New York ELCA Synod Sues Immanuel Lutheran Pastor Over Apartment Sale

The Metropolitan New York Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America has sued a pastor over the sale of an apartment he has lived in for 30 years. The synod contends that, although the pastor’s name is on the title, the apartment belongs to the church and is therefore subject to state religious property laws.

Gregory Fryer has been pastor of Immanuel Lutheran Church in New York City since 1991. He recently sold the three-bedroom apartment, on the seventh floor of a building on East 82nd Street, for $2 million to a couple listed in the lawsuit as John and Jane Doe. The synod has asked the court to stop Fryer from transferring the title to the unnamed buyers. It calls Immanuel Lutheran the apartment’s “real and beneficial owner.”

Immanuel Lutheran is also named as a defendant, along with the building’s co-op board and the real estate firms named in the filing as Douglas Elliman and Brown Harris Stevens.

According to the synod’s position, if the church owns the property, the sale would fall under New York laws that require religious corporations seeking to sell, mortgage, or lease property for a term longer than five years to first obtain approval from the New York Attorney General or the State Supreme Court.

The complaint says the long-standing arrangement under which Fryer’s name is on the title violates “the Religious Corporations Law, the Not-for-Profit Corporation Law and the discipline, rules and usages of plaintiff, the ecclesiastical governing body.” It further states that the terms of the sale “are not fair and reasonable” to the church and its members, a matter of truthful dealing in a church’s property (Ephesians 4:15).

The suit also alleges that Fryer and Immanuel “have ignored and continue to act in defiance of the Religious Corporations and Not-for-Profit Corporation Laws, their own Constitution, their covenants with the Church and the Synod and their covenant with their members.”

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