Peace River Presbytery Overture to 218th General Assembly calls for World Alliance of Reformed Churches to investigate EPC's 'actions, conduct' By Patrick Jean Staff Writer The Layman Online Tuesday, March 11, 2008 The Evangelical Presbyterian Church is "actively pursuing a strategy to persuade Presbyterian Church (USA) churches to disaffiliate with the Presbyterian Church (USA) and be dismissed to" the EPC, a PCUSA presbytery in Florida charges in an overture to the 218th General Assembly. Peace River Presbytery is asking the General Assembly to "request the Executive Office of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches to investigate the actions and conduct" of the EPC and "take appropriate action." The overture was approved on a majority voice vote at the presbytery's stated meeting Feb. 28, the Rev. Craig Countiss, the presbytery's stated clerk, said in an e-mail to The Layman Online. He said "a member of the presbytery" presented the overture to the presbytery's rules and overtures committee, which found it to be in order and moved it for adoption. Countiss declined to identify the member of the presbytery who made the overture. Peace River Presbytery, which is based in North Port, Fla., had 38 congregations with almost 21,000 members in 2006, the most recent year for which PCUSA statistics are available. Both the PCUSA and the EPC are members of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches, which is based in Switzerland. Clifton Kirkpatrick, stated clerk of the PCUSA, is president of the alliance. Peace River Presbytery's overture is the third attack in recent months from a PCUSA governing body or official on the smaller, more conservative EPC: On Nov. 30, 2007, Kirkpatrick charged in a letter to the Rev. Dr. Jeffrey J. Jeremiah, executive pastor and stated clerk of the EPC, that Jeremiah's denomination is receiving congregations and ministers "prior to constitutional release by PCUSA presbyteries" and that EPC representatives "have been actively recruiting, seeking and initiating contact with PCUSA congregations to encourage their leaving this denomination. … If this pattern continues unabated, I expect one or more of our presbyteries will overture the 218th General Assembly … requesting that the assembly examine the basis of the PCUSA's relationship with the Evangelical Presbyterian Church." At a special called meeting Feb. 12, the Presbytery of Mississippi voted to ask that a formal complaint be filed against the governing bodies of the EPC and the New Wineskins Association of Churches. Instead of approving an overture to the 218th General Assembly that would suspend the EPC's relationship with the PCUSA, presbytery commissioners voted to send a letter to Kirkpatrick and General Assembly Council Chair Allison Seed requesting that they file the complaint against the EPC and the NWAC requesting that the organizations "cease and desist from recruiting or receiving congregations of the PCUSA before they are officially dismissed, and to meet with representatives of such bodies for the purpose of coming to an amicable agreement with respect to such matters." The proposed Mississippi Presbytery overture came from the administrative commission for Grace Chapel Evangelical Presbyterian Church in Madison, Miss., which is seeking a temporary restraining order to prevent the presbytery from violating a final declaratory judgment that resolved a property ownership lawsuit that the church brought against the presbytery in March 2007. On Feb. 26, The Layman Online posted an open letter response from the church's pastor, the Rev. Steven S. Bryant Sr., in which he said, among other things, that the letter to Kirkpatrick and Seed "is based on mistaken information." In a March 6 statement to The Layman Online, Jeremiah dismissed the charges by Kirkpatrick and Mississippi Presbytery. "It is and always has been the policy and practice of the Evangelical Presbyterian Church to not solicit, initiate contact or recruit churches and leaders who are outside our denomination," he said. "We take any charges of misconduct in this area seriously. To date, complaints received by the office of the General Assembly about the activities of EPC leaders have been found to be based on inaccurate information." Here is the full text of the Peace River Presbytery overture, a copy of which was obtained by The Layman Online: "Whereas the Presbyterian Church (USA) is in correspondence with the Evangelical Presbyterian Church (EPC) because both denominations are members of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches (WARC), and "Whereas the Evangelical Presbyterian Church is actively pursuing a strategy to persuade Presbyterian Church (USA) churches to disaffiliate with the Presbyterian Church (USA) and be dismissed to the Evangelical Presbyterian Church, and "Whereas the Evangelical Presbyterian Church has created a transitional Evangelical Presbyterian Church Presbytery to facilitate the process, "Now therefore: "Peace River Presbytery respectfully overtures the 218th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA) to request the Executive Office of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches to investigate the actions and conduct of the Evangelical Presbyterian Church described above, and to take appropriate action." The 218th General Assembly will meet June 21-28 in San Jose, Calif. Patrick Jean is a staff writer for The Layman and The Layman Online. He can be reached at pjean@layman.org.

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