Report to the Presbytery of Carlisle
Dismissal of the Hawley Memorial Church
Today I encourage you to approve the dismissal
of the Hawley Memorial Church. Our Commission on Ministry has already acted to
dismiss their Pastor Carl Batzel pending our action today.
Once again today, in official meeting, we
consider the dismissal of one of our congregations to the new denomination, the
Covenant Order of Evangelical Presbyterians (ECO). We have done this before. We
dismissed the Upper Path Valley Church and their Pastor Meagan Boozer; we
dismissed the Lower Path Valley and Burnt Cabins Churches and their Pastor
Donna Ryan; we dismissed the Port Royal and Mexico Churches and their Pastor
Crystal Lyde; we dismissed the Shippensburg Church and their Pastor Mike Miller
Many of you will also remember that
we did NOT dismiss our Faith Church, despite the request of the session at the
time. In seeking to leave our Church, the Session at Faith Church caused
enormous conflict, and more than half of the congregation left with their
Pastor Wayne Lowe to form what is now a new ECO congregation. Our Faith Church
today, although smaller, is thriving with remarkable energy and enthusiasm. I
am grateful to their Interim Pastor Steve Lytch and their new session members.
My friends, I believe we have
reached the end of an era. My belief is confirmed in conversation with my
colleagues in presbyteries all around Pennsylvania. There are still several
dismissal conversations in process in neighboring presbyteries, but generally,
I believe, the era of church dismissals is behind us. After today’s action we
will not have any active Conversation Teams, and we have not received any
official requests from any other session to begin our dismissal process. I am
not aware of any of our congregations that are discussing dismissal at this
time.
My friends, I believe we have done
this right. I believe we should be proud and grateful for the way we have acted
through this season of deep conflict and turmoil. We wrote, we debated, we
approved, and we acted on repeatedly a policy, and a spiritual stance, of gracious
dismissal. This was and is the right thing to do in Christ Jesus. Like many of
you, I know all the arguments for a different path, a different tone in these
conversations. In many sleepless nights, I have played out those arguments in
my mind. Today, without any doubt, I am convinced that we have done the right
thing with our policy and our practice of gracious dismissal. And I am very
grateful to almost countless numbers of leaders in this presbytery who have participated
in this discernment and these practices, and especially the members of all the
Conversation Teams we have had over these years.
Now I see three great challenges
before us:
Our first challenge is to live into
this very new language in our Book of Order: Nothing shall compel a teaching elder to perform nor compel a session
to authorize the use of church property for a marriage service that the
teaching elder or the session believes is contrary to the teaching elder’s or the
session’s discernment of the Holy Spirit and their understanding of the Word of
God.
Our second challenge is live into
this very old language in our Book of Order; one of the historic principles of
our church: “We also believe that there
are truths and forms with respect to which (believers) of good characters and
principles may differ. And in all these we think it the duty of both private
Christians and societies to exercise mutual forbearance toward each other.”
Third, if I am correct that we are
now moving into a new era, we need to ask ourselves as a Presbytery in a very
deep and thoughtful way, “What are we going to do now?”
I ask you to support the recommendation
of our Conversation Team and our Council and approve the dismissal of the
Hawley Memorial Church.
