ORLANDO — The New Wineskins Association of Churches https://www.newwineconvo.com/ has voted unanimously to ask the Evangelical Presbyterian Church (EPC) https://www.epc.org/ to create a new, non-geographic presbytery to which congregations that want to leave the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) could be dismissed.
The EPC’s General Assembly is expected to vote in June to create the presbytery.
And some New Wineskins congregations may already be prepared to leave. The association — meeting Feb. 9 at First Church in Orlando — also voted to recommend that congregations ready to depart take the necessary steps to be dismissed from the PC(USA), “taking with them their property,” and to move to the EPC.
How many congregations are ready to go now is not clear, although turnout was strong at a workshop for both congregations that say they’re ready to make the move and those heading in that direction, but not quite ready yet.
The association also passed a motion asking that New Wineskins endorsing congregations that are willing to be publicly identified send their contact information and agree to have it posted on the New Wineskins Web site. Close to 600 people registered for the New Wineskins meeting Feb. 8-9, including representatives from 130 of the 151 endorsing churches, according to New Wineskins executive director Tom Edwards.
“I say, `Whoopee! EPC, here we come!’ “ said a delegate from Pittsburgh just before the vote.
There may be some sticking points, however, in the proposed marriage of conservatives from the PC(USA) with the EPC — particularly over the issue of where the EPC stands on ordaining women.
Several speakers said the EPC has perhaps one or two women ordained as pastors. Russ Wilkins, a member of the New Wineskins leadership team, said during a workshop that he doesn’t know whether any of the EPC’s current presbyteries are willing to ordain women.
The New Wineskins Association passed a motion asking its leadership team to affirm and outline the biblical basis for women serving as pastors, elders and deacons.
New Wineskins leaders have said that congregations leaving the PC(USA) would join the new, non-geographic presbytery for five years, and during that time both they and the EPC could evaluate whether the arrangement was working. Women ordained as pastors, elders, and deacons in the PC(USA) would retain their ordination in that transitional presbytery.
But the question of what would happen after the five years — and whether the EPC would be ultimately willing to ordain women — remains to be seen.
“We need to make a statement” that at the end of five years, the EPC must agree to women’s ordination or that will be “a deal-breaker for us,” said Richard Wolling, a pastor from Pennsylvania.
“Don’t leave us behind,” Laurie Johnston, a pastor from Kansas, said during one workshop. “I want to make sure there’s a place for me somewhere” after five years.
New Wineskins co-moderator Gerrit Dawson said of the EPC: “They understand we’re coming with all our women.”
But he cautioned the New Wineskins from determining that women’s ordination is an “essential tenet” before discussions can continue further. “We’ve received a gracious invitation” from the EPC, Dawson said. “They know who we are. … The women will not be forgotten.”
Nancy Lee Cochran, a minister from Pennsylvania, also raised a concern about the makeup of the New Wineskins strategy team, which consisted of nine men. Cochran said she loves “every bit” of the strategy team report, but “I just don’t like the make-up of the group,” because “every one of them was a white male.”
Carmen Fowler, New Wineskins’ co-moderator, responded that seven of the nine strategy team members were chosen from nominations made at the New Wineskins meeting in July 2006 in Tulsa. “If you want different people,” Fowler said, “you have to nominate different people.”
There was, from the start of this meeting, a sense that it was time to act.
Evangelical Presbyterians “have seen the erosion of orthodoxy” in the PC(USA) “and are ready to do something about it,” said Randy Jenkins, chairman of the strategy team that presented the New Wineskins’ recommendations.
People referred over and over to the flashpoints of frustration in the PC(USA) — including the controversial report of the Theological Task Force on the Peace, Unity, and Purity of the PC(USA), which some contend could give local congregations and presbyteries leeway to ordain sexually-active gays and lesbians.
The report retains the denomination’s ordination standards, which limit ordination to those who practice fidelity if they are married or chastity if they’re single, but would allow a candidate who disagrees with the standard to declare a “scruple” or disagreement based on conscience, and to be ordained if the presbytery or congregation involved determined that such a departure from the standard didn’t involve an “essential” of Reformed faith or polity.
And some remain upset about a report the General Assembly received in 2006 on the Trinity, which describes alternate language for “Father, Son and Holy Spirit,” including “mother, child and womb.” (Cynics have sometimes added the “rock, paper, scissors” phrase.)
While individual congregations may have tough decisions ahead of them — the New Wineskins have said there are two faithful options, to go to the EPC or stay in the PC(USA) and work for change — it was clear many New Wineskins supporters came to this meeting determined to do more than just talk about their unhappiness with the PC(USA).
Earlier in the day, New Wineskins co-moderator Dean Weaver laid out some of the nuts-and-bolts of the EPC proposal.
Under PC(USA) polity, a congregation that wants to leave must be dismissed to another Reformed body in fellowship with the PC(USA). If the EPC creates a transitional presbytery, “they have created a place for us to be dismissed to,” Weaver said.
In the transitional presbytery, the New Wineskins congregations would become “almost a denomination within a denomination,” he said. Congregations would own their own property, and pastors and other church staff members could participate immediately in the EPC’s pension and health insurance plans.
Other Reformed groups outside the PC(USA) are expressing interest in what’s happening as well, Weaver said — for example, the Presbyterian Church of East Africa. People are saying, “We would like to graft our little tributary into that confluent stream” of a denomination that’s committed to focusing on mission around the world.
Despite that excitement, some folks won’t be pleased with what the New Wineskins is doing, Dawson told the group after the vote.
If churches leave the PC(USA), “somebody’s going to get smacked,” Dawson said. “It has to happen. In my experience, the flaming darts of the evil one are craftily designed,” although “the people who throw the darts are not satanic themselves.”
He encouraged the New Wineskins supporters to pick up their shields of faith, and realize that God “is our assurance.”
The New Wineskins Association will meet next Oct. 29-30 in Sacramento.
