In October 18, 2000 the Sunnyside Seventh-day Adventist Church in Portland, Oregon, voted to disfellow-ship Robert (Bob) Bretsch. The motion to disfellowship passed by one vote.

Bretsch had been senior pastor of Sunnyside from June,1992 to May, 1997. After leaving Sunnyside he became co-pastor of Bridge City Community Church. (Bridge City was an independent Sabbath-keeping congregation that had been established some months earlier by people who had left Sunnyside because of their concerns about the intentions of the Oregon Conference administration and the actions of Sunnyside members opposed to Bretsch.) In October, 1998, he left Bridge City. In February, 1999, with several others, Bretsch established Christian Growth Center where he is currently senior pastor.

According to Bretsch, about a year and a half ago he offered to resign his membership at Sunnyside to spare the church continued conflict. At that time some of the elders of the church asked him not to resign,  since Bretsch still considered himself to be a Seventh-day Adventist. Shortly afterwards most of these elders were replaced in a church election and under this new leadership the church voted to censure Bretsch.

According to church policy, a vote of censure must be for a specified time, at the end of which the case is to be reviewed. A subcommittee of the Sunnyside Church Board was asked to interview Bretsch and report back to the church. The committee’s report attempted to present the facts of Bretsch’s thinking and his relationship with Adventism; it did not make a recommendation for or against dis-fellowshiping. At a church business meeting in September of this year, after the committee’s report was received, a motion was made to reinstate him to regular membership. That motion failed. Then it was moved to disfellowship him. That motion carried by a vote of 34-33.

Participants in that meeting report that the pastor, Ivan Blake, did not wish to take such a serious action on the basis of such a slim majority, and it was decided to consider the matter again at a future meeting.

Bretsch was informed of this action. He reports that he again offered to resign his membership so that the present pastoral staff would not have to deal with him as an issue. Bretsch understood that it would be some time before the matter was considered again in a church business session.

A second meeting was called sooner than Bretsch expected. He happened to be out of town at the time, so repeated attempts by the Sunnyside staff to reach him failed. More people attended this second meeting than were present at the first meeting. Before a vote was taken on Bretsch’s membership, the group discussed what to do if the vote was again extremely close. The group voted unanimously to accept whatever was voted by whatever margin as the final vote on this matter. The vote was taken, and the church voted 55 to 54 to remove Bob Bretsch from membership. Sunnyside membership includes a number of retired church administrators, some of whom serve on the committees and boards that govern the congregation. By these men congregationalism is seen as a grave threat to the very existence of the worldwide Adventist church, and Bretsch was seen as at least an ally, if not an advocate, of congregationalism. There was another significant source of conflict, according to some observers: the disruption of the historic centers of power and control within the congregation. Under Bretsch’s leadership the congregation had attracted so many new members that simple numbers altered the power structures of the church, and Bretsch’s leadership style was not designed to sustain the influence of long-time lay leaders.

According to two participants in the process, the reason for the action against Bretsch was "divisiveness." This charge was rooted in his employment by Bridge City Community Church and his subsequent founding of Christian Growth Center. One participant said that since Bretsch felt called to serve in another church which was not an Adventist church and that he had no intention of attending Sunnyside, it just made sense to remove his name from the membership roles of Sunnyside Seventh-day Adventist Church. Those who opposed the action to disfellowship cited Bretsch’s undisputed effectiveness as a preacher, his agreement with the core doctrines of Adventism and his saving impact on young people and on their own spiritual life.