An email shared with Beverly Heights Presbyterian Church in their preperation to leave the EPC

In my last Good Future Report, I shared with you a vision of the good future I believe God has in store for Beverly Heights Church. I believe this future is worth pursuing and worth defending. I also do not believe it is a future we can achieve in the EPC. In my previous report, I said I would share some thoughts as to why I believe we should leave the denomination. I want to offer some thoughts that are theological, moral, and financial in nature.

The EPC Has Slowly Become a Liberal Denomination

The EPC is a 43-year-old denomination. A detailed history of the denomination can be found here. There are some important details we should know about the origin of the denomination, since origins tend to set trajectories for the future. Or as Kyle Bennett likes to say, “the end is in the beginning.” First, we should consider that the EPC came out of the two liberal, mainline Presbyterian denominations.  Yes, when the EPC formed, it did so to flee liberalism, but those who leave often fail to recognize the corruption they bring with them. Israel was set free in the Exodus, but they brought the rebellion of Egypt with them into the desert. As one wise observer told me, “You can take the church out of the mainline, but you can’t take the mainline out of the church.” Mainline liberalism entered into the EPC in seed form. Those seeds contained a set of assumptions that after 43 years have matured and blossomed.  

One of those assumptions includes suspicion of pastors, which resulted in the 2:1 ratio requirement of pastors to ruling elders in the Presbytery and General Assembly.  This way ruling elders could always overrule the clergy in the courts. The EPC believed it was the pastors who caused the liberalism in the mainline church with their fancy, progressive theology.  Best to have the ruling elder there as protection from the menecing pastor. When three ruling elders from our church accused me, the presbytery was already conditioned (after 43 years) to privilege the opinions of the ruling elder, despite evidence to the contrary.

When the EPC left the mainline, it also brought with it the priority of egalitarianism. Egalitarianism is a big problem and is the belief in the principle that all people are equal and deserve equal rights and opportunities. Egalitarianism produces DEI and affirmative action.  This issue is most readily identified in the EPC in women’s ordination. The EPC does not mandate women’s ordination, rather it makes the decision a matter of local choice. Each church and presbytery can decide what they believe on the issue. The problem with this is that individual choice is now the essential in the equation. But the Bible discriminates; there are Jews and Gentiles, sheep and goats, men and women, holy and common, competent and incompetent.  In the world of the Bible, some things are out of bounds. But with egalitarianism, there is no need to worry about that, being “in” is a matter of equality and your conscience. When conscience, opinion, or personal feelings start to displace the Bible, then egalitarianism is well underway. Under egalitarianism, standards erode and the individual and their feelings become the standard. This leads to worldliness where “you can be anything you want to be, and do anything you want to do,” as long as your conscience (mainly feelings) is honored.  

When I was on the presbytery’s Ministerial Committee, we examined candidates for ordination and those transferring in from other denominations. We spent a lot of time listening to the candidate’s sense of call, meaning how they personally felt about pastoral ministry or how they believed God was calling them to serve. There was less emphasis on educational or theological standards. We never refused anyone from candidacy based on their competence. If there were concerns, mostly we would delay ordination if we felt the candidate was not ready. Egalitarianism lowers the bar for everyone and when standards dissolve, so does the church. Egalitarianism is the principle that led the mainline to ordain women, and then homosexuals, and then eventually conduct same-sex unions because everyone deserves a right to be happy or in leadership.  The EPC will claim that the Bible, Westminster, and the Constitution are the standard. But every time we appealed to them in our situation, they were set aside to consider people’s feelings.  The EPC looks like it is on the same trajectory as the mainline.  

The mistake we made when we left the PCUSA all those years ago, is that we looked for a denomination that was “less liberal,” rather than “more Christian.” The problem is that over time, less liberal always becomes more liberal, and the EPC is well underway.

 Since the progressive impulse is to make progress, liberalism leads to mission drift. The EPC has drifted left like so many other formerly stalwart evangelical institutions. Just read Christianity Today’s recent compromise on gender pronouns, their celebration of critical theory, or Wheaton College’s foray into monument removal to keep up with modern sensibilities. The EPC has joined today’s obsession with racial diversity, equity, and inclusion. Consider the EPC’s Revelation 7:9 initiative, a form of critical race theory for evangelicals. As things continue to drift, management and therapeutic values start to displace biblical and theological priorities.  

Another sign of liberalism is its loose affiliation with the concept of truth. In liberalism, truth is fungible and malleable, and texts are made to say whatever you need them to say, whether that text is the Bible, the Constitution, or an email. But words have meaning. When I was trained to read the Bible in seminary I was taught that there is a “plain meaning of the text.” The words meant what they said. Jesus turned water into wine, not grape juice. In liberalism, words become whatever you need them to say. I can’t tell you how many times we would call into question something the AC said or wrote, and they responded by saying, “Well that was not our intent” or “That’s not what we meant.” Words either have meaning or they don’t, the truth depends on it. When words change, and meanings change, then the truth starts to change and eventually, the gospel is lost. The truth is worth fighting for and guarding the gospel is worth leaving a denomination over.  

When it comes to truth, the accusers and the AC demonstrated their adoption of a leftist, liberal tactic known as the “lie of omission.” Dennis Prager recently described this phenomenon after NBC intentionally withheld important information and context from a recent interview to create a negative narrative about his company PragerU. You can watch the video here, it is fascinating. Such omission of important facts and details were withheld in our accuser’s charge report, and then by the AC when they read their Actions and Recommendations on the floor of the presbytery. Dennis Prager called such behavior, immoral. 

And finally, you know that the seeds of liberalism are in full flower when totalitarian impulses emerge in the form of “you must comply or suffer the consequences,” which is the very scenario the Session and I now face with the AC. Conformity was mandated of us, not to the scriptures, but to the AC’s policies and reports. There is no liberty in the non-essential, only tyranny, something we saw all too often in the PCUSA. Sadly, the EPC has come into blossom and we can see the fruit it is producing if we care to look. It is the fruit of liberalism, for the apple does not fall far from the tree.

The EPC and POA have been Unjust and Immoral

The AC, POA, and EPC failed to uphold the standards of justice in their treatment of me and the Session. In the AC’s handling of the charges, they did not consider “evidence” which is the biblical standard (1 Timothy 5:19), only opinion and alleged testimony. They then produced a disciplinary outcome through an administrative process, rather than a judicial process, which is a violation of due process.      

As one well-regarded PCA leader shared with me shortly after I resigned, 

“One characteristic of the mainline, that caused OPC, later PCA, then EPC, to leave it, was its unjust judicial processes. They always found ways to evade and avoid the due process that the constitution of those various communions provided. I think the EPC appears to have done so here also. You cannot appeal, because you haven’t been found guilty; you cannot complain; so you are stuck in a situation where there is little or nothing you can do, so you (understandably) resigned.”

Not only is there injustice by the POA’s evasion of due process, but it is also likely that the accusers, through their false charge report, and the AC and POA, through their public reading and dissemination of the Actions and Recommendations Report, committed defamation. Following the AC’s public reading and dissemination of their Actions and Recommendations report, people close to me inquired with a law firm to discuss the legality of the AC’s report and the negative consequences it had upon my position at Beverly Heights Church and professional career in the EPC. Based on those conversations, it appears there may be a defamation case arising from the false charge report issued by the accusers, which was then promulgated by the POA’s public dissemination of the AC’s Actions and Recommendations report.  

The immorality continues as the AC works to gerrymander our membership rolls to influence the outcome of the vote. The AC is contesting our rolls claiming that members were unduly removed, despite our evidence to the contrary. They want to overrule the Session’s constitutional right to manage the rolls by allowing former members, who have not worshipped at Beverly Heights for years, to vote on February 4th. Furthermore, they are seeking to prohibit our new members from voting. The AC told us that these new members are full members in every regard except with the right to vote on February 4th. We believe this is not only immoral but it may very well be illegal to issue such a restriction on the Session, who are trustees of the corporation, and on our new members, who are also members of a non-profit in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. The Session is actively and vigorously looking into all remedies and responses to this draconian decision by the AC.  

The EPC Does Have a Stake in Our Decision 

Since our reception into the denomination in 2009, Beverly Heights Church has given $145,662.54 in what is called “Per Member Asking” (PMA), with $95,592.00 given to the EPC General Assembly office in Orlando, and $50,070.54 to the Presbytery of the Alleghenies. With that kind of money flowing into the denomination and presbytery, it is hard for me to believe Roger Rumer when he says, “The AC has no stake in whether you as a congregation decide to leave the EPC.”

I for one am asking, “What return on investment has Beverly Heights received from all this money?” Yes, some of our money covered administrative costs for medical insurance and retirement, but beyond that, what benefit have we received?       

And now the EPC wants more money. A few years ago, the GA office changed its model from a flat PMA model to an annual budget tax model. With PMA, churches were charged a flat fee by both the national office and the presbytery, based on a church’s active membership only, which incidentally may be why the EPC does not want individuals who no longer actively worship moved from active to inactive status. Under this new model, our $95,592.00 to the GA would now be $125,538.94.  Beverly Heights Church leaving the EPC represents significant lost revenue for the denomination.

Given all that we’ve learned about the EPC over the last year, and given the needs of our local congregation,  I’m not sure it is good stewardship to continue giving such resources to the denomination.  The money spent on the denomination could have easily paid for the much-needed repairs to our neighborhood playground.  

The AC has broken trust with me and our Session and the EPC overall has proven itself untrustworthy. They have broken covenant with this congregation and abandoned the biblical principles of justice and truth. More and more the EPC behaves hierarchical and oppressive, like its predecessor, the PCUSA.  I believe the EPC is like an unfaithful spouse and we have biblical grounds to leave the denomination. We not only have grounds but a duty to leave.  Now you must decide what you believe.

Photo by 🇻🇪 Jose G. Ortega Castro 🇲🇽 on Unsplash