News

Senior minister sees 'bright future' for church under new denomination

By Bill Moss, Published: June 6, 2013

The congregation of First Presbyterian Church voted overwhelmingly Wednesday night to leave the Presbyterian Church-USA and affiliate with a more conservative denomination, the Evangelical Presbyterian Church.

The vote on the reaffiliation brought out 333 church members who filled the sanctuary for the decision that would separate one of the anchor downtown churches from its mainline denomination for the first time. The vote, announced by a presiding minister with the Presbytery of Western North Carolina, was 270 votes for leaving PC-USA, 62 votes for staying with denomination and two abstentions. The 82 percent supermajority exceeded the 75 percent vote required under the Presbytery's rules governing a church dismissal process.

"We see a bright future ahead," said the Rev. Bill Campbell, the senior minister, said in a news release. "Even before the vote, our attendance and giving was up, and people have been joining and still others are waiting to join the church. We may lose some members over this, which saddens us, but I believe our gains will be huge. People will see that we are not changing as a congregation. We will continue to welcome everyone, to love everyone, and to remain biblically faithful."

The next step in the process, Presbytery officials said, is the appointment of a task force that will work out a legal settlement to transfer ownership of the property to the new EPC. The square-block property is valued for tax purposes at $4.2 million. Presbytery leaders who have guided the church through the dismissal process have offered no estimate of a cost for the transfer of the property, and the church's governing body, the Session, declined to enter into negotiations before the dismissal vote.

The national average for such settlements with congregations the size of First Presbyterian has been less than $100,000 paid over five years, the church said. Once the terms are established, they will be presented to the congregation and then the WNC presbytery for a final vote, likely in July or October of this year.

The congregation will also be required to change its name. "We've bounced around the name 'Hendersonville Presbyterian Church', which was the name of our congregation for its first 100 years," said Associate Pastor Carolyn Poteet. "It only became First Presbyterian when it celebrated its centennial. Whatever the congregation chooses, we look forward our new name and our new future that God has in store for us!"

Some of the members who voted not to re-affiliate are talking with the WNC presbytery about establishing a continuing PCUSA congregation with the name "First Presbyterian Church" in a new location. "If they do so, they will go with the elders' support and blessing," said Pastor Campbell. "Our strong preference, however, is that they remain with us. We love all of them, and I believe we can do ministry better together."

Elder Glenn Richardson added, "We're moving into a denomination that has been in existence longer than the PCUSA, and it has been grounded in the essentials of the faith from day one. They keep the main thing as the main thing, and it has resulted in tremendous growth, both of the denomination and of individual churches. The PCUSA, on the other hand, has been shrinking for decades and drifting in a direction we can no longer follow."

Campbell, the senior minister, on Wednesday night urged the members to support the reaffiliation.

"I urge you to vote yes, realizing we're just trying to stay the same, with one exception," he said. "We're not going to spend so much energy arguing with the denomination, trying to keep our conscience clear by speaking against compromise. Dear friends, we're going to focus with all of our hearts on ministry."

Steve English, an opponent of the dismissal, said there are hundreds of PC-USA congregations, large and small, that don’t always agree within their church or with other churches or with the larger church. When he was a young, English said, stores were closed on Sundays, ladies never wore pants to church and “we were a racially segregated society. Our culture has evolved.”

He told of a conversation with a fellow Presbyterian who, while expressing some anxiety about the tilt of the larger denomination, based in Louisville, Ky., said, “For me, the road to salvation does not go through Louisville.”

Poteet, the associate minister, also urged the congregation to vote for the EPC affiliation. She said the EPC welcomes women as elders and in many church roles and ordains women ministers.

"This is a new day," church member Jane Waddell said in a news release. "Rather than battle against headquarters, we can focus our efforts on ministry to the community and beyond."

Presbytery officials said they will offer support and assistance to the remaining First Prebyterian Church-PC-USA members if they wish to continue as First Presbyterian Church.

The 160-year church has survived two other major splits as a PC-USA congregation, one in 1983 that led to the formation of Covenant Presbyterian Church on Kanuga Road and another in 1998 when the senior minister led a conservative faction's departure to form Reformation Presbyterian Church, affiliated with the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church.
Church leaders say they believe the EPC is more in line with the Bible-based ministry that most members of First Presbyterian want to practice.
"The EPC's been around since 1981," Campbell said last month. "There's a lot of stability there and they pride themselves to be over time a denomination that keeps the main thing the main thing. It seems like the best fit for our congregation. It sounds like a cliché but we don't feel like we're leaving PCUSA. We feel like they've left us."