| LOUISVILLE — Heartland Presbytery cannot require congregations to make per capita payments and mission pledges to be considered for loans or other financial support from the presbytery, the Permanent Judicial Commission of the Mid-America Synod has ruled.
The synod judicial commission ruled April 3 that the Constitution of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) provides “that the session (of a congregation) has sole responsibility to distribute the gifts of the people” and that Heartland’s policy, adopted in June 2003, had a “coercive force” that was not acceptable.
Heartland’s policy was challenged by two pastors, A. Kirk Johnston and Laurie Johnston, and by the session of the congregation Kirk Johnston pastors, First United Presbyterian Church, Paola, KS. Laurie Johnston serves as stated supply at Hillsdale (KS) Presbyterian Church.
For years now, upset first by the Reimagining God Conference in 1993 and later by other denominational decisions, First United church has withheld part of its per capita payment in disagreement with the course the PC(USA) has taken, and has used that money to support specific mission programs the session there considers worthwhile.
Heartland Presbytery’s policy stated that only congregations that have “full participation” in the life of the presbytery, including making per capita payments, would be eligible to get help from the presbytery in receiving grants or obtaining loans. And without the presbytery’s backing it would be difficult for a congregation to get a loan for construction or to buy land, because, in the PC(USA) system, church property is held in trust by the presbytery for the benefit of the denomination.
But in July 2003, the General Assembly Permanent Judicial Commission ruled that presbyteries cannot require sessions to pay the per-member assessments — paying per capita is strongly encouraged, but technically still is voluntary, the denomination’s highest court ruled.
That decision also stated, however, that withholding payments “as a mean of protest or dissent” is “a serious breach of the trust and love with which our Lord Jesus intends the covenant community to function.”
The ruling of the Mid-America Synod PJC cited that decision and concluded that “a church may neither be compelled, nor punished for failure, to pay per capita apportionments” to the presbytery.
The judicial commission also ruled, however, that it would not sustain the allegation that Heartland Presbytery’s policy “mutes the rightful witness to higher governing bodies” of a congregation deciding for itself how to spend the money that people from the congregation give.
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