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Note #8042 from PCUSA NEWS to PRESBYNEWS:

Vote goes against Lay Committee chief
03533
December 10, 2003

Vote goes against Lay Committee chief

Presbytery panel would withdraw validation of Williamson's ministry

by John Filiatreau

LOUISVILLE - The Committee on Ministry (COM) of the Presbytery of Western
North Carolina voted in a closed session on Dec. 9 to approve a task force
that it withdraw its validation of the ministry of the Rev. Parker T.
Williamson, chief executive officer of the Presbyterian Lay Committee and
editor in chief of its publications.

Presbytery Executive William "Bill" Taber said the 18-member COM "carefully
and seriously discussed and debated" Williamson's ministry during the
90-minute meeting, and decided by an "overwhelming" margin "not to validate
the ministry of the CEO of the Presbyterian Lay Committee."

Mary V. Atkinson, the chair of the task force that recommended the action to
the COM, said the session was "serious, thoughtful and heartfelt," and the
committee members "really worked at it" before voting to endorse the task
force's recommendation.

When he learned of the decision, Williamson, who couldn't attend the meeting
because of a previous commitment, told The Layman: "Presbyterians who care
more about institutional preservation than constitutional integrity have won
a short-term skirmish in a battle that is wider than they can imagine."

The issue now will go before the full presbytery at a meeting on Jan. 31 at
First Presbyterian Church in Asheville, NC. If the presbytery concurs with
the decision of the COM, Williamson will be placed on "inactive" status and
will lose privileges of voice and vote at presbytery meetings.

If his ministry were not restored to active status within three years,
Williamson then would lose his ordination and his name would be stricken from
the presbytery roll.

The five-member task force on validated ministry voted 4-1 to recommend
inactive and probationary status for Williamson, who became a member of the
presbytery in 1971. He served as pastor of First Presbyterian Church in
Lenoir, NC, before his hiring by the Presbyterian Lay Committee in 1989.

The reconsideration of the presbytery's "validation" of non-pastoral
ministries is an administrative, not disciplinary, process.

Atkinson, an elder from Black Mountain, NC, and a former member of the
denomination's national staff, said the task force based its recommendation
on "the character and conduct of the ministry of the Presbyterian Lay
Committee."

"It isn't Parker," she told the Presbyterian News Service. "It is the
ministry in which he is engaged."

What "tipped the scales" for the task force, she said, was the "Declaration
of Conscience" in which the Lay Committee called on sessions to "prayerfully
consider" withholding per-capita and mission funds from the Presbyterian
Church (USA) on the grounds that its leaders have not been faithful to
Biblical standards.

Although the Lay Committee's statement stops short of directly urging
sessions to withhold payments to the denomination, she said, "We felt that
they were definitely trying to encourage churches to withhold funds."

Church courts have ruled, and several General Assemblies have confirmed, that
sessions have the right to determine how their offerings are spent, and
cannot be compelled to make per-capita payments.

However, some church officials, including the Rev. Clifton Kirkpatrick, the
stated clerk of the General Assembly, have said that Presbyterian officers
who advocate withholding funds from the denomination are in danger of
violating their ordination vows.

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