The letter mentions several alternative ideas that have been discussed by the FOP including, non-geographical presbyteries, allowing congregations to transfer presbytery membership, or forming dual Committees on Ministry and Committees on Preparation for Ministry in the same presbytery.

A collection of 24 Presbyterians, most of whom are middle-level bureaucrats, have dispatched a“Letter of Reconciliation” to Gradye Parsons, stated clerk of the Presbyterian Church (USA) and Jim Singleton, president of the Fellowship of Presbyterians (FOP).

The letter pleads for a middle-of-the-road compromise in the midst of what has become a rapidly fracturing denomination.

The letter’s emailed press release, signed by Paul Watermulder, pastor of First Presbyterian Church of Burlingame, Calif., said that those who signed the letter were “intent first on urging our General Assembly leadership to immediately become bridge-builders with those churches and leaders who out of conscience have become disaffected from our denomination.”

“The second intent was to urge all those who are talking about leaving or distancing themselves from the PCUSA to slow down and recognize that there are several viable signs of unity coming to the GA in Pittsburgh which are supported by a wide range of centrist leaders.”

“A significant number of PCUSA congregations have entered into a period of discernment, prayerfully considering how they can remain part of the PCUSA while also maintaining theological integrity. Their sense of increasing estrangement from the trajectory of the PCUSA reached a breaking point with the recent changes in ordination standards,” the two-page letter begins.

The letter states that these Presbyterian feel “betrayed by and alienated from this branch of the Church, believing that these recent legislative changes are symptomatic signals of other, deeper changes that have set the PCUSA on a course of unfaithfulness to the heart and will of God.”

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