Exit strategies

Church Transitions | Conservative congregations face complicated issues as more and more decide to leave liberal denominations | Jamie Dean

Photos by Neil Cowley/Genesis Photos

On a stormy Sunday morning in Charlotte, N.C., latecomers were still shaking off wet umbrellas and streaming into a rented chapel at a local Catholic high school as Anglican minister Filmore Strunk led the congregation in reading Psalm 19: "The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether. More to be desired are they than gold, more than much fine gold."

For this congregation, those words ring especially true: Less than 15 months ago, the 300-member group was worshipping with more than 1,000 other parishioners in a 22,000-square-foot, gothic-style sanctuary on a prime piece of property in a growing suburb. Strunk had been pastor of St. Margaret's Episcopal Church for 12 years, and the congregation was growing. Also growing: Strunk's conviction that he couldn't stay in a denomination abandoning orthodox Christian faith.