Caution to readers: This story contains sexually explicit language taken from church court documents.
A Florida pastor accused of sexually abusing a teenage girl more than 20 years ago has renounced the jurisdiction of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) rather than stand trial in a church court.
Kirk A. McCormick, who had been pastor of Grace Community Church of Boca Raton for 18 years, renounced jurisdiction in the Presbytery of Tropical Florida on June 3, just before testimony was to begin in the case against him.
The complaint alleges that when McCormick was an associate pastor at St. Andrews Presbyterian Church in Newport Beach, Calif., in the late 1980s, he began sexually abusing a teenage girl who was involved in the church youth group, starting around the time she turned 17.
McCormick could now, if he chose, seek ordination as a minister in the new denomination ECO: A Covenant Order of Evangelical Presbyterians. The congregation he had been serving is in the process of leaving the PC(USA) for ECO.
Its departure had been put on hold while the disciplinary case against McCormick was in process, but that case has now reached an end. McCormick could seek to switch denominations along with his church and become an ECO minister, though ECO’s top administrative official said there would likely be serious obstacles to McCormick’s ordination.
“We would need to see all the charges” and “we wouldn’t treat it as ‘No big deal,’” said Dana Allin, ECO’s synod executive.
The complaint against McCormick alleges the sexual abuse of the girl took place on multiple occasions starting around June 1988, when she was just turning 17, and continuing through 1990. The alleged abuse took place on church trips and at St. Andrews Church, the complaint states.
It calls the abuse a violation of the requirement in the PC(USA) Book of Order (G-2.0504) that “when teaching elders are called as pastor, co-pastor or associate pastor of a congregation, they are to be responsible for a quality of life and relationships that commends the gospel to all person and that communicates its joy and justice.”
The complaint alleges that the contact between McCormick and the girl in the youth group involved back-rubs that included “intentional contact by the accused” with the girl’s breasts; removal of her clothing; penis to vagina contact; “simulated sexual intercourse, colloquially known as ‘dry humping,’ ” although not actual sexual intercourse; fondling of her breasts and vagina; kissing; and his ejaculation in her presence.
For example, while on a church youth group water skiing trip in June 1989, the complaint states, “Kirk A. McCormick was completely naked with (the victim) while sharing sleeping bags with her; rubbed his penis against (the victim’s) vagina; ejaculated while in the sleeping bags with (the victim); and fondled (the victim’s) breasts while his body was in the spoon position from behind.”
In pleadings filed in the proceedings, McCormick contended that the original charges (which were later amended to add more details) were not specific enough to allow him to prepare a defense, and that some of the charges should be dismissed on technical grounds or because of the precedent set by prior court rulings.
In his letter of renunciation, McCormick complained that the process of investigating the complaint against him “has been abused and corrupted;” that he wasn’t provided enough specific information about the allegations to prepare his defense; and that the investigating committee acted “specifically and purposefully to punish and destroy.” McCormick stated that “I no longer believe I can receive an honest and fair trial.”
He did not say whether he denied the allegations of sexual abuse.
By renouncing jurisdiction in the middle of the trial, McCormick “de facto admitted to the guilt,” said Albert W. “Skip” Bush Jr., the interim stated clerk for Tropical Florida Presbytery. “That’s what happens when you renounce in the middle of a trial. He may deny that vehemently and accuse the presbytery of all sorts of things, but by not seeing the trial through to the end, he cut the process short that could have proven him not guilty.”
On June 4, the presbytery informed the session of Grace Church (formerly known as First Presbyterian Church of Boca Raton) that McCormick had renounced jurisdiction and was no longer a PC(USA) minister. The Book of Order states (in G-2.0407) that “renunciation of jurisdiction shall remove the ruling elder or deacon from member- ship and ordered ministry and shall terminate the exercise of the ministry.” A congregational meeting was held June 9. Now that the disciplinary proceedings involving McCormick have ended, “there are no other steps that need to happen” for Grace Church to be dismissed to ECO, except for relatively small procedural ones, Bush said.
The minutes of the Permanent Judicial Commission’s proceedings will be read into the record at the next presbytery meeting, scheduled for June 20, “so a full and accurate record of what he de facto admitted to by renouncing will not be lost,” Bush said. “So if ECO were to contact the presbytery in some kind of reference check or background check, we would share the minutes of the presbytery meeting that would show the charges that were made against him, which were being tried and which he cut the process short by renouncing.”
Before he became the ECO synod executive in April, Allin had been a colleague of McCormick’s in Tropical Florida Presbytery, where Allin was pastor of Indian River Presbyterian Church in Fort Pierce, Fla., a congregation which also has left the PC(USA) for ECO.
In a telephone interview, Allin, the ECO synod executive, described McCormick’s decision to renounce jurisdiction as “not a helpful action for us. Certainly, we would much rather have seen a positive resolution to the case” – to have the matter adjudicated by a PC(USA) church court. “Certainly that would have been the best thing for us.”
How the ECO might evaluate the charges against McCormick isn’t clear, as “it wouldn’t be a formal trial,” Allin said. But “we would certainly want to talk to all witnesses, all complainants, who would have testified in the PC(USA) hearing.”
In a follow-up email, Allin said that ECO is prepared to accept Grace Church, a congregation of about 650 members, when the Tropical Florida Presbytery releases the congregation, but that any decision regarding whether to ordain McCormick in ECO would be separate. ECO’s Presbytery of the East “is prepared to bring in Grace Community but not the former pastor,” Allin wrote.
He also wrote that because of the confidential nature of the proceedings, ECO officials have not seen the formal charges that were filed against McCormick. So ECO does not know the specifics of the allegations against McCormick, nor has it received any formal notice that McCormick wants to apply for ordination in ECO.
Speaking hypothetically, Allin wrote that “ECO would NEVER allow a potential minister to duck charges, especially serious charges, by renouncing jurisdiction and then just take that person in ECO. In fact the burden would even be higher in an application process because in a judicial process a person is innocent until proven guilty, but in an application for admission if such serious charges are out there the burden of proof lies with the accused to prove that they are false. Also since there was a renunciation IF there were to be an application it would be an application for ordination not a transfer.”
In the interview, Allin said he would want the Grace congregation to know that “we are not making any guarantee or promise or hint that you could have him (as Grace’s pastor) if you came into ECO . . . . There’s a distinct possibility, a very significant possibility, that he won’t be at the church. They need to know that.”
