Throughout the ordeal, no formal charges were filed against the Crossroads trio, no opportunities to face accusers, no chance to offer a rebuttal or cross examine witnesses, no presentation of evidence, no due process. Milwaukee’s administrative commission simply barreled into Crossroads, declared itself to be prosecutor, jury and judge, and left the rule of law in shambles.
Crossroads, a 1,500-member Presbyterian Church (USA) congregation in Mequon, Wisc., was the scene of an ecclesiastical pileup on Sept. 23, when an administrative commission from Milwaukee Presbytery fractured the church and wrecked the careers of its two ministers and parish associate. Reports from the scene indicate a statistical death toll among members that could easily number into the hundreds and decimate the ministry of this once-thriving church.
“I think I speak for many who feel as if we were attending a funeral,” said Aline Mohr following the Sept. 23 congregational meeting conducted by the administrative commission.
Addressing some 400 members of the congregation, the commission announced that it had fired the church’s ministers, silenced them with a gag order and, although it had to allow the congregation to concur or dissent from what it had done, the vote wouldn’t make any difference.
Trashing the staff
The senior minister, Timothy Harrison, had already been ordered to vacate his office immediately and exit his house within 30 days. He was also warned that if he was caught in conversation with his former members he would lose even the 30-day severance (violating Milwaukee Presbytery’s policy that calls for a minimum severance of three months) that the commission approved.
Associate Minister Steven Sherrill didn’t fare much better. During a meeting with the commission on Sept. 6, after Harrison had been dumped, Sherrill was showered with laudatory evaluations of his ministry at Crossroads. According to two witnesses who accompanied Sherrill to the meeting, commission members said“Steve, you’re great!” “Your ministry is energetic!” “We want to encourage you to continue …” Sherrill was handed a letter written by the commission to the congregation announcing that it had fired Harrison and stating that Sherrill“will continue to provide this congregation with the strong and vibrant pastoral and programmatic guidance that so many of you commended in our interviews.”
Then commission members asked Sherrill to share his opinion of the manner in which the commission had disposed of Harrison. Sherrill responded to the invitation:“I do not support the decision of the administrative commission. I believe you failed the church, the presbytery and the Gospel.”
“Then your call is dissolved,” responded a spokesperson for the commission.
The Rev. Karen Harrison, Crossroads’ parish associate was also stripped of her position without any evaluation of her work, simply because she happens to be married to Timothy Harrison.
Throughout the ordeal, no formal charges were filed against the Crossroads trio, no opportunities to face accusers, no chance to offer a rebuttal or cross examine witnesses, no presentation of evidence, no due process. Milwaukee’s administrative commission simply barreled into Crossroads, declared itself to be prosecutor, jury and judge, and left the rule of law in shambles.
Reading the skid marks
What in the world happened at Crossroads that caused such damage? What did Timothy Harrison do to invite this collision? Tracing the skid marks one finds that Harrison is an evangelical pastor serving in a territory claimed by more progressive Presbyterians.
Despite all its claims to “inclusiveness and diversity,” Milwaukee has no room for an evangelical congregation, and under Harrison’s influence, the vibrant and energetic Crossroads church was becoming exactly that. Here’s how the commission put it in a list of unproven charges against Harrison that it published without affording Harrison any opportunity to respond: “unilateral redefinition of Crossroads as a conservative evangelical church, which is contrary to repeated session and congregational statements in church documents which affirm Crossroads as part of a centrist reformed tradition.”
Ah, there’s the sin. And if being an evangelical Christian is a sin, then Harrison is the first to plead guilty. He accepts Jesus Christ as He is revealed in Scripture, and Harrison has preached that high octane Gospel without equivocation from Crossroads’ pulpit. Preferring a gospel diluted by cultural accommodation, a handful of Harrison’s members cloistered secretly with the presbytery’s Committee on Ministry (COM). That’s all the invitation Milwaukee needed to justify its Crossroads invasion.
COM labeled Crossroads a divided congregation, suffering such deep divisions that its session was unable to carry out its duties without presbytery’s assistance. Thus the session was ordered not to meet unless COM monitors and tutors were present. Then the COM proceeded to interview a selected group of congregational members who confirmed what the COM had apparently already concluded.
Harrison was excluded from the process, although the subject of the COM’s inquisition was Harrison’s leadership. When after weeks of selective data gathering the COM called a session meeting to discuss its “findings” about Harrison, Sherrill was barred from the meeting, despite the fact that the Book of Order names the associate minister as a permanent member of the session. When Sherrill called attention to this constitutional violation, the COM chair accused him of being “confused, arrogant, immature and inexperienced.”
Defensive driving
Believing that there was some legal recourse in the denomination’s Book of Disciplinethat might prevent the oncoming collision, Harrison filed a judicial complaint against Milwaukee Presbytery, naming the COM’s unconstitutional assaults. Along with the complaint, he requested and received from the Synod Permanent Judicial Commission a “stay of enforcement” designed to put the brakes on Milwaukee until the case could be adjudicated.
But Milwaukee found a loophole in the “stay.” That document ordered the presbytery not to proceed against Harrison and Crossroads via its COM. So presbytery leaders proceeded to create an Administrative Commission, empowering it to do what its COM, now barred by the “stay,” had been doing.
The Harrisons and Sherrill have filed a second complaint against Milwaukee Presbytery, citing among other “irregularities” the fact that the presbytery via its administrative commission violated the spirit, if not the letter, of synod’s stay of enforcement and ran roughshod over rules of discipline enshrined in theBook of Order.
The Crossroads trio and hundreds of parishioners who are distressed by these events will have their day in court, for the Synod Permanent Judicial Commission has combined both complaints, found them justifiable and ordered them for trial. But in the meantime, the Harrisons and Sherrill are out of their jobs and places of residence and barred from any conversation with Crossroads members, while a dazed and disparate congregation squirms under the commission’s thumb.
The commission has assigned William Johnstone to replace Harrison in the pulpit of Crossroads. Johnstone is the former minister of the area’s Covenant Network’s flagship church, Immanuel. That church’s current pastor, Deborah Block, is a leader in the Covenant Network and a member of the church serves on the AC responsible for the carnage at Crossroads.
However the court decides this case, a once healthy church is now broken, and its people will never be the same.
Parker T. Williamson is editor emeritus of the Presbyterian Layman. He earned the MDiv at Union Seminary, Richmond, VA and a Mphil in Christian Ethics at Yale. A minister of the Presbyterian Church (USA), This commentary appeared at The Layman and is used with their permission.
[Editor’s note: the original URL (link) referenced in this article is no longer valid, so the link has been removed.]