Covenant Network co-founder retiring The Layman Volume 35, Number 2 Posted April 8, 2002 Robert Bohl Robert Bohl, co-founder of the Covenant Network and pastor of one of the largest congregations in the Presbyterian Church (USA), is leaving Village Presbyterian Church in Prairie Village, Kans. in the wake of growing congregational unrest over his leadership. Bohl, a former moderator of the PCUSA and one of the denomination’s harshest critics of its evangelicals, has announced that he is retiring as senior pastor of the congregation, which reported having 6,053 members in 2000, according to denominational data. In an address during a conference at Union Theological Seminary in 2000, Bohl said of evangelical renewal groups in the denomination, “I’m damned mad and here’s why! I wish they would go away.” He accused them of not really being concerned about Biblical authority but about “control and power” and “theological cleansing.” He said renewal leaders “rebuke civility as irrelevant.” Bohl was chairman of the denomination’s Bicentennial Campaign, which concluded in 1997 with reported gross receipts of $74.4 million, less than half its $150 million goal. Fundraising costs were 30.4 percent, more than double the General Assembly’s mandated 13.5 percent cap. Village Church has lost 20 percent of its members since Bohl became pastor in 1995

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