Formerly Methodist church can keep its property, judge rules

Harvest Church in Dothan, Ala., can retain its building despite leaving the United Methodist Church denomination in 2022, a court decided Wednesday. Houston County Circuit Judge Chris Richardson concluded a four-year legal battle by ruling that the roughly $15 million property belonged to Harvest, according to a report from WTVY-TV.

Harvest Church left the UMC over the denomination’s gradual embrace of homosexuality, according to Harvest’s website. It sued UMC’s Alabama-West Florida Conference in 2022 to avoid paying money to leave or forfeiting its building. The denomination argued in court that Harvest, like all Methodist churches, was bound by a trust clause agreement on its building, according to the UMC Book of Discipline. But Harvest’s founding pastor, Ralph Sigler, argued that the denomination did not include the usual trust clause when Harvest bought land and built its worship center, local news outlet AL.com reported.

The case went all the way to the Alabama Supreme Court, which ruled in 2024 that the lawsuit was a property dispute rather than an internal church matter. However, the Supreme Court declined to rule on the ownership of the church building, instead sending the case back to Judge Richardson’s county court for final judgment. The Alabama-West Florida Conference of the UMC has been involved in dozens of property lawsuits with other congregations that have also opted to leave.

Dig deeper: Read my story for WORLD Magazine about congregations choosing to leave the UMC.