who Christ is, and what should we confess, but maybe we can all agree on some do-good, feel-good cooperation on some social action outreach then maybe we can all get along well enough. I think that concept and idea has limits and cannot paper over issues core issues of faith and practice.
The lesson of the ECO/PCUSA engagement of lack of it, is that people, churches, regions will self-select relationships, fellowships, and cooperative ministries, with or without permission of a theological entity. It is not congregationali sm or every person for themselves in a wild-west free for all. But personal empowerment to the point where words like Presbyterian, Methodist, Lutheran, Synod, GAMC, really have no power or meaning to capture faith formation or faith identity. The old power structures and entrenched bureaucracies with their highly paid staffs and overhead can adapt to that or not. If not, much like the old Oldsmobiles and AMCs my father drove religiously, all things brake down over time, and pass along in history.
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