If all eight of the churches decide to leave it could have a huge impact on the Presbytery of Pueblo. First Presbyterian Church alone accounted for half of the administrative body’s budget, Anderson said.

A vote Sunday by the largest Presbyterian church in Colorado Springs to split from the denomination’s main governing body in the United States may just be the beginning of a growing divide.

Eight churches in the region have expressed an interest in splitting from Presbyterian Church (USA), said Ronald Anderson, executive presbyter for the region that is based in Pueblo and spans much of southern Colorado. Those eight churches account for almost a fourth of the total churches in the Presbytery of Pueblo and make up more than half of the region’s total members.

On Sunday afternoon, 88 percent of First Presbyterian Church members voted in an informal poll to split with the mainline Presbyterian church and join a newly created, and more conservative, group called the Evangelical Covenant Order of Presbyterians. The vote was the culmination of several months of work by church leaders who sought to distance themselves from the main governing body after it voted in May that congregations could appoint openly gay ministers.

To officially make the split, church leaders and the Presbytery of Pueblo still have to negotiate terms and the congregation has to make an official vote, presumably in late-April.

Rev. Tom Trinidad, pastor at Faith Presbyterian church, 1529 N. Circle Drive, in Colorado Springs said his congregation is not considering a split and is sad that other churches want to leave.

“I like having people at the table to have different opinions,” he said. “If the conservative churches all leave then we lose their input and we lose our accountability to them.”

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