Summary of Departing Virginia Parishes

Thanks to Greg for posting this for me.  One question right off the bat for any Falls Church readers.

There seems to be a slight discrepancy in how the NO votes for both proposals have been reported for Falls.  John Yates gave one set of figures in his oral remarks at the CANA Press conference filmed by Anglican TV and linked below here on Stand Firm. 

E.g. for Proposal 1: Yates CLEARLY said 1228 YES votes and 127 NO votes.  (I listened two or three times to be sure.)  Those figures are now being published in the Washington Times, Living Church, etc.

  But the published Press Release from Falls has this text:

Of the 1,348 eligible voting members casting ballots at The Falls Church this past week, 1,228, or 90 percent, voted in favor of the first question, or “resolution,” on the ballot about whether to sever ties.

On the second and final resolution, 1,279 of 1,350 eligible members, or 94 percent, voted in favor of retaining the church’s real and personal property.

If one subtracts 1228 yes votes (stated orally and published in writing) from the figure listed of 1348 ballots for Proposal 1, we are left with a maximum possible of 120 “NO” votes.  Yet Yates+ said 127 votes.

The difference is insignificant.  The percentages don’t change more than maybe by 1/10th of a percent.  The yes votes are reported consistently.  But it would be nice to make sure the spoken and written reports conform to one another to avoid confusion.

And there is a similar discrepance with the No votes between the oral report and the written text for Proposal 2 for the Falls Church as well.  So both vote totals need to be clarified.  Thanks.

Ok: BabyBlue has now confirmed for me that the figures in the table, which I took from the written press release are correct for Falls Church.

If all of the churches scheduled to vote on this, vote to leave, then the diocese will lose 1/6 of it’s ASA.

Wow.

An update:  digging through Titusonenine archives, I found old articles about South Riding church.  Membership is listed as 150 (90 adults, 60 children).  Still no vote numbers or % for South Riding, however.

Also, I still haven’t seen anything about St. Paul’s Haymarket.

TFC you are rounding up (not that it matter) but from the signs: Questions #1 - 90+% Yes 9+% No; Question #2 94+% Yes 5+% No.

That’s the easy way to handle it, unlike the national elections recently those decimal really don’t matter - no recount on these votes.

Do remeber to keep these parishes and the Lord’s servants working at them in prayer. As a parishioner it sometimes is harder to see the costs, but last night’s Bible study I learn of one TFC assoc. rector who is two years from fully vesting in the pension. While federal law protects what he has already, there is a cost for this man for this stand - God is able, but we need to remember to keep the lifted in prayer.

The Washington post now names all nine parishes in its list of parishes who have voted to leave.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/18/AR2006121801174.html

So, it looks like the vote total at St. Paul’s Haymarket must have been released at some point.

If anyone has numbers or percentages, it would be nice to be able to update the table.

Couldn’t TEC just change the vesting rules without annoying the IRS?  Surely for someone who has been a priest for many years, to accelerate vesting wouldn’t cost the govt any money, would it?

If they change it towards this guys favor, the IRS wouldn’t probably care, however it’s not in TEC interest to do so, this is one way they can “punish” those who are leaving.

Now I’ll speak with a little insider information also being in a small/medium business. These costs were considered and counted before the vestries voted (a month ago), there are plans in place. However all of this is up in the air for the next year, putting my business hat on, imagine trying to work with a broker without any real numbers (“we may have 25 to 40 but we may also have several hundred”).  These little details will come together over the year and they were considered beforefore hand, but us sheep need to be mindful of our shepherds and staff that are stepping out in faith.

UPDATE
T19 elves are reporting the St. Paul’s Haymarket vote results
http://titusonenine.classicalanglican.net/?p=16777#comment-1487714

90% to disaffiliate and join CANA
92% to keep property.

Question:  Is there may be safety in numbers?

I would like some of the barristers out there to provide some feedback on the following proposition:  If part of the problem in applying the Virginia Statute about Church Property is defining if a split in a heiacrial denomnination has taken place, then does the essentially simultaneous exit (+/- a year) of [potentially] 15 Virginia Parishes provide evidence of such a split?

Today’s Washington Times reports the votes at St. Paul’s Haymarket as follows:

More than 90 percent of St. Paul’s members voted to leave on two ballot measures: 93-6 to leave the denomination and 95-4 to fight to retain their property.

Oh, thanks Justin.  I’d missed that, or perhaps I read an earlier version of the story.  Excellent.

I’ll send an updated table to Greg later this afternoon.

Some thoughts on a possible game plan by DOV in light of the defection of 15 congregations, with the possibility of more in the future, if I was advising the DOV (which I definitely am NOT)

Overall goals
-Minimize the number of congregations that vote on the issue
-Minimize the number of church buildings lost, particularly historic ones
-Maximize the amount of money and other assets recovered from departing congregations

The current parishes are not uniform.  They can be divided into roughly three groups

1. Large, historic parishes (TFC, Truro)
2. Relatively new missions or churches (Christ Our Lord (Lake Ridge), All Saints (Dale City), St. Margaret’s (Woodbridge), Apostles, Church of the Word, Redeemer, Epiphany, Potomac Falls, Holy Spirit (Ashburn), South Riding)
3. Small, historic parishes (St. Stephens-Heathsville, St. Paul’s (Haymarket), Our Savior (Oatlands))

Other parishes at some risk of defection by group:

1. Christ Church (Charlottesville)
2. Messiah (Fredericksburg), Church of the Spirit, St. Matthews (Sterling), St. Augustine-in-the-Fields, St. Matthews (Richmond), Christ the King, Church of the Cross, Cristo Ray, Holy Cross Korean, San Jose, Santa Maria, St. Peters-in-the-Woods
3. Aquia, Olivet, Pohick, numerous rural parishes

Strategy

Group 1- TFC and Truro both have small chapels and large, relatively recent sanctuaries, as well as adjoining property (although TFC’s historic church dates to the 1700’s, Truro’s only to the 1930’s).  Since there are some Episcopalians who predate the current leadership who could form the basis of a congregation, the key here is to maintain some DOV presence at these sites.  One possibility is to try to retain the historic churches, but let the rest of the property go (for a price).  The least that would be acceptable would be for a DOV congregation to share those churches but for the ADV parish to provide all upkeep.  A secondary goal is to obtain money in return for relinquishing property claims.  Chances of a large payment, however, are not great since each of these churches has more resources than the DOV as a whole to use on litigation.

Group 2- These parishes have relatively new, utilitarian buildings that with little sentimental attachment for the congregations.  It is unlikely that there will be ANY current parishioners who want to remain with the DOV.  Moreover, there are few other DOV parishes near these locations who could supply replacement parishioners and the demographics of these suburban areas are not favorable.  Thus maintaining a DOV presence at these sites would be difficult and expensive.  The key here then is to obtain the maximum amount of money possible.  Since other religious groups in NoVA are desperate for these types of suburban locations that are already zoned for churches, the property can be resold without difficultly for amounts that will easily cover any remaining mortgages.  The chance of success in obtaining payments or the property are good given that the new ADV congregations face the same zoning and high land value problems.

Group 3- These parishes have old, historic churches that are both expensive to maintain and to replace. Even though largely rural, the departing congregations may have a range of resources (some are located in fairly wealthy areas).  Nevertheless, since these types of congregations constitute the bulk of parishes in DOV and contain relatively large numbers of “cradle” Episcopalians, the key here is to retain the buildings and to discourage further defections.  Therefore, the bulk of DOV’s resources should be devoted to litigating to keep these buildings, at least in the short run.  In the long run, maintenance expenses can be reduced by merging the remaining DOV congregations and using the buildings only for occasional services, e.g., weddings.

As I was commenting over at T19 this afternoon, something important struck me. In any other ECUSA diocese with the exception of Texas, these kinds of departures would really trigger a pretty full-blown emergency with a drop of more than 25% of ASA.

http://titusonenine.classicalanglican.net/?p=16783#comment-1488288

An important fact to realize is that even with the 18% drop in ASA, Virginia will still be the second biggest diocese in ECUSA measured by ASA. It will fall below Texas, but it will still be quite a bit above New York. In all but Virginia or Texas, this magnitude of departure would have represented the following in the domestic US dioceses — i.e. Virginia and Texas are about the only 2 dioceses in the country that might be able to handle such losses without imploding.

For Virginia: about 17-18% of ASA
For Texas: about 18.5% of ASA

For 9 dioceses: 25-33% of ASA
For 13 dioceses: 34-50% of ASA
For 17 dioceses: 51-75% of ASA
For 12 dioceses: 76-100% of ASA
For 45 dioceses: > 100% of their ASA