The 198-year-old Williams Chapel Methodist Church in Brundidge has petitioned a Pike County judge to approve removing the word “United” from its property trust documents.
The congregation voted Oct. 6 to leave the United Methodist denomination, according to the court document.
Founded in 1826, it’s the oldest Methodist church in Pike County. Brundidge is southeast of Troy, and north of Enterprise.
While at least a dozen other congregations are suing the Alabama-West Florida Conference of the United Methodist Church asking courts to rule that they have sole ownership of church property, Williams Chapel simply asked the court to approve the name change on its ownership documents.
Most recently, on Nov. 5, Ham Chapel Methodist Church in Elba filed a lawsuit against the Alabama-West Florida Conference of the United Methodist Church in Coffee County Circuit Court.
It’s similar to nine other lawsuits filed by churches on Oct. 31 against the Alabama-West Florida Conference, asking judges in various counties to rule on whether the congregation or the conference owns the property.
Ham Chapel was among 44 churches that previously sued the conference as a group in an effort to force the conference to allow them to disaffiliate. The latest round of lawsuits by individual churches were filed on Oct. 31 in seven different counties.
In Mobile County, Theodore and Trinity churches sued. In Conecuh County, Baggett Chapel sued. In Clarke County, Coffeeville Church sued. In Coffee County, Elba Methodist Church sued. In Dale County, Pleasant Hill and Westview Heights churches sued. In Houston County, Highland Park Church of Dothan sued. In Lee County, Gold Hill Church sued.
They are making a similar argument, that the congregations own their own property, rather than the conference, which claims to hold it in trust.
The churches say property disputes are subject to civil court jurisdiction.
In their previous group lawsuit, they had asked Montgomery Circuit Court to force the conference to allow them to disaffiliate. The court ruled that was a church matter to be decided by the denominational court.
The United Methodist Judicial Court ruled last month that after the expiration of a special disaffiliation rule at the end of 2023, that no other church policy allows the churches to disaffiliate.
The denomination’s Book of Discipline had a temporary disaffiliation clause that ended Dec. 31, 2023, that had allowed churches to negotiate for their property and leave the denomination. After that expired, some churches that still wanted to leave argued for using another provision, Paragraph 2549, as a route to disaffiliation by closing a church, then selling it to the congregation that voted to leave.
“Within our structure, the conference board of trustees plays a pivotal role as they work in tandem with the bishop and cabinet to safeguard the interest and rights of the annual conference in all matters relating to property,” said a statement released by the conference after that ruling.
Ham Chapel this week and the nine churches who filed lawsuits Oct. 31 are in addition to four that had previously sued.
Harvest Church in Dothan, not a part of the group lawsuit, was the first to sue individually in Houston County, arguing that it could prove its historic ownership had never been signed over in a trust clause. While other churches negotiated payments to the conference, Harvest argued it owed no money to keep its own property. The state Supreme Court sent that case back to a lower court for a ruling, denying the conference’s request that the lawsuit be dismissed. Lead Pastor Ralph Sigler said he expects it to go to trial in spring 2025.
Selma Methodist Church, founded in 1835, is the most recent of the group of 44 churches to file its own lawsuit, saying it never signed a trust clause giving the denomination authority over its property and asking a Dallas County judge to declare that the congregation’s trustees had the only legal claim to the property.
The First Methodist Church of Demopolis, founded in 1847, sued in August saying it has owned its own property throughout its history and has never signed a trust clause giving ownership to the denomination. The 177-year-old Demopolis church, one of the 44 plaintiffs in the group case, filed its new solo lawsuit on Aug. 16 in Marengo County.
Guy’s Chapel, a 114-year-old church in Baldwin County, sued the conference in July saying it could prove its historic ownership of its property had never been relinquished by signing documents for the denomination to hold it in trust.
For years, conservative churches complained that the denomination’s rules banning same-sex weddings and ordination of LGBTQ clergy were not enforced. United Methodists elected their first openly LGBTQ bishop in 2016, Bishop Karen Oliveto. This year at the United Methodist General Conference, the denomination officially dropped the bans on same-sex weddings and LGBTQ clergy.
