Group holds final service at Peters Creek church
Peters Creek Church will be swapping congregations May 3. As the Evangelical Presbyterian Church congregation prepares to leave, a smaller group with Presbyterian Church U.S.A. plans to return.
The Rev. Doug Brandt gave his final sermon at Peters Creek Presbyterian Church in Venetia April 26. The congregation will be moving to a temporary location down the street until they find a more permanent home.
Parishioners of the Peters Creek Evangelical Presbyterian Church attended their last service in the building April 26.
The Peters Creek Evangelical Presbyterian congregation gathered in a circle during its last worship service at the church in Venetia April 26.
There is a time to rend and a time to sew, the Rev. Doug Brandt preached to the Peters Creek Evangelical Presbyterian congregation during an emotional service the morning of April 26. The passage from Ecclesiastes was familiar terrain, but it resonated with parishioners as they prepared to leave behind the brick church on Brookwood Road.
It was their last church service at the worship site that served Presbyterians in Washington County for 220 years.
“Rending a garment in grief shows emotion, doesn’t it?” Brandt said. “We have some hope for the future, but today, we’re experiencing a great deal of grief because we leave this place behind and move out into the unknown.”
Church leaders said the congregation’s decision to vacate the property was one of necessity.
They were renting it since last fall from the Washington Presbytery, but church officials said the monthly payment of $3,000 – plus upkeep and utilities – became too burdensome.
The final sermon marked a symbolic end to a lengthy legal battle over the ownership of the church that began nearly eight years ago when the congregation voted overwhelmingly to leave Presbyterian Church U.S.A. in favor of the more conservative Evangelical Presbyterian Church. A Washington County Court judge ruled last December that a minority group that opted to stay with PCUSA reserves all ownership rights for the church and adjacent properties.
That group – a congregation of about 20 people under the wing of Washington Presbytery – will be returning to Peters Creek Church for 5 p.m. services beginning May 3. That same day, the EPC congregation will begin using the Parish Hall of St. David’s Episcopal Church.
Brandt said the church’s 130 parishioners represent a “permanent congregation in a temporary location.” They made an offer to purchase the property from Washington Presbytery, but the two groups were unable to reach a deal during a negotiation session last week in Washington County Court. They also failed to reach a settlement on a few outstanding issues related to money that both parties believe they are owed. A hearing will be scheduled before Senior Judge William Nalitz.
Ray Peterson, chairman of the legal committee for the EPC congregation, said the deadlock was disappointing.
“There was apparently no intent to settle the issues on behalf of the Washington Presbytery,” Peterson said. “We are certainly disappointed in their stance and hope that during the next several months they have a change of heart and will negotiate with us on an honest and reasonable basis.”
Executive Presbyter Craig Kephart said they were considering selling the church, but couldn’t agree on a price tag.
“We, as a Presbytery, have to be very careful that we’re not just giving away a property, particularly in a case like this, where we have invested so much time, effort, energy and financial resources in litigation,” Kephart said.
Both groups said they were eager to put the past behind them. EPC parishioners said Peters Cheek Church was slowly splintering for years, perhaps as early as the 1920s when disagreement arose over Jesus’s atonement in what is now called the fundamentalist-modernist controversy.
Churches across the nation have been leaving the nation’s largest Presbyterian denomination because of PCUSA’s recent decision to recognize gay marriage. Peterson said their decision was already made long before the church debated gay marriage.
“We are believers in the inerrancy of the Bible,” he said.
Linda McCaig, a member of the EPC congregation, said she wishes they could have found a way to stay at Peters Creek Church.
“Even though it’s been a tremendously horrendous journey, it has brought the congregation together, and we do have the hope that we’re going to move on,” she said.
Members of the PCUSA congregation have been meeting at the Venetia Heritage Society since the split. Judy Mayer, chairwoman of counsel for the Presbytery, said the group is “somewhat smaller than it was at the time back in 2007,” but they are just as eager to return to Peters Creek Church. Pastors will be visiting from other Presbyterian churches in the area, and they hope to draw in more parishioners by offering evening services.
“It’s been a long process, but we’re looking forward to this,” she said. “God is doing a new thing, and we’re hoping to be responsive to what God is leading us to do.”