The largest church in the Pittsburgh Presbytery has called for a congregational meeting to vote on whether to leave the Presbyterian Church (USA).

Memorial Park Presbyterian Church in McCandless will vote June 3 on whether to secede from the 2.3 million-member denomination. Its intention is to affiliate with the conservative Evangelical Presbyterian Church.

"It's not a situation that we are going into joyfully. There is a grieving here for us, as well as for the presbytery," said the Rev. Dean Weaver, senior pastor of the 1,675-member congregation.

"But, at the same time, Scripture says we grieve, but not as those without hope."

Rev. Weaver also is co-moderator of the New Wineskins Association of Churches, a national movement of conservative congregations in the Presbyterian Church (USA), which designed the option for realignment with the 75,000-member Evangelical Presbyterian Church. Six of Pittsburgh Presbytery's 153 congregations belong to New Wineskins. Beverly Heights Presbyterian Church in Mt. Lebanon has already voted to leave.

The Rev. James Mead, pastor to Pittsburgh Presbytery, expressed disappointment that efforts to persuade Memorial Park to stay appear to have failed.

"The sorrow of considering losing Memorial Park . . . is the possibility of losing their commitment to our mission to reach [all] communities in Allegheny County with the whole of the gospel," he said.

Unlike some other conservative congregations, Memorial Park has never withheld its per capita assessment from the national church, he said. While its donations to presbytery mission work dropped, it was a key partner in past efforts, such as starting a new church on the Butler County line, he said.

The congregation's unhappiness with the national church is longstanding. In 1999 it became a so-called "Confessing Church," declaring faith in the authority of Scripture, the lordship of Jesus Christ and traditional Christian sexual ethics. In 2005 the congregation joined New Wineskins, an effort to organize like-minded churches in the denomination, and last year it called the national co-moderator of New Wineskins as senior pastor.

"This is a congregation that has been dealing with these issues for years, long before I ever came on the scene," Rev. Weaver said. "This congregation is concerned about the shift of the denomination away from biblical standards."

He believes that reports endorsed at last year's General Assembly weakened the church's commitment to the doctrine of the Trinity and paved the way for local option on gay ordination.

"Our principal concern is the loss of a high view of who Jesus is and a high view of Scripture," he said.

Pittsburgh Presbytery is one of the more conservative Presbyteries in the denomination.

"Memorial Park's issue isn't with Pittsburgh Presbytery," he said. "It's with the denomination. We continue to have a good relationship with the presbytery. I think very highly of Jim Mead.".

The leaders chose to act now because the congregation seemed ready and the vote must be taken before people start leaving for the summer, he said. In order to meet certain standards that could allow the congregation to keep its building without a court fight, Pittsburgh Presbytery requires 70 percent of active members to vote on June 3, and 75 percent of those attending to favor leaving.

"There was a sense [among the lay leaders] that the congregation was saying that we have enough information, we are ready to make our decision," Rev. Weaver said.

He called it an "odd time" for conservative churches to leave since during the past decade evangelicals have increasingly come into leadership, and now occupy several key posts at national headquarters. Rev. Mead, who is an evangelical, estimates that 600,000 to 850,000 of the national membership are evangelicals.

"It's not to say that the evangelicals are winning, but that the leadership of the denomination is beginning to look like the membership of the denomination," he said.

The presbytery requires that its representatives be allowed to speak to the congregation to present the case to stay. That will happen later this month when the Rev. Andrew Purves, professor of pastoral theology at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary and a respected standard-bearer for theological conservatives in the Presbyterian Church (USA), speaks to a special meeting, Rev. Mead said.