Posted on 09/21/2014 4:17:55 PM PDT by Gamecock
Exactly.
Not really. The denomination owned the property and the congregation decided to buy it when they left the denomination rather than build a new building.
Churches which outgrow their building sell all the time and move to a larger structure.
The corrupted church trying to keep members in line by making them pay vast sums of money to leave. Like a Berlin wall or something.
The denomination owned the property because the deed was turned over as membership fee. The denomination was holding them for ransom.
Then, I totally understand why they are livid about having to pay again. PCUSA is very lucky they are settling it out of court. The local congregation has grounds to make it very ugly if they paid for the church.
Hasn't been for a LONG time. The church in which I grew up left in 1973 when the PCA was originally formed and was known as the National Presbyterian Church.
PCUSA is truly lost.
Hoss
Highland Park is fairly liberal after a split some 20 years ago - they finally choked on ordination of practicing homosexuals, but had no problem with the denomination’s women preachers or abortion stands. That’s one reason they went ECO rather than Evangelical Presbyterian.
It’s a big money church - Caroline Hunt Schoellkopf (H.L. Hunt’s daughter), Ross Perot and his family, Trammel Crowe and his family for a few well known names (and a lot of very rich folks who aren’t household names). So they have members who could probably write a check out of their petty cash accounts.
However, as hard as they may try they will never get Born Again Christians to submit to evil.
Had a convo last Sunday with a long time member of our Methodist Church. We live in a very conservative area. We agreed that when the bishops decide to allow gay marriage.....we’re gone. But she seemed to think the church would split from TPTB.
Wrong. The building was paid for by the members and titled in the local church. About 30 years ago, when its denomination merged into the northern church, a clause was added to the denomination's rules which said that the local congregation held the property in trust for the denomination. Highland Park claimed that no trust was established under Texas law (although it could be argued that they did, in fact accede to the the clause when they voted against leaving in the early 1990s after the merger but before the clause became binding.
No, by historical and confessional standards, many of these church leaders really are not Christian at all.
No, see my post 30. Deed remained in the name of the local church.
The congregation should sue to get their donations transferred to the new church.
PCUSA is quickly bleeding off its membership at an ever-increasing rate that is now at 5% a year. There goes another 4,000+ members!
In 1984 they had 3.1 million members. In 2013, 1.76 million.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presbyterian_Church_%28U.S.A.%29
PCA does just that.
Did the Southern mainline presbyterian church have a similar rule when the PCA split from them?
They shouldn’t have to pay the money to leave.
About the only thing that can be taken seriously these days by the PCUSA.
I know that in the SBC it is frequently the denomination that signs for the loan to build the church. The congregation then makes the payments. Don’t know about PCUSA.
Agreed. But the law in Texas isn’t settled - a local Episcopal church paid about $1.2 million to leave (and affirmation of sole responsibility for debt of $6.8 million) in 2006 with the facts substantially similar, except the Episcopal church property wasn’t nearly as valuable as the Highland Park property. (Annual giving at the Episcopal church was about $3.8 million at the time, Highland Park is about $8 million a year.)
The biggest problem, as I saw it, for Highland Park is that they did have a vote on pulling out with their property during a window when that was allowed, and a majority of about 43% carried the day to stay with the denomination. So it isn’t like they stumbled into the situation.
Interesting. Although I don’t see how a church congregation would have to owe them anything to stop being members.
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