“New Hope Presbyterian Church’s dismissal to the EPC from the Presbyterian Church (USA) by Presbytery of the Peaks came to a ceremonial conclusion on July 20. The congregation had been granted its departure during a May 8 presbytery meeting. The presbytery’s policy calls for a 90-day waiting period after dismissal, so while Presbytery of the Peaks has bid farewell to the church, the official date of release will be Aug. 31.”

The wait to become part of the Evangelical Presbyterian Church (EPC) is over for a Virginia congregation that also has changed its name.

New Hope Presbyterian Church’s dismissal to the EPC from the Presbyterian Church (USA) by Presbytery of the Peaks came to a ceremonial conclusion on July 20. The congregation had been granted its departure during a May 8 presbytery meeting. The presbytery’s policy calls for a 90-day waiting period after dismissal, so while Presbytery of the Peaks has bid farewell to the church, the official date of release will be Aug. 31.

However, when presbytery officials gave church leaders an opportunity to schedule the dismissal service for July, Pastor Cameron Smith and members of the session jumped at the opportunity to bring their long journey to an end. The 100-member church in Salem (Roanoke County), now part of the EPC, is known as New Life Presbyterian Church (NLPC).

“This was painful for us, but we had a chance to wrap things up by an earlier date, and we jumped on it,” Smith said. “This has been a process where the presbytery has done a lot of learning, and our church was sort of at the mercy of the process. It was a long process, but it worked out for us in the end and brought us closer together as a church.”

Negotiating a suitable settlement

It appeared that dismissal for NLPC would be very costly for a long time. Taking into account the church property’s appraised value of $850,000, the Peaks Presbytery Response Team (PRT) initially wanted a payment of $422,500 over 10 years from the congregation to grant its departure from the PCUSA, telling church officials there would be no negotiations on the amount during an October 2013 meeting.

“When we heard $422,500 you may as well have taken a hammer and hit us over the head,” Smith recalled, noting that the annual budget for New Life is $157,000. “We didn’t handle that very well and were visibly upset.”

Smith stopped attending the meetings of the PRT to avoid any notion that he was behind the proposed departure of the congregation that instead was guided by the session.

In a meeting a month later, the PRT gave New Life two options: a payment of $422,500 over 10 years or $322,500 over five years.

“They were not going to budge. They were going to keep (the amount) high,” Smith said.

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Read about other congregations withdrawing from the PCUSA:

Two Holston Presbytery PCUSA churches leave

FPC Hendersonville and Western Carolina PCUSA Presbytery

Christ PCUSA in Massachusetts withdraws from PCUSA for EPC

Covenant Presbyterian Church (CPC) in Ligonier, Pa., and Redstone Presbytery Negotiated an Agreement