Conference sues its largest congregation

Key points:

• The Horizon Texas Conference has filed a civil lawsuit against Highland Park United Methodist Church.
• The suit follows changes the congregation’s church council made to its articles of incorporation and bylaws.
• The conference says the changes remove both the conference’s oversight and the wider input from the congregation.

The Horizon Texas Conference is suing Highland Park United Methodist Church — claiming the Dallas megachurch improperly moved to end oversight by the denomination and its own congregants.

The dispute deals with changes Highland Park’s church council made in 2022 to the congregation’s articles of incorporation and bylaws. Those changes affect the congregation’s governance and relationship with The United Methodist Church.

Since October 2025 — when conference leadership learned of the changes — the conference and church leaders have engaged in private discussions to try to resolve their differences.

When those discussions broke down, the conference filed the lawsuit Aug. 10 in state civil court in Dallas County, challenging the changes made to the church’s legal documents.

Ultimately, the conference said it is seeking to ensure that the governing documents are back to being consistent with the Book of Discipline, which contains the denomination’s rules for church administration.

“Our purpose is restoration — bringing the original governance structure back into alignment with the Book of Discipline so this church can move forward faithfully,” said Horizon Texas Conference Bishop Rubén Saenz Jr., who is also president of the denomination’s Council of Bishops.

United Methodist News has reached out to the church for comment.

Highland Park United Methodist Church, a 110-year-old congregation that began on the Southern Methodist University campus, has more than 15,000 members. It is the largest United Methodist congregation in the conference and the state of Texas.

Over the years, the church has counted some prominent people among its membership including former U.S. President George W. Bush and his wife, Laura. But the church, whose gothic building still stands next to SMU’s campus, also has identified itself as centrist — taking pride in bringing together in its pews people from across the political and theological spectrum.

As The United Methodist Church underwent a season of church disaffiliations after years of debate over LGBTQ inclusion, Highland Park United Methodist showed no indication of taking the temporary exit path available between 2019 and 2023.

To this day, the church identifies as Highland Park United Methodist Church on both its entrance sign and website. Earlier this year, Highland Park United Methodist also continued its tradition of hosting the graduation ceremony for SMU’s Perkins School of Theology, a United Methodist seminary.

Nevertheless, in 2022, the congregation’s church council quietly altered its legal documents to concentrate sole authority in the church council and pastor-parish relations committee on matters such as pastoral oversight, mission and ministry, and denominational affiliation.

Among other changes, the church council altered the corporation’s name to Highland Park Methodist Church and removed all references to The United Methodist Church, the conference and the Discipline from its governing documents.

The Horizon Texas Conference said these changes violate denominational policy as well as Highland Park United Methodist’s own original governing documents.

“This dispute is whether HP Corporation — an entity organized decades after HP Church was formed as a United Methodist Church — may, through its Church Council, sever the connectional relationship between HP Church, the Conference, and The United Methodist Church,” the lawsuit said.

The church council made the changes without the approval of a properly called charge conference, the lawsuit said.

The charge conference, established in the denomination’s constitution, serves as the connecting link between the local congregation and wider denomination. Under the Discipline, voting members at a charge conference include all appointed clergy, all members of the church council and any retired clergy and diaconal ministers who hold membership in both the congregation and broader annual conference.

The Discipline requires churches to hold charge conferences at least once a year. Crucially, the meetings must be presided by the church’s district superintendent, an ordained elder appointed by the bishop to oversee local churches in a district. Under the Discipline, any changes to church governing documents also must receive the district superintendent’s approval.

Charge conferences have responsibility for, among other things, evaluating the overall mission and ministries of the church, adopting the church budget, reviewing annual membership records and electing various leaders including members of the church council and pastor-parish relations committee.

Under Highland Park United Methodist’s changes:

• The charge conference no longer chooses church council members, but the church council itself chooses its roster.
• Likewise, the church council also names the Pastoral Relations Committee members. The changed documents give the Pastoral Relations Committee sole authority in appointing, employing and supervising the church’s pastors with no oversight by the bishop.
• The church council alone determines the mission, ministry and pastoral messaging.
• The church council determines the church’s denominational affiliation and connections with other institutions — without consultation of the members, who no longer have a say in congregational affairs.

This is not how The United Methodist Church’s connectional system is supposed to work.

Under the Discipline, the pastor-parish or staff-parish relations committee serves as a liaison among the broader congregation, clergy and staff. United Methodist bishops make clergy appointments through a consultative process involving district superintendents, the clergy and appropriate pastor-parish or staff-parish relations committee. While consultation is typically part of the process, the bishop ultimately makes pastoral appointments.

Highland Park United Methodist Church has recently undergone a significant pastoral transition. In a video late last year, the Rev. Paul Rasmussen — who was then senior minister — announced he was stepping down because his worsening Parkinson’s disease meant he no longer had the energy the position requires. He is now pastor emeritus. His successor is the Rev. Matt Tuggle — who had spent much of his career at Highland Park. In the video, Rasmussen thanked Bishop Saenz for vetting Tuggle’s appointment.

The conference said its concern is not that a local church has articles of incorporation or bylaws but that the local corporate documents assign sole authority to local church bodies in areas governed by the Book of Discipline.

“As your bishop, I have a moral responsibility to the Highland Park congregation and the wider United Methodist Church to uphold the order of The United Methodist Church and to protect the sacred trust that generations of United Methodists have entrusted to this congregation,” Saenz said in a video statement.

Going back to the 18^th century, the Book of Discipline has included a trust clause, which states that church property is held in trust for the benefit of the entire denomination. Methodism’s founder, John Wesley, introduced the first trust clause, and U.S. civil courts have repeatedly recognized it when dealing with church property disputes.

A temporary disaffiliation policy allowed churches a limited release from the trust clause if they met certain conditions including two-thirds majority support from the congregation. But that policy has since expired, and the 2024 General Conference took the step of removing it from the Discipline entirely.

That year’s General Conference also removed longtime, denomination-wide bans on same-sex marriage and the ordination of openly gay clergy. But those changes did not appear to affect the church much.

In a video immediately after the lawmaking assembly, Rasmussen explained the changes and announced that he was exercising his right under the Discipline not to hold same-sex weddings at the church. However, he added other pastors on staff could choose to officiate at same-sex weddings at other venues. He also celebrated the elimination of a 52-year-old statement in the Discipline calling “the practice of homosexuality… incompatible with Christian teaching.”

The church, along with SMU, is located on land donated by a predecessor denomination of what is now The United Methodist Church. The university earlier this year resolved a separate legal dispute with The United Methodist Church’s South Central Jurisdiction in a way that maintains its strong ties with the denomination.

“The conference’s position is not that Highland Park must surrender its identity, traditions or distinctive approach to ministry,” Saenz said. “The conference's concern is limited to the church's governing documents and decisions that were made about the congregation's governance and denominational standing without transparency and without following the process required of every United Methodist church.”

Hahn is assistant news editor for UM News. Contact her at (615) 742-5470 or newsdesk@umnews.org.To read more United Methodist news, subscribe to the free Daily or Friday Digests.