Correcting what he called erroneous online reporting elsewhere, Ferguson told the Outlook that he has not renounced jurisdiction of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).
“I’m not mad,” he said. “I’m not slamming the door of the church here behind me.” Rather, “We have completed the call God had here in Grace and sense that God is calling us to Mountaintop in Birmingham.”
Mountaintop is a nondenominational church on a 34-acre campus in Vestavia Hills, a Birmingham suburb. Its facilities include a 1,700-seat auditorium, an atrium, classrooms and seminar halls.
Ferguson said he wrestled for six to eight months with the possibility that the time was coming to move to a new call. Then, he said, he “requested to be released from ordered ministry as a teaching elder” in the PC(USA), which he called radically different from renouncing jurisdiction.
He said that, since last spring, he has confided with Mike Cole, general presbyter of the New Covenant Presbytery. Ferguson said Cole has been “a source of counsel and wisdom, and source of encouragement, a good friend.”
On Ferguson’s recommendation, the Grace Church Session has invited Cole to moderate its meetings until an interim pastor is found.
Ferguson said it was a clear sense of call that brought him to Grace and “it’s been a rich, rewarding six years.” He added, “I’ve grown a lot here as a pastor. We’ve done some great things here.”
Ferguson is a new board member of the Outreach Foundation, an independent organization that serves and strengthens PC(USA) mission efforts worldwide. He said he was pleased to learn that taking a call outside the denomination does not disqualify him from continuing in the board.
“I look forward to continuing the Outreach Foundation partnership,” he said.