On Monday, Nov. 9, the congregation I serve, Hackberry Creek Church, and I journey forward into a new chapter. Today, we transfer officially into ECO, a Covenant Order of Evangelical Presbyterians.
Hackberry Creek Church (HCC) was planted in 1988 through the initiative of Highland Park Presbyterian Church. Throughout our history, HCC has felt a bit out of place within our presbytery and the PCUSA at large. That dissonance was aptly described in an open letter to the PCUSA in 2011: Our divisions revolvearound differing understandings of Scripture, authority, Christology, the extent of salvation amidst creeping universalism, anda broader set of moral issues. Outside of presbytery meetings, we mostly exist in separate worlds, with opposing sidesreading different books and journals, attending different conferences, and supporting different causes. There is no longer common understanding of what is meant by being "Reformed." For HCC, our mission has remained focused on sharing Jesus Christ with others and growing as his disciples. Over the years, we saw less and less of our mission in the broader denomination and even in our own local presbytery. Since 2012, HCC had resolved to remain in the PCUSA by being part of the Fellowship Community of Presbyterians- an order of churches within the larger denomination. The Fellowship Community was committed to helping its churches make much of Jesus and the gospel and no longer engage in the larger denominational theological/ polity debates.
HCC has always been more about making disciples of Jesus than making good presbyterians, so we managed to find away to remain in the larger denomination without being defined by it. In 2024, the PCUSA closed its world missions office and withdrew funding for missionaries overseas. In addition, the PCUSA approved an overture that would expect churches to comply with standards for officers and members that had previously been considered matters of conscience. These two factors were significant indicators that the norms of HCC and the norms of the PCUSA were becoming increasingly disparate as well as an expectation from the denomination to conform more to its norms.
So, in prayer, the session decided to initiate the dismissal process with Grace Presbytery. The process was long, prayerful, and conversational. The church prayed for unity through the process and those prayers were answered. 97% of the congregation approved the dismissal and after several months of negotiating with presbytery regarding the church’s property, a settlement was reached and unanimously approved by Grace Presbytery last month.
So today we enter ECO, but our identity remains the same. We are a church committed to its mission of sharing Jesus Christ with others and growing as his disciples. The difference is that we will be more in alignment with our denomination than we’ve ever known previously. Jesus’ commission is to make disciples by going, baptizing, and teaching them to obey all that he’s commanded in Scripture. That is what we will continue to do. That’s not a presbyterian commission, it’s Christ’s Great Commission for all his people. Let all that we do serve that end.
