A prominent Pennsylvania congregation was given approval this week by its governing body to leave the Presbyterian Church (USA) after a month's worth of negotiations.

First Presbyterian Church of Beaver, Pa., reached a settlement with the Beaver-Butler Presbytery on Tuesday, exchanging $133,700 for retention of its property and assets and permission to leave.

The congregation, which was the largest in the presbytery, voted unanimously on the decision in February, and announced it would be joining the smaller and more conservative Evangelical Presbyterian Church.

"We praise God for His blessings and guidance through this process, and ask Him to enable us to be even more faithful in ministry, service, and maturity as we move forward as part of the EPC," the church said on its website.

The exit of the Pennsylvania church furthers a twenty-five year decline in membership that has plagued PC(USA) since its formation in 1983.

A report released last month from the National Council of Churches (NCC) showed that among mainline Protestant churches, the PC(USA) had the steepest drop in membership between 2008 in 2009, with a loss of 3.28 percent of its congregants.

The loss follows an approval by the group's 2008 General Assembly of a proposal to delete from its Book of Order a requirement that bans the ordination of gay clergy.

While failing to receive the necessary number of votes to pass, the proposal is revealing of the PC(USA)'s liberal theological slant that has moved congregations like the one in Beaver to seek other denominational affiliations.

A survey released in January revealed that less than 40 percent of PC(USA) members affirm Christ as the only way to salvation.

In commenting on the survey, Chicago minister the Rev. Dirk Ficca said a majority of Presbyterians feel that "the God they know in Jesus" can save people outside of the Christian faith.

"I'm a Christian. And so I can't think about God or about the nature of salvation apart from Jesus of Nazareth," Ficca told the Associated Press. But "that God I know in Jesus, I find at work in people who aren't Christians."

"Some other traditions would say, 'No, God is only at work in us,"' said Ficca, who is also the executive director of the Council for a Parliament of the World's Religions, which convenes one of the largest interfaith gatherings in the world yearly. "And that is a big divide in the Christian community."

Last month, a megachurch in Danville, Calif. started a series of meetings to begin a process of "gracious dismissal" from PC(USA) citing a "creeping tolerance of theological pluralism" in the church.

"Biblical Authority is the primary issue," the church said. "Over the years, increasingly unique interpretations of Scripture has had a ripple affect and has called into question foundational Christian beliefs such as the Lordship of Christ, the place of Scripture in church discipline, Jesus Christ as the only means of salvation and Biblical teaching on marriage."

While shrinking, PC(USA), with its 2,140,165 million members, is still several times larger than other national Presbyterian groups, including the Presbyterian Church of America, whose 2008 reports showed 340,852 members, and the Evangelical Presbyterian Church who report a membership of 80,000 members.