To close observers of The United Methodist Church, the current legal wranglings over Highland Park United Methodist Church in Dallas might sound familiar. A similar story played out four years ago in Arkansas, in what was then the second-largest UMC…
In Dallas, Methodist bishop creates a church in exile
This article was updated Thursday evening to include a response from two church lay leaders. The drama around one of the most contentious Methodist church fights in modern history took yet another turn Oct. 29 as the bishop of…
Current and past senior ministers urge HPUMC to vote for disaffiliation
The current senior minister of Highland Park United Methodist Church and his two immediate predecessors have sent a message to congregants about why they should vote to leave The United Methodist Church. And the three senior ministers directly counter the…
Here’s what a Baptist sees in the HPUMC legal dispute
Here’s how this looks to a Baptist outsider with more than average knowledge of The United Methodist Church: The denomination’s second-largest church intentionally changed its governing documents to allow the possibility of withdrawing from the UMC. And once the denomination…
Does Methodist connectionalism serve large and small churches equally?
The battle between Highland Park United Methodist Church in Dallas and its regional governing body in The United Methodist Church may boil down to whether large and small churches in the denomination can continue to operate by the same governing…
Lawsuit asks, ‘What does it take to be a good United Methodist church?’
Leaders of Highland Park Methodist Church have spent the last week expressing shock that the bishop of their United Methodist conference filed suit against them over changes made to their governing documents four years ago but only recently made public….