New City (an Evangelical Presbyterian Church) is pastored by Tullian Tchividjian, and Coral Ridge (Presbyterian Church in America) was pastored for 33 years by its founding pastor, D. James Kennedy, until his death in 2007. If the merger goes forward, Tullian--whose grandfather Billy Graham preached the dedication sermon at Coral Ridge in 1974--would be the senior pastor. For more info, see the Sun-Sentinel Times story (which was updated this afternoon).
Today the board of elders at New City released a formal statement on Coral Ridge's invitation for Tchividjian to become their pastor:
As was announced January 18, 2009, at both New City Church and Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church, Coral Ridge has issued a call to our senior pastor Tullian Tchividjian to become senior pastor at Coral Ridge. But because of Pastor Tullian's unwavering commitment to remain as Pastor here at New City, both churches have agreed to consider a merger. In response to Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church's call of Tullian, the elder board of New City Church at a called meeting on January 13, 2009, carried a motion to begin the process of evaluating the possibility of making the two church's one. The elder board of New City Church unanimously agrees that the intricacies of putting this merger together are going to require a time of due diligence where representatives from both sides will sit down and work out the terms of a merger for approval by both sessions. Legal matters, financial matters, ministerial matters, structural matters, and philosophical matters, will be among the list of things needing to be discussed and hammered out. Only if agreeable terms on all of these fronts can be reached and those terms approved by both church sessions would Tullian formally accept the call and the two become one.
