When the New Wineskins Association of Churches meets again in Orlando in February, some of these evangelicals may be ready to leave the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) on the spot, others probably not.
So the New Wineskins leadership is planning to offer alternatives: a roadmap for those who think the PC(USA) has abandoned orthodoxy, including a proposal for PC(USA) congregations to leave the denomination and take their property with them.
A New Wineskins strategy report, prepared by a nine-person team and released publicly Jan. 16, speaks of “moving together to a new thing,” and says that “it is time to implement the strategy our Lord has given us to transform the world.” The report was written by a strategy team whose members are not named.
That new thing apparently could include leaving as a group, most likely for the Evangelical Presbyterian Church, https://www.epc.org/ or — for those not ready to take that step yet — staying in the PC(USA) and working for reform from within.
For those congregations considering departure, the Evangelical Presbyterian Church is considering providing them with a new option: creating a non-geographic, “transitional” presbytery or presbyteries where the departing congregations could move en masse.
The EPC’s stated clerk, Jeff Jeremiah, has written https://www.epc.org/general-assembly/EPNews2006/JJJ%20Messages/JJJMessageHistoricOpportunity.html that such presbyteries, if approved by the denomination’s General Assembly in June 2007, “will allow churches interested in coming into the EPC to provide safe haven outside their current denomination as quickly and as easily as possible.”
It encourages those that do stay to protect their property from denominational control and to “prepare for struggle and conflict,” in part by aligning with like-minded congregations in the New Wineskins ministry networks.
“We would now say there are two faithful options,” said Dean Weaver, pastor of Memorial Park Church https://www.memorialparkchurch.org/ in Pittsburgh and a co-moderator of the New Wineskins group. “It is faithful for evangelical churches to stay within the PC(USA) and have a witness there. And it is faithful for churches of conscience to consider realigning with other Presbyterian brothers and sisters from other denominations and advancing the kingdom that way. We want to provide resources for people” to do both.
The strategy team report, however, offers strong cautions for congregations that don’t feel ready to leave — and implies that much of the New Wineskins leadership may already be gone.
“The implications for those who stay are huge,” the report states. “The climate of the PC(USA) will undoubtedly change after we follow God’s call to a new thing. What was once a theologically evenly-divided presbytery may turn into one in which a significant majority favors the agenda of those who are more theologically liberal. We will no longer be able to fight the good fight with you or vote with you as we have in the past.”
And it states that “given the many years and millions of dollars faithful Presbyterians have put towards renewal of this once great denomination, and the continued slide the PC(USA) has taken into theological liberalism, we do not hold out much hope for renewal. Yet, we will fervently pray for you.”
For those ready to leave, the New Wineskins report states that there are both strategic and moral advantages to moving together towards that “new thing” — advantages, in other words, to acting as a group.
“The leadership of the PC(USA) appears convinced that we are a vocal but small dissident group that cannot or will not disaffiliate from the PC(USA),” the strategy team report states. “A vote by the NWAC (New Wineskins Association of Churches) and others to pursue a new thing sends a strong message to PC(USA) leaders that they have misread our faithful dissent. Now is the time for us to demonstrate our faithfulness to God’s call and cross over the Jordan to the Promised Land.”
By acting as a group, the report states, congregations are more likely to retain their property and financial assets — even if the denominational headquarters in Louisville doesn’t want that to happen.
“It is unlikely that presbyteries will devote the resources to support many separate legal actions” in many states and jurisdictions, the report states. “The best possible outcome, save repentance and true reformation, is that the presbyteries may turn their backs on Louisville’s demands and simply let us pursue a new thing. We fervently pray to God to make this so.”
The New Wineskins will meet at First Church in Orlando Feb. 8 and 9. So far, just over 150 churches have formally affiliated with New Wineskins, Weaver said — but what exactly that means may vary from congregation to congregation.
“I don’t think they’re monolithic,” Weaver said in an interview. “I’m guessing maybe a third of them are already out the door. A third are never going to leave. And a third need to discern what they’re going to be called to do.”
The strategy team report states that “for the PC(USA), the die was cast on two successive days in Birmingham, Alabama in 2006.”
That’s when the assembly approved two controversial reports: one from the Theological Task Force on the Peace, Unity, and Purity of the PC(USA), and the other a report on the Trinity, which discusses other ways of referring to the Trinity beyond “Father, Son and Holy Spirit,” using names such as “Mother, Child and Womb” or “Rock, Redeemer and Friend.”
The report states that “we now believe that the PC(USA) has eroded Reformed orthodoxy and Presbyterian practice to a point where the collective conscience of many no longer allows us to remain aligned with this thinking.”
For those intending to leave, the report describes the idea of a new transitional presbytery in the Evangelical Presbyterian Church that would have the power to ordain, install, receive, and dismiss pastors. Each church in the presbytery would own its own property, and pastors and staff of congregations joining that presbytery could participate in the EPC medical and pension plan.
The five-year period for any transitional presbytery in the EPC would give churches leaving their old denomination a chance to heal from the break, and “gives us time to learn about them and whether they would be a good fit for us,” Jeremiah wrote. “We’ve repeatedly described our relationship with churches in the transitional presbytery as a `courtship.’ “
The EPC, created in 1981, is a small denomination, with fewer than 200 churches and 70,000 members. What it would mean if an influx of PC(USA) congregations showed up there relatively soon remains to be seen.
But Weaver said he understands that the New Wineskins approach — including its proposed constitution — could be put into operation in a transitional EPC presbytery, so “we would have the ability to incubate that new concept.”
Peggy Hedden, of the Presbyterian Lay Committee, said that with a transitional presbytery, “the great hope would be there would be neither an EPC nor a New Wineskins but a new group that has the best features of both of those. It’ll be a new thing, but won’t be totally one or the other.”
Congregations that stay in the PC(USA) could still be part of the New Wineskins ministry networks, creating “an interesting permeable membrane” that would be partly within the PC(USA) and partly outside it, Weaver said. And Hedden said she expects that congregations considering leaving might approach their presbyteries as a group, to give them a stronger position in the negotiations.
Weaver also said he doesn’t anticipate problems regarding the ordination of women in the EPC — women ministers from the PC(USA) could still serve, he said, because in the EPC, the ordination of women is not considered an “essential” of faith.
“The great thing about the EPC is that for the EPC ordination standards in terms of doctrine are national — there’s no wiggle room there,” Weaver said. “But when it comes to the ordination of women, each congregation and presbytery gets to decide on their own.”
More than 40 of the New Wineskins congregations have women pastors, Weaver said, and the group has told the EPC that “all of our women pastors come with us. That’s a non-negotiable for us.
Weaver described the strategy team report, at 155 pages, as “a very concrete plan,” offering everything from legal information for congregations that want to leave to ordination procedures to information on how health and pension benefits could work.
The New Wineskins conversation is taking place in a broader context too, as the PC(USA) continues to work out the implications of the controversial report of the Theological Task Force on the Peace, Unity and Purity of the PC(USA).
At least 16 presbyteries have approved resolutions that basically say, in one form or another, that no attempts to allow “scruples” or deviations from the PC(USA)’s ordination standards will be permitted in that presbytery. But some contend that such resolutions — depending on how they’re worded — may well be unconstitutional, and challenges to those resolutions have been filed in at least four presbyteries: Olympia, Pittsburgh, Sacramento and Mid-South.
But there have not been — at least so far — a rush of cases in which candidates for ordination have declared “scruples,” or objections based on conscience, to some part of the ordination standards. When a candidate does announce a scruple, then the presbytery or session involved must decide whether that deviation from the standard would involve an “essential” of Reformed faith or polity, or whether it could be permitted.
In the meantime, New Wineskins will gather in Orlando in February.
Delegates will be asked to encourage the EPC to establish non-geographic presbyteries when that denomination’s General Assembly meets on June 20-23, 2007.
Congregations ready to leave the PC(USA) will be asked to take steps to align themselves with another Reformed denomination — and to prepare to take their property with them.
Congregations that aren’t sure yet should continue to study the matter and pray, the strategy team recommends.
And for those that want to remain in the PC(USA), the recommendation is to faithfully proclaim the gospel and the Word of God — no matter how difficult that may be.
