Trust Clause Follow Up

So those who read my blog regularly--and thank you if you do (and I'm sorry for the rambling that most of my posts are)--I wanted to follow up regarding the issue of the trust clause, specifically as it was in the news recently because of the situation at Sunnyside.

Based on what I gathered from the Bishop speaking at last week's annual conference session, the parties involved have come to an agreement (along with some sort of confidentiality clause which I'm not sure what that hides, but I guess that's the point) in which Sunnyside gets to leave, and will buy their building. Now that I think of it, the confidential part may be the amount they're paying, since this is one of the problems the conference trustees have run into in the past--a congregation leaves, then the district committee sells or rents the building for a fraction of the price--there are even rumors of past such sales of churches for $1, which hardly seems to validate the spirit of the trust clause. At any rate, I have no idea what the amount was, though I can only hope it was a fair market price. At any rate, I must commend our conference leadership, the DS and the Bishop, who were far more gracious in this situation than was required.

The question of the trust clause remains, though, and was given bolstering recently with a judgment in a case involving Episcopal churches in VA--a big deal for United Methodists since our trust clause is much more legally strong than theirs.

Check out this story from the Washington Post

Nine conservative congregations sought to break away from the denomination over conflicts involving the ordination of LGBT persons to the Episcopacy--this is a different issue for their denomination because their call system allows for the ordination of LGBT priests without all churches being require to accept them. Therefore, the issue is not as present for all churches when it only allows for LGBT priests as it does for LGBT bishops. It is different for the United Methodist church because of the appointment process--a church could not simply NOT hire an LGBT minister, therefore, the issue for the UMC, I suspect, will be resolved long before the election of a bishop is the issue. But, hey, stranger things have happened.

That said, the unanimous appeals decision doesn't straight forwardly reinforce the trust clause, but says that the lower court mis-applied it in this case. The article says things are not over, just getting a lot more messy as these congregations seek to leave and take their property with them.