Rick
Ufford-Chase has talked about how we in the gathering of Jesus’ disciples need
to be joined together in community by “cohesion,” not “coercion.” I think by cohesion he means
voluntarily, by sharing a common vision, mission, purpose, and approach. Coercion, on the other hand, would have
to do with forcing a false togetherness by threats, extortion, hostage-taking,
and parliamentary technicalities.
In
the Presbyterian Church (USA) we have something in our Form of Government
called the Trust Clause. It
basically requires presbytery approval before a church can buy, sell, or
encumber its real estate (G-4.0203).
The Trust Clause is an example of how something originally intended to
be an expression of cohesion, can be twisted into a tactic of coercion.
As
far as I can tell, the Trust Clause as we now know it did not exist prior to
1983, when it was invented and added to the new Book of Order. The
polities of both the former denominations – the PCUS (Southern) and the UPCUSA
(Northern) – included provisions requiring presbytery approval for
congregations to buy, sell, or encumber property. But the whole “all property is held in trust for the
denomination” thing was not there.
I don’t know if, prior to reunion, many Presbyterians were afflicted
with the misunderstanding that the denomination or the presbytery “owns” all of
congregations’ property. I do know
that since the Trust Clause was added this view became so widespread that a
GAPJC explicitly stated as much a couple of years ago. Did the presbyteries voting on the Plan
of Reunion back then understand themselves to be handing all congregational property
over to the denomination? (My
recollection is that many members of UPCUSA presbyteries didn’t even read the
Plan of Reunion before voting for it….)
I
understand the thinking behind having presbyteries approve congregational property
transactions. It is prudent and
responsible for presbyteries to aid individual churches over issues of buying
and selling property. There have been
historical examples of gross abuses.
Property/real estate is often a church’s most valuable asset. By far. In our polity, the local session is remarkably powerful. Under malignant leadership, a session could
easily clear the rolls of certain members, and use the remaining congregational
majority to sell or reallocate the church’s property according to some agenda
not reflecting the will of the actual, original members. So giving the presbytery some oversight
and authority over what churches do with their property makes sense. It is an expression of our mutual
looking out for each other. I get
that.
However,
when the Trust Clause is used to prevent responsible and missional decisions from
being made by a faithful, legitimate, and historical congregation, or to basically
extort money from a congregation as the price of letting them do the mission
they feel called to do, or when it is used to arbitrarily dissolve a
congregation simply because the presbytery wants to use its assets for
something else, then the Trust Clause enables an abuse of a presbytery’s power. It is one thing when brothers and
sisters gather to support each other; it is quite another when a group of
siblings murder one of their own in order to collect the life insurance.
The
wording of the Trust Clause is legally unclear: all property is “held in trust”
for the denomination. What does
that even mean? Some, including
that recent GAPJC decision, think this means that the denomination “owns” all
church property. I don’t see how
this is true in any meaningful sense.
Most local churches hold the legal title to their property. And the denomination does not act in
any way like a landlord or an owner.
It is the members of the church who pay 100% of a church’s property
upkeep, maintenance, improvements, utilities, insurance, etc. At most, the interest the presbytery
and denomination have in a local church’s property is more like a lien. The presbytery must sign off on the
sale or encumbrance of a church’s property.
The
Trust Clause also creates an artificial division between churches whose assets
are in the form of property, and churches whose assets include large amounts of
cash. Under the Trust Clause, a cash-poor
church that wants to support its mission by liquidating a manse, or selling an
acre of real estate, is subject to the withering scrutiny of a presbytery.
Churches,
however, that have significant cash
reserves, may do as they please with their resources, no matter how
counter-missional. Indeed, a large
church may even be positively hemorrhaging members and money, but if they still
have sufficient cash they need no presbytery approval to do anything not liable
to invoke the Rules of Discipline.
Buying steeples, pipe-organs, stained-glass windows, not to mention
paying the Head of Staff a 6-figure salary, that’s all fine.
Furthermore,
to say that a presbytery has a conflict of interest when it makes decisions
about dissolving a church, knowing that it will receive all the assets of any
church it dissolves, is an understatement. (Presbyterians are usually highly allergic to conflicts of
interest; in this area it somehow simply doesn’t occur to us.) The Trust Clause thus incentivizes the
closing of churches, irrespective of the quality of the churches’ ministry.
The
Trust Clause is a throwback to a time when the denomination mistook itself for
a centralized business corporation, with churches as franchises reporting up to
the home office. But now, in a
time when we have increasing numbers of cash-poor churches, we need to figure
out a better and fairer tool for making decisions about church property. Most importantly, we have to place the
mission of Jesus Christ ahead of concerns to protect and preserve churches’
assets. God gives us resources to
spend on mission, not to hoard in a portfolio.
The
Form of Government stresses the congregation as the basic form of ecclesial
life (G-1.0101). It says that the
main concern of presbyteries is to support the mission of their constituent
congregations (G-3.0301). Surely a
way can be found by which we continue to protect churches from abuses, and at
the same time open up avenues for churches that are doing effective mission to
use their own assets in supporting their mission.
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