The Tecumseh experience appears to follow advice (“The Louisville Papers”) given by lawyers in the Louisville office of the PCUSA. In that document, denominational officials urged presbyteries to engage in hardball tactics, including removing session members from their governing role, removing the pastor, seizing bank accounts, changing the locks on church buildings, and naming a minority group the “true church.” [Editor’s note: the original URL (link) referenced is no longer valid, so the link has been removed.]

The session of 440-member First Presbyterian Church in Tecumseh, Mich., has filed charges against Maumee Valley Presbytery for failing to follow its own rules.

Apparently, local churches seeking to exit the Presbyterian Church (USA) must obey the presbytery’s self-described “fair, clear and easily understood,” dismissal policy, but the presbytery itself does not. Tecumseh’s April 3 remedial complaint will be heard by the Synod of the Covenant Permanent Judicial Commission.

In 2007, the presbytery adopted a “Process for Separation” in which it promised to “follow the example of Jesus in setting the interests of others above our own” and, with respect to property, not “to use the threat of its seizure as a coercive instrument of the presbytery.”

Included in the document is the promise of “an open process” and that the team chosen by the presbytery to represent it in any negotiations with the local church will not be given coercive powers. “The team is not an administrative commission,” says the policy. “It has no authority to take any action regarding the property held in trust, pastoral leadership, session membership nor the moderator of the session.”

The policy states that if the local church follows the policy’s guidelines, the presbytery’s pastoral team “will support and recommend” the congregation’s request for dismissal when that request is presented to Maumee Valley Presbytery.

Dotting I’s and crossing T’s
Tecumseh church leaders say they followed the rules, and their complaint to the synod is replete with supporting documentation. In 2007, the session formed a task force to conduct intensive discussions regarding the theology and practices of the PCUSA. After the task force’s findings were reported, the session invited representatives from the presbytery to visit with them and respond to their growing sense of estrangement from the denomination………

(Editor’s Note: More of the Session/Congregation process is available in the Read More: we skip now to some of the Presbytery action)

……Following that meeting, (Presbytery Administrative) commission members met secretly with other persons no longer worshiping with the Tecumseh church. According to Tecumseh’s judicial complaint, they recruited inactive members and non-members who had not attended Tecumseh church services for as many as ten years, one of which was actively involved in an area Lutheran church. In addition, the presbytery’s interim executive set up an escrow fund for the group.

The presbytery’s clandestine campaign resulted in the addition of only four of Tecumseh’s active members to the group, but it brought out of the woodwork some 25 additional persons who at some time in the past had a relationship with the Tecumseh congregation. Now numbering approximately 60, the group, with support from the presbytery, named itself “the foundational group.”

Prosecution and eviction
Claiming to be the “true” First Presbyterian Church of Tecumseh, Mich., the approximately 60-member foundational group is demanding that Tecumseh’s pastor, Rev. Richard Mortimer, be removed from all pastoral duties, that the 440-member congregation turn over its sanctuary on Sunday mornings for a worship service led by a Maumee Valley approved minister, and that the majority congregation seeking alignment with the EPC vacate the church buildings now claimed by the foundational group.

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[Editor’s note: the original URL (link) referenced in this article is no longer valid, so the link has been removed.]