Email from F. Russell Mitman:

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                         e-BULLETIN
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           Welcome to the occasional news bulletin from
              PENNSYLVANIA SOUTHEAST CONFERENCE
                     of the United Church of Christ
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                    Alert!  Church-stealers at Work!
                      from F. Russell Mitman, D.Min.
                   Conference Minister and President
                            September 7, 2005
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There are outside organizations at work, some of  which may be aligned with and even funded by ultra-right-wing political lobbies, seeking to lure churches away from their historic denominational families.  These church-stealers are known to prey on people's fears and anger at times when controversies over political and cultural issues divide and polarize denominations.  In some cases the organizations have no real interest in religious or theological issues but simply use the discontent for their own political and ideological gain.  All denominations are targets for church-stealing activities, but the polity of the United Church of Christ makes us particularly
vulnerable.  United Methodists, Episcopalians, and Presbyterians have legal safeguards against such take-overs of church property and assets, but, ironically, the radical freedom each congregation in the UCC enjoys makes us fertile ground for the sowing of seeds of discontent and schism.  A leader in one of these organizations recently was recorded bragging that it is much cheaper to start a new church by having a
congregation vote itself out of the UCC than by traditional church-planting methods.  I call it "stealing."

A paid advertisement appeared in several newspapers recently inviting people on Sunday, September 11, at 3:00 P.M. to a church in Sinking Spring that seceded from the UCC several years ago.   "Tired of denominational Liberalism?" the ad baits.  "There's an alternative!  Informational Meeting. . . ."   What organization funded the ad and is sponsoring the event is not clear.  However, it is apparent that there is an alliance of organizations seeking to exploit the fear and anger in some UCC congregations over the resolution in support of equal marriage rights that was passed by the delegates at the General Synod in July.

Yet, the church-stealing activities go beyond merely inviting people to a meeting.  Agents­both clergy and lay­have been planted in targeted congregations to sow discontent and to urge congregations to vote themselves out of the UCC.  The public rhetoric is generally about sex-related issues, but the real agenda is to foment schism, that is, to batter people in congregations with negative information and dis-information long enough to get a majority of them eventually to vote their congregations out of the UCC and to unite with one of these other organizations.  The tactics, in my mind, are not far from those employed by religious and political cults to lure children away from their parents and families.

This is not a new activity.  It has been going on now for nearly thirty years.  However, the campaign accelerates whenever the church-stealers can find some unpopular issue on which to capitalize for their own self-interests.  The maneuver is to lump all settings of the UCC beyond the local church together and, through
biblical proof-texting and religious innuendo, to create the impression that everyone in the UCC is part of some kind of monolithic evil conspiracy to destroy our historic traditions.    Moreover, certain geographic areas of the UCC are targeted, particularly those areas, like the Pennsylvania Conferences, with a large constituency of congregations stemming from the Evangelical and Reformed heritage in which actions of a General Synod were binding on a local church.  However, that is not the polity of the UCC, yet the sowers
of discontent­including the media-- want to make people believe that a majority vote of several hundred delegates to a General Synod speak for the whole church.  I believe it is time to name the church-stealing for what it is and to warn pastors and members of congregations that they are vulnerable targets in a well-funded take-over scheme.

When I was a local church pastor nearly forty years ago, one Sunday afternoon­ the church stealers like to work on Sundays­ the doorbell rang while Ruth and I were having lunch. When I opened the door, the woman on the porch asked in tones of self-righteous arrogance, "Are you dissatisfied with the kind of preaching that is
going on in your church?"  I promptly replied, "Well, ma'am, if anybody in my church is dissatisfied with the preaching, that person needs to speak to me because I'm the preacher!"  She quickly excused herself, and I
saw her go down the sidewalk to my neighbor who just happened to be a deacon in another UCC congregation.  I'm sure she inflicted her inflammatory one-liner on him too.  She could be pitied as the victim of some church leader's manipulation.  However, the church-stealers we are dealing with today are far less naive and innocent.
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