One group leaving Grace church, one moving in -- but when?

A Fourth Judicial District Court judge ruled Tuesday that a towering stone church on North Tejon Street belongs to the Episcopal Church and not to a congregation that split from the church in 2007 but continued to worship on the property.

Judge Larry Schwartz also ruled that the breakaway church, Grace Church & St. Stephen's, will lose its name, its Web site domain and its rectory on Electra Drive, which serves as the home of its leader, the Rev. Donald Armstrong.

But the legal wrangling isn't over.

Both sides will be back in Judge Larry Schwartz's courtroom today to argue when Grace Church & St. Stephen's should be off the premises.

Gregory Walta, attorney for Grace Church & St. Stephen's, filed a motion Tuesday asking that the church be given until at least April 7, plus additional days, if needed, to get off the property. Martin Nussbaum, attorney for the diocese, wants the church out by April 1, a date that Schwartz initially OK'd.

Nussbaum also is asking that the congregation exiled from the $17-million Tejon Street property, Grace and St. Stephen's Episcopal, be allowed to hire a security team to patrol the property to avoid theft.

"We don't want a wholesale looting of the building," said Lynn L. Olney, senior warden of Grace Episcopal.

Walta said Tuesday he plans to appeal Schwartz's decision. Among his complaints are that the property trial, which ended March 11, should have been decided by a jury, not a judge, and that the judge made "a number of errors of law" in making his decision.

The fight over ownership of the property goes back to March 26, 2007 - almost two years to the day of Schwartz's ruling - when Armstrong and other vestry members broke from the Episcopal Church, saying its theological base had become too liberal, manifested, in part, by the consecration of a gay bishop in 2003. The group aligned with the conservative Convocation of Anglicans in North America, or CANA.

A few months later, parishioners of the CANA congregation voted to support their vestry's decision to leave the Episcopal Church. Of the 370 votes cast, 342 voted to align with CANA. The group also voted 348 to 22 to retain the real and personal property of Grace Church.

But hundreds of congregants, many of whom now attend Grace and St. Stephen's Episcopal each week at another downtown location, did not take part in the vote.

In April 2007, the CANA church filed suit to determine ownership of the property after claiming the diocese tried to freeze parish bank accounts and trust funds. This set the stage for the property trial, which began Feb. 10 and would become the longest church trial in Colorado history.

During the trial, Grace Church & St. Stephen's argued that in 1973 it became a separate corporation, operating outside the auspices of the diocese, and therefore had legal rights to the building. The diocese argued that Grace Church has always been an Episcopal parish, and as such did not have legal title to the property.

Schwartz's ruling upheld the Episcopal church's argument.

 "The Diocese over most of its 35 years existence demonstrates a unity of purpose on the part of the parish and general church," Schwartz wrote. "The trust created through past generations of members of Grace Church & St. Stephen's prohibits the departing parish members from taking the property with them."

Armstrong had mixed emotions about the order. On the one hand, he said, leadership at Grace church is already working to establish its parish at another location and committed to cooperating with the Episcopal group during the transition.

"It's been a privilege but also a financial burden to maintain the church property," said Armstrong, who will have to move out of the Skyway-area rectory, which had a market value of $567, 841  in 2008. "I am committed to having them back in the building."

On the other hand, he confirmed that the ruling would be appealed and lamented what he called "the amount of perjury" by Nussbaum's witnesses during the trial.

About a dozen members of both parishes gathered Tuesday outside Grace Church & St. Stephen's hours after the order was made. Among them was Karl H. Weiskopf of Grace Church & St. Stephen's, which has about 1,200 members.

"If God has other places for us, so be it," he said.

The Rev. Alan R. Crippen II of Grace Church was also conciliatory. "We lost; we need a new home," Crippen said. "It is liberating. It isn't all bad."

While most of the Episcopalians gathered were giddy over the ruling, some were more circumspect.

"I think we should not have split," said Jana Moyers, one of about 500 members of the exiled Episcopal congregation. "We need to ask ourselves what we learned from this. It's not about who was right and who was wrong."

Other issues surrounding the bitter divorce between the congregations remain unresolved, including a criminal investigation of Armstrong.

Before the split, the Episcopal Diocese of Colorado's ecclesiastical court convicted Armstrong of financial misconduct - a move that has no teeth outside the denomination. The court also concluded that Armstrong committed tax fraud by underreporting his income and causing the church to issue false W-2s.

Colorado Springs police got involved in 2007, and last November, raided the church to seize records and computers as part of its theft investigation.

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TIMELINE: Grace Church