Denominations

Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)

On the sources. The denomination publishes its constitution in full, along with a legal resource manual and advisory opinions written for congregations facing exactly the questions this site asks — unusually good primary material. Two limits should be stated. First, only a small number of its provisions were actually read for this profile; the Book of Order is published as a large PDF that did not render for direct reading, so several claims rest on the denomination's own advisory and guidance documents quoting the constitution rather than on the constitutional text itself, and the fields that could not be sourced that way are left open. Second, the best-organised accounts of how departure actually worked come from law firms that represented departing congregations and from the denomination's internal critics; they are cited here for the mechanics of dismissal and marked as the interested sources they are, never for a judgment about the trust clause.

Identity

Founded

Formed in 1983 by the reunion of the United Presbyterian Church in the United States of America and the Presbyterian Church in the United States, healing a division that ran back to the Civil War. Its constitution is in two parts, the Book of Confessions and the Book of Order, the latter revised each biennium by the General Assembly with the concurrence of the presbyteries; the edition current at the time of writing runs 2025–2027.

Headquarters

Louisville, Kentucky, where the Office of the General Assembly and the denomination's agencies are based. Government runs through councils — session, presbytery, synod, General Assembly — rather than from that office.

What it calls itself

Calls itself a connectional church governed by councils of elders. The connectionalism is expressed in property as well as in government: what a congregation holds, it holds for the whole church. Read alongside the Presbyterian Church in America, this body shows how little a shared tradition settles. The two use the same offices, the same courts and much of the same language, and take opposite positions on who owns the building.

  • governing document Book of Order (PC(USA)) 2025/2027, G-4.0203, Church Property Held in Trust

Congregations

8,304 congregations at the end of 2025, a loss of 128 during that year. Congregational closures have continued even as the rate of membership loss has eased.

Adherents or attendance

1,019,003 members at the end of 2025, down by more than 26,000 over the year — a decline of about 2.6%, described in the denomination's reporting as the slowest in a decade against a ten-year average nearer 4.6%. Membership stood above 2.5 million in 2000. Sixty per cent of members are over 55, and 35% are 71 or older.

Property

Who holds title

The congregation, held in trust for the denomination

The congregation holds title; the denomination holds the benefit. The Book of Order provides that all property held by a congregation — "whether legal title is lodged in a corporation, a trustee or trustees, or an unincorporated association, and whether the property is used in programs of a congregation or of a higher council or retained for the production of income, is held in trust nevertheless for the use and benefit of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)." The drafting is deliberately exhaustive on the two points where a claim might otherwise fail: the form in which title is held, and the use to which the property is put. A congregation cannot escape the trust by incorporating differently, and an investment property is caught as surely as a sanctuary.

  • governing document Book of Order (PC(USA)) 2025/2027, G-4.0203, Church Property Held in Trust
  • governing document Book of Order (PC(USA)) 2025/2027, G-4.0208, Exceptions

The instrument

The trust is asserted by the constitution itself rather than created congregation by congregation — the same technique the United Methodist Church uses, and open to the same difficulty: its force in a given case depends on how a particular state's courts treat a denominational trust provision, and American courts have not been uniform. Three neighbouring provisions give it practical teeth. Under G-4.0206 a congregation may not sell, mortgage or otherwise encumber its real property, or acquire property subject to an encumbrance, without the written permission of the presbytery, and may not lease property used for worship — or lease any other property for more than five years — without the same permission. Under G-4.0204, whenever property ceases to be used by a congregation of this denomination in accordance with the Constitution, it is to be "held, used, applied, transferred, or sold as provided by the presbytery." Under G-4.0205 the property of a dissolved or extinct congregation is applied as the presbytery directs. There is, however, a class of congregations the trust does not reach. G-4.0208 excuses any congregation that was not subject to a similar provision before the 1983 reunion, provided it voted within eight years of the reunion to be exempt and notified its presbytery; such a congregation holds title under the constitution that governed it beforehand. The paragraph ends with a sentence that is unusual in any constitution: "This paragraph may not be amended." So the answer to who owns a PC(USA) building has an exception class, fixed permanently in 1991, that no later assembly can close.

When a congregation closes

The presbytery directs. When a congregation is formally dissolved by the presbytery, or has become extinct through the dispersal of its members, the abandonment of its work or any other cause, its property "shall be held, used, and applied for such uses, purposes, and trusts as the presbytery may direct, limit, and appoint," or sold or disposed of as the presbytery directs, in conformity with the Constitution.

  • governing document Book of Order (PC(USA)) 2025/2027, G-4.0205, Property of a Dissolved or Extinct Congregation

When a congregation departs

There is no constitutional route by which a congregation departs with its property as of right. What developed instead, during the years of substantial departures to bodies such as ECO and the Evangelical Presbyterian Church, was dismissal at the discretion of the presbytery: the General Assembly asked presbyteries to provide a path for congregations whose mission would be better served in another Reformed body, and presbyteries adopted their own policies. Terms were negotiated case by case, dismissal had to be to another Reformed body, and a presbytery acting on a request was still obliged to weigh the denomination's interest as beneficiary under the trust. The practical consequence is that outcomes varied by presbytery rather than by rule. Congregations in the same denomination, in the same years, on the same theological grounds, left on materially different terms — a fact about the structure rather than about any of the congregations. Two constitutional provisions frame all of it. A congregation's relationship to the denomination "can be severed only by constitutional action on the part of the presbytery" — the congregation cannot sever it by its own vote. And where a congregation divides and the presbytery cannot reconcile it or split it into two continuing congregations, G-4.0207 directs the presbytery to determine which faction is entitled to the property as "the true church," adding the sentence that decides most such cases: "This determination does not depend upon which faction received the majority vote within the congregation at the time of the schism." A majority of a congregation may vote to leave and be held, constitutionally, not to be the church.

Money

Where the money goes Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.): Per capita, assessed by formula. The congregation Per capita Assessed by formula
Generated from this profile's own data rather than drawn by hand, so it cannot drift from the text. Rates are abbreviated here; the full terms and their qualifications are below.

Per capita

Assessed by formula

Each council above the session prepares a budget for its operating expenses, including administrative personnel, and "may fund it with a per capita apportionment among the particular congregations within its bounds." Presbyteries raise their own funds and are responsible for transmitting per capita to their synods and the General Assembly. The charge is per member rather than a percentage of income, which distinguishes it from every other assessed body on this site. The constitution draws one line explicitly: presbyteries may direct per capita apportionments to sessions, "but in no case shall the authority of the session to direct its benevolences be compromised." Operating support may be apportioned; a congregation's mission giving remains its own to direct.

  • governing document Book of Order (PC(USA)) 2025/2027, G-3.0106, on per capita apportionment

What happens if it is not paid

The constitution frames participation as a matter of unity rather than of debt: "The failure of any part of the church to participate in the stewardship of the mission of the whole church diminishes that unity and interdependence." No collection remedy against a non-paying congregation was located in the provisions read, and per capita is widely reported to go unpaid in part without a congregation losing standing — though that practice was not researched here and is not asserted.

  • governing document Book of Order (PC(USA)) 2025/2027, G-3.0106

Money that flows down

Not established.Whether presbyteries or the denomination subsidise congregations unable to support a pastor was not established for this profile.

Who sets the pastor's pay

Negotiated between congregation and pastor

Compensation is fixed in the terms of call, which the congregation adopts and the presbytery's committee on ministry approves. The congregation therefore proposes and a council disposes — a structure that gives the presbytery a direct interest in what its ministers are paid, and a means of enforcing minimums where it sets them.

Who pays the pastor

The local congregation

The congregation pays, and pays substantially more than the salary alone. Because benefits dues are calculated on effective salary and charged to the employing church, the true cost of an installed pastor to a PC(USA) congregation is a materially larger figure than the cash compensation — see pensions below.

Minimum standards

Not established.Presbyteries approve terms of call and are widely understood to set minimum compensation standards for their bounds, but no denomination-wide provision was read for this profile and no presbytery's schedule was examined.

Pension and benefits

Participation is required, not offered. Employers must enrol every minister serving in an installed position in the Board of Pensions' Pastor's Participation, and dues are charged as a percentage of the pastor's effective salary and paid by the congregation. The benefit structure was restructured for 2025 and the applicable percentages have changed over time, so no single current figure is given here; the material point is structural. This is the strongest form of benefits obligation on the site — stronger than the United Methodist arrangement in that it is a condition of the installed relationship itself, and the opposite of the wholly voluntary provision in the Presbyterian Church in America.

Clergy

Who credentials clergy

A regional body

Ministers of the Word and Sacrament are members of a presbytery rather than of the congregations they serve, and the presbytery examines, ordains and holds their standing. Unlike the Presbyterian Church in America, this body ordains women as well as men to the office.

How a pastor is placed

Both — call within a supervised process

A congregation elects a pastor nominating committee, which searches; the terms of call go to the presbytery's committee on ministry for approval; the congregation votes; and the presbytery receives and installs. Neither party can complete the process alone. The pattern matches the Presbyterian Church in America closely, which is what makes the pair instructive — the two bodies place pastors by nearly the same mechanism and treat the building by opposite rules, so the difference between them cannot be attributed to polity in general.

Employer of record

The local congregation

The congregation employs and pays, and it also chooses — so, as in the Presbyterian Church in America, this is not the United Methodist split. But the relationship is constituted by the presbytery and dissolved by it: the Book of Order treats dissolution of a pastoral relationship as a matter for the council, not for the congregation acting alone. The employer is local; the power to make and unmake the relationship is shared, and the benefits obligation attached to it is denominational.

Removal

A congregation cannot dismiss its pastor by its own act. The pastoral relationship is dissolved through the presbytery under the Book of Order's provisions on dissolution, and recent revisions direct presbyteries to establish terms for dissolution when an installed relationship ends. Removal from ministry itself lies with the presbytery, which holds the credentials.

Security of tenure

Not established.No provision equivalent to United Methodist guaranteed appointment was located, and the treatment of a minister without a call was not researched. Presbytery membership preserves standing, but whether anything secures employment was not established.

Governance

The legislative body

A General Assembly meeting biennially, above synods, presbyteries and congregational sessions. Constitutional change requires the General Assembly to act and a majority of presbyteries to concur, so the Book of Order cannot be altered by a single assembly — the same double lock the Presbyterian Church in America uses. Councils are composed of ruling and teaching elders together.

Who oversees the congregation

A council of elders, not a person

A council, not a person. This body has no bishops: oversight of a congregation and its pastor rests with the presbytery, a body composed of ruling and teaching elders together, and above it synod and General Assembly. What an episcopal body vests in an individual — approving the pastoral relationship, dissolving it, holding clergy standing, consenting to property transactions — is here vested in an assembly that meets, debates and votes. The practical differences are worth naming. A council has no tenure to protect and cannot be succeeded; its composition turns over as congregations elect commissioners; and its decisions are made in public session and are reviewable by a higher council rather than by appeal to a person. It is also slower, and the variation between presbyteries that shaped the departures of the last decade is a direct consequence of oversight being local and plural rather than personal and singular.

  • governing document Book of Order (PC(USA)) 2025/2027, G-4.0206 and G-4.0207 — presbytery permission for property transactions; severance only by constitutional action of the presbytery
  • governing document Book of Order (PC(USA)) 2025/2027, G-3.0106, councils above the session

Who may plant or close a church

Not established.The provisions governing the organisation and dissolution of congregations were not read for this profile. Presbytery authority is the structural expectation given its role elsewhere, but the sections were not checked.

Who owns the name

Not established.Not established. As with the Presbyterian Church in America, the question is complicated by the number of separate American bodies using "Presbyterian" in congregational names, and no evidence was located either way about denominational control of the name.

Discipline

Not established.The Rules of Discipline in the Book of Order were not read for this profile. The denomination operates a judicial process through permanent judicial commissions of its councils, but its procedure, standards and appeal routes were not examined and are not described here.

Joining and leaving

How a congregation joins

Not established.The route by which an existing independent congregation is received into a presbytery was not established for this profile.

How a congregation leaves

Disputed in practice

The constitution provides no departure route, and the trust clause means the building is at stake in any attempt — so what actually happened, across a decade of substantial departures, was negotiation under the shadow of litigation. Presbyteries adopted gracious dismissal policies at the General Assembly's request; congregations entered discernment; terms were settled case by case; and some disputes reached the civil courts, where outcomes turned on how a given state treats denominational trust provisions. "Contested" is the honest value here, and it is worth distinguishing from the United Methodist "no provision." Both constitutions lack a right of departure. The difference is that the United Methodist Church opened a temporary, uniform, denomination-wide path with published terms and then closed it, while this body devolved the question to 170-odd presbyteries, each free to set its own terms — producing not one settlement but many.

What leaves with them

Whatever the presbytery agrees to release. Where dismissal was granted, congregations generally left with their property on negotiated terms, sometimes including a payment; where it was refused or contested, the trust was the denomination's ground for resisting. Ministers' credentials are held by the presbytery and do not travel with a departing congregation.

When the body removes a congregation

Not established.The provisions by which a presbytery may dissolve a congregation, as distinct from dismissing one at its own request, were not read for this profile.

Legal form

Corporate structure

Congregations incorporate under state law and hold their own title, subject to the constitutional trust; the denomination publishes a legal resource manual addressing incorporation and boards of trustees for that reason. As with the United Methodist Church, there is no corporate parent holding congregational property directly, which is precisely why the trust has to be asserted in the constitution and why its force varies with state law.

Tax status

Not established.Whether the denomination administers a group exemption ruling covering congregations, as the United Methodist finance agency does, was not established for this profile.

Liability

Not established.Not researched.

Further reading

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