The Numbers War: Highland Park vs. the Bishop

It wasn't enough for the 2025 data to come out. That would have normally been the biggest thing to talk about in Methodism. However, there has somehow been bigger news sucking the oxygen out of the United Methodist denomination.

On October 25 and 26, 2026, the members of Highland Park United Methodist Church in Dallas voted on one question: "Shall Highland Park Methodist Church, doing business as Highland Park United Methodist Church, sever all of its ties, affiliations, and connections to The United Methodist Church?"

Of the 4,775 votes cast, 90.35% voted to leave.

On October 29, Bishop Ruben Saenz Jr. issued an "ecclesiastical determination" that "Highland Park United Methodist Church remains a congregation of The United Methodist Church."

I did talk briefly about Highland Park in my article on the 2025 statistics. And since you all seem very interested in the numbers, I figure you may want some more specifics on this battle between two juggernauts.

The Dispute

Because of the unusual size of the fight, both sides have made their case in public, which is more than we usually get from a church fight. Highland Park posted letters and an FAQ in August and held a town hall on October 11. The Conference answered with a page of its own and an hour-and-a-half webinar on October 24.

Something that has some confused is that from 2019 to 2023, more than 7,600 churches left the UMC. For reasons beyond me, and not well explained, Highland Park stayed. This is odd because their actions towards the trust clause are typical of churches that want out.

On November 16, 2022, with Paragraph 2553 still open, Highland Park's Church Council rewrote the church's corporate documents. The church became Highland Park Methodist Church, "doing business as" Highland Park United Methodist Church, and every reference to the UMC, the Book of Discipline and the Conference came out. The Council could do that without a congregational vote because a charge conference handed it the power to amend the bylaws way back in 1998.

These decisions are the kind I would expect to see in Eastern Pennsylvania or other places where denominational leaders were vindictive or manipulative towards disaffiliation. Texas was anything but, from what I've heard. Highland Park did something that is quite surprising and atypical of disaffiliating churches. It seems as though it telegraphed its actions well in advance.

For example, on January 3, 2023, the church emailed new articles to the Conference, and GCFA, the denomination's own finance agency, wrote back that Highland Park was still under the UMC's tax umbrella. That kind of disclosure is very uncommon for a church that wants out. And, confirming what United Methodists have suspected for decades, nothing happened for almost three years, almost as if the Conference filed the paperwork and never looked at it once.

The Conference raised its first concern in October 2025. Its position is that it saw the new articles in 2023 but never laid eyes on the new bylaws until it asked for them that October. If you're wondering how a Conference receives a church's articles of incorporation with every mention of the United Methodist Church taken out and doesn't say a word for nearly three years, so am I.

Paragraph 2529.1c of the Discipline says the pastor and the district superintendent have to approve, in writing, any change to a church's articles or bylaws. Neither one did. Highland Park's position is that it followed its own 1998 and 1999 documents to the letter, along with a 2020 Texas Supreme Court ruling that courts "would not accept religious terms or doctrinal rules embedded in corporate documents." This is a typical argument under the First Amendment, and Texas courts settle church disputes by the deeds and corporate documents. In that 2020 case, the approach went against the Episcopal Church.

This gets hairy, because in places where the denomination and civil authorities are at odds, in places where it doesn't concern doctrine or theology, the Book of Discipline cedes to the secular courts. So, Highland Park was probably perfectly in its rights by Texas state law, and probably not in terms of the Book of Discipline.

The Conference says lawyers for both sides drafted new documents in November 2025 and "reached areas of agreement" before a December meeting, and that the Church Council "summarily rejected" them. Highland Park remembers it differently. At the town hall, the 2024-2025 Council chair said the bishop wanted new bylaws voted on the very next night, and "there were never any issues brought up about how we could compromise." In other words, Highland Park says that Ruben Saenz Jr.'s version of compromise was actually closer to, "Do what we say; now."

It appears Highland Park said 'no,' because on August 10, 2026, the Conference sued (Dallas County case DC-26-14816, 193rd District Court).

The Conference's second amended petition, filed October 15, asks a Dallas County court to throw out the 2022 documents and adds a breach of contract claim. It also asks for damages "in the alternative," which means that if the court won't restore the documents, the Conference wants money instead, which is an amazing 'blink.' Documents filed with alternatives like that seem to say the Conference knows it will be fighting uphill in the long run, or, it knows that Highland Park has the war chest necessary to match the Conference blow-for-blow in a court battle.

The trial is set for October 12, 2027, almost a year away.

And it has gotten personal. At Highland Park's town hall, Church Council member Greg Swalwell said of the bishop, "I really don't trust him" (UM News covered it here). Mark Freeman, who chairs the Pastoral Relations Committee, said the bishop told Highland Park's clergy their health care and retirement benefits were at risk.

Bishop Saenz answered that he does not intend to let pastors lose what they earned because of governance decisions they did not make. In the webinar, he also said the lawsuit "has nothing to do with the assets of Highland Park" (UM News on the webinar and the vote).

For the sake of disclosure, I do not trust Bishop Saenz. In the webinar, Bishop Saenz said, "I cannot simply look the other way while a United Methodist church operates outside of it." That rings more than a little hollow, given that he said relatively little when the entire Western Jurisdiction operated outside the denomination.

The Bishop's Words

On August 11, the day after the Conference sued, Bishop Saenz called every clergy member appointed to Highland Park to a meeting. The clergy sat around a table, and Saenz asked them to turn off their phones. Some of the clergy didn't, and recorded the meeting.

At the town hall, Highland Park's lawyer put the bishop's words on the screen. Keep in mind these are Highland Park's slides, picked by Highland Park's lawyer, but they're the bishop's words, and you can read the whole thing yourself.

Saenz compared Highland Park to a husband who goes to a lawyer behind his wife's back. Saenz told the clergy, "I've already created my parachute just to jump out of this arrangement and I've protected all my assets. That's essentially... what Highland Park has done." There are verses that talk about spiritual unfaithfulness and adultery that come to mind, but normally, I would apply those to the denomination. It's rather ironic hearing it come from Bishops.

Saenz also told the clergy that he had already counted the cost of suing Highland Park: "I've already weighed all of the costs... as one given the responsibility to oversee and protect the assets of the United Methodist Church." Two months later, in the webinar, Saenz said the lawsuit had "nothing to do with the assets." There seems to be a bit of double-speak going on here.

Saenz said, "I've been planning this for 10 months," because of "the intractability demanded by this situation." Saenz didn't say what "this" was. Highland Park's lawyer took it to mean the lawsuit, which was filed the day before the clergy meeting, which is not unreasonable.

Saenz then turned to the rest of the clergy in the room and told them, "You're clergy on my appointment. The next step will be to figure out who's going to remain in Highland Park to reorganize the life of the church, or who might be reappointed." Then Saenz asked the clergy, "Do you wish to remain a United Methodist pastor?"

Highland Park's slide says Saenz told the clergy that their pension credit from 2022 on would be erased. Saenz added, "this is not a threat, it's just reality," which is usually what someone says right before making a threat. Saenz knows perfectly well the pension rules aren't set in stone, so yes, any reasonable clergy would see this as a threat.

Saenz also warned the clergy about the land: "The property doesn't belong to the conference. It belongs to SMU." According to Saenz, the SMU deed has a clause that returns the land to SMU if the land is not used for a United Methodist church. After the lawsuit was filed, SMU found a 1926 deed that gave the land to Highland Park. Highland Park's lawyer says the land is no longer in question.

Saenz's letters tell a different story than the lawsuit. The Conference's lawyer says Highland Park "severed all connectional ties" with the UMC back in November 2022. Yet in a December 9 letter, Saenz thanked Paul Rasmussen for the chance "to affirm your continuing commitment to the Horizon Texas Conference and the United Methodist Church." In an October 28 letter to Mark Freeman, Saenz wrote that Tuggle "spoke candidly and convincingly about his commitment to the United Methodist Church." A bishop doesn't write letters like these to pastors he thinks already left the UMC, or more likely, this is another bishop speaking with a forked tongue. This kind of language is the very thing that makes people not trust the UMC bishops, and they keep making this mistake.

At a meeting with Tuggle and Freeman, Tuggle asked Saenz what would happen if a congregational vote didn't go the bishop's way. According to Tuggle and Freeman, Saenz answered, "the bylaws will still be out of order." In writing, Saenz put it more politely: "Whether a church conference goes my way was never the question, because the outcome does not belong to me."

Well, the congregation voted anyway, and 90% of the voters chose to leave.

Three days after the vote, Saenz removed Highland Park's pastors. Saenz's letter says "a congregational vote or action of the Church Council cannot, by itself, terminate the congregation's connection to the denomination." Saenz's reasoning is that Paragraph 2553 expired December 31, 2023, and nothing else in the Discipline lets a church walk out the door.

The Conference's news release says Tuggle and Rasmussen were reappointed "from all positions at Highland Park United Methodist Church." The Conference hasn't said where Tuggle and Rasmussen are going. People Newspapers only says "other duties." Saenz's letter names only Tuggle and Rasmussen, so nobody knows yet what happens to the rest of Highland Park's clergy.

Andy Lewis, who was Saenz's chief of staff, is the new senior pastor. That will probably go over about well as you might expect: either a person they trust who has grown the church or the direct liaison to the bishop they don't trust. I suspect Lewis will be preaching to tens and tens of people.

Lewis's congregation will meet November 1 at 10 a.m. at University Park UMC. The Conference's release says Lewis's congregation is meeting away from Highland Park to "avoid unnecessary conflict as the Conference continues to address questions surrounding Highland Park UMC's governance and property."

Highland Park's Church Council said the bishop's announcement "changes nothing." Tuggle will lead worship Sunday as usual, and the council said, "we will continue to protect our beloved and incredible clergy including the Rev. Matt Tuggle and the Rev. Paul Rasmussen." According to the Dallas Morning News, the council plans to keep worshiping on Mockingbird as Highland Park Methodist Church.

So on November 1, Highland Park's members get to choose between Tuggle on Mockingbird and Lewis at University Park. Given a 90% vote, I have a strong feeling about how that attendance will work.

Saenz's pastoral letter to the congregation says, "This is not the end of the story." On that point, Saenz and Highland Park agree.

Highland Park, 2016 to 2025

Legal battle aside, you might be here for the numbers.

Highland Park may be strong, but according to its numbers on umdata.org, Highland Park actually didn't grow from 2016 to 2025, at least not by membership. It peaked in 2016 at 16,917 members and reported 15,782 in 2025, a drop of 6.7%. In most denominations that's a rough decade. However, in the UMC, it's practically a growth chart. Over the same years the UMC lost 45.2% of its members, and the churches that now make up Horizon Texas lost 48.9%, which was worse than the national average for the UMC.

However, it's not exactly fair to compare Horizon Texas Conference's numbers to Highland Park's directly. After all, disaffiliations happened from 2021 to 2023. So, in the charts below, I removed the churches that left (and the few that closed) from the statistics so they would show what was happening outside of disaffiliation:

Members	2016	2025	Change
Highland Park	16,917	15,782	-6.7%
Horizon Texas churches that didn't disaffiliate	210,122	175,167	-16.6%
UMC churches that didn't disaffiliate	4,859,763	3,807,612	-21.7%

Attendance needs one footnote. Highland Park's 2016 attendance number looks like it counted people watching online, because when the church started reporting online attendance on its own line in 2017, the in-person number dropped by almost exactly that much.

So, because it doesn't map cleanly for anyone, I'm going to use 2019 here:

2019 to 2025	Highland Park	Horizon Texas churches that stayed	UMC churches that stayed
Members	+6.8%	-12.3%	-17.0%
In-person attendance	-1.9%	-32.9%	-34.4%
Professions of faith other than confirmation	+22.2%	-14.9%	-15.6%
Sunday school attendance	-3.0%	-39.3%	-46.9%

Since 2019, Highland Park grew while the churches around it that stayed lost a third of their in-person attendance.

In 2025 Highland Park was the largest United Methodist church in the country by membership. It was second in in-person attendance, behind Adam Hamilton's Church of the Resurrection, and first in professions of faith, with 319. A profession of faith is the closest number the church keeps to new believers. If a person joins a United Methodist church by confessing faith in Christ for the first time, it's a profession of faith. Otherwise, it is entered in as a transfer from another church.

Highland Park received 20.2 people by profession of faith (other than by confirmation) for every 1,000 members. The UMC as a whole received 6.5 for every 1,000. Whatever you think of Highland Park, it is doing the Matthew 28 work the rest of the denomination has been catastrophically failing. It has three times the entire denomination's average.

The Conference Merger

For a little more history, Horizon Texas didn't exist until 2024. It's a Frankenstein's monster of Conferences that used to exist stapled together: North Texas, Central Texas and Northwest Texas. Because of the disaffiliations that happened, the denomination opted to merge them together. Highland Park was in North Texas.

As exits went, these three Conferences were not the worst places to be (unlike places like Eastern Pennsylvania or Greater New Jersey). All three stuck almost to the word of what Paragraph 2553 required. A church needed a two-thirds vote of its church conference and a simple majority at annual conference. It paid its unpaid apportionments, another 12 months of apportionments, and its share of the Conference's unfunded pension liability.

North Texas's framework also made churches pay their own legal costs and pay back any development grants from the prior 10 years.

Generously, Central Texas used its reserves to shrink what departing churches owed for pensions, and Northwest Texas paid those pension costs out of its reserves outright. None of the three charged a percentage of the property's value. Compared to what a lot of churches faced, that's a fairly clean exit, and hundreds of churches took it.

Conference	Churches approved to leave	Sessions
North Texas	53	March 4, 2023; June 2023; December 2, 2023
Central Texas	123	September 17, 2022; June 2023; November 4, 2023
Northwest Texas	172	December 3, 2022; June 2, 2023; October 23, 2023
Total	348

Northwest Texas approved 154 churches in a single day. By January 1, 2024, the whole Northwest Texas Conference had 9,814 members. Highland Park alone had 14,852 at that time.

On umdata.org, the churches that now make up Horizon Texas went from 754 in 2019 to 369 in 2025. Half the churches are gone, members are down 45%, and in-person attendance is down 60%. If Highland Park goes too, members are down 50%, in-person attendance 63%, and church income 40%. That exodus beats the national average by a worthwhile margin.

The money went with them. The three Conference budgets added up to $27.3 million in 2019 and $22.9 million in 2022. In 2023 Northwest Texas stopped asking its churches for apportionments altogether and lived off its reserves. The first Horizon Texas budget, for 2025, was $15.3 million, and $2.7 million of that came out of savings.

They didn't hide why they merged. The Plan of Union the three Conferences adopted in 2024 says "the loss of churches and church membership due to disaffiliations and shifting migration and population trends have prompted a collective recognition among these conferences that unification is necessary and strategic." It also gives the damage: "The cumulative financial loss in the three conferences is $7.9M (or 36% of combined apportionments in 2023)."

If your household lost 36% of its income, you'd be looking for a smaller house too. And with Highland Park looking to exit, it stands to lose almost another 10% of what's left, to say nothing of the missions Highland Park supported.

Horizon Texas started operating on January 1, 2025.

Big Departing Churches in Texas

Highland Park is in many ways late to the game, because it isn't the only big church that left. Here are the largest, with the membership in their last report to the UMC:

Church	Last UMC report	Members
White's Chapel, Southlake	2022	17,490
Mansfield First	2022	8,439
St. Andrew, Plano	2022	6,665
Grapevine First	2022	2,409
LakeRidge, Lubbock	2021	2,406
Temple First	2021	2,327
St. Stephen, Amarillo	2021	2,155
Waco First	2021	1,989
Aldersgate, Abilene	2021	1,675
Corsicana First	2021	1,517

White's Chapel reported 17,490 members in 2022. This area has already watched a church bigger than Highland Park walk out the door. And once again, the UMC's leadership hasn't exactly encouraged or even attempted to give reasons Highland Park should stay.

Big Money

I normally hate reading exclamatory statements in articles on facts, but here it's appropriate: financials are where things go from sad to absurd.

Highland Park reported $48.3 million in total income for 2025.

That's the most of any United Methodist church in the country. It's 1.02% of the income of every UMC church in the United States combined, from one church on Mockingbird Lane. If there is an accounting error, I wouldn't be surprised. If there's no accounting error... wow.

Put another way: every church in the Peninsula-Delaware Conference put together took in $43.5 million in 2025. All the churches in Oregon-Idaho took in $32.1 million, South Georgia $27.5 million, and the Dakotas $24.2 million. Highland Park beat every one of those Conferences by itself.

Year	Highland Park income	Per member	UMC per member
2017	$34.8 million	$2,228	$978
2019	$26.5 million	$1,794	$999
2022	$21.4 million	$1,408	$1,054
2024	$22.0 million	$1,445	$1,143
2025	$48.3 million	$3,058	$1,242

Income more than doubled from 2024 to 2025, and the reason is almost certainly "Project Mockingbird," Highland Park's capital campaign. By December 2025, commitments had passed its $43 million goal, and the campaign site now says it has raised over $46 million. Highland Park hasn't published how much of that came in during 2025 and how much is pledged for later years, so I can't say exactly how much of the $48.3 million it accounts for, but that's a little beside the point.

Even in an ordinary year like 2024, Highland Park took in about 26% more per member than the UMC average. In 2025, of the 144 United Methodist churches with at least 2,000 members, only Myers Park in Charlotte took in more per member.

And Highland Park has not skimped on its commitments. Highland Park paid 100% of its apportionments every single year from 2009 through 2025. The UMC as a whole paid 81.5% in 2025. The Conference's own sheets put Highland Park down for $1,196,012 in 2026 and $1,247,466 in 2027.

But, that's over now. Since September 4, 2026, that money, $125,000 a month, has been going into escrow instead.

At the town hall, Tuggle said the church's CFO estimates that at most about $275,000 of the $1.25 million ever reaches benevolence. By the church's own estimate, Highland Park gave Africa University about $5,600 through apportionments in 2025. It gave Africa University $56,000 directly. "We gave them that because that's what they asked for," Tuggle said.

Highland Park publishes annual reports, but only in percentages, with no dollar budget. Its 2025-2026 Impact Report lists $5,446,805.96 in outreach giving. Please note, the reporting is to the penny, and for number guys like me, I appreciate that level of precision.

So what does Highland Park mean to what is left of Horizon Texas?

Horizon Texas, 2025	Highland Park	Conference	Highland Park's share
Members	15,782	175,167	9.0%
In-person attendance	2,876	42,890	6.7%
Professions of faith other than confirmation	319	1,445	22.1%
Church income	$48.3 million	$276.1 million	17.5%

Highland Park's 2026 apportionment is 9.5% of everything the Conference asks of all 387 of its churches. More than one in five people who joined a Horizon Texas church by profession of faith other than confirmation in 2025 joined at Highland Park. One church out of 387.

Two Juggernauts

That is the Conference's problem: Highland Park is not a church that can be priced out of a fight.

It took in more than three times the Conference's entire 2025 budget. Its lead counsel is DLA Piper, one of the largest law firms in the world, and its FAQ says "several members of our congregation have graciously offered to cover the Church's legal fees." The Conference has its reserves, its trustees, the Dallas firm Cowles & Thompson, and the trust clause. Neither one is going to get outspent.

A Conference that lost 348 churches and 36% of its apportionments is in court with the church that pays 9.5% of what's left. If the Conference wins, it gets the governing documents back for a congregation whose members voted 90% to leave. I don't know what a Conference win looks like on a Sunday morning, but I imagine they'll have a very hard time keeping the electricity going, let alone the millions in missional money now missing.

And Me

I don't trust the bishops of the United Methodist Church. If you're not familiar, though, I've said why before.

To be fair, I'm not ready to hand Highland Park a halo either, because I haven't seen a strong explanation for why Highland Park didn't disaffiliate in 2022 or 2023. North Texas had a standard process with standard costs, and Highland Park, of all churches, had the required financials. In November 2022, with the door wide open, Highland Park rewrote its corporate documents instead.

Highland Park's FAQ says, "We did not want to leave our denomination, and we had no dispute with the conference." It also says the church was "forthright about our readiness to leave if necessary." Maybe both are true. But if Highland Park has explained why it chose new bylaws over the exit 348 of its neighbors used, I haven't found it. And "the lawyers said we should" isn't exactly the best answer.

I would love to hear more to the story. If anyone knows, please reach out to me. But, I'm not exactly crying tears over this for the UMC, either. This is another example of terrible denominational leadership, and once again, they continue to double and triple down on everything that has failed miserably.

I believe, despite the rhetoric, that the Conference sees Highland Park as little more than a piggy bank now. The Conference is also attempting to swing a hammer to break it.