When a church fight spills into the street, and by the time the matter reaches court, usually all that is left is the dispute over control of the church assets and especially its land. Buildings and land have most of the secular value. However, if a church split reaches court before the spiritual issues are stripped away, a court is unlikely to intervene.

In the Texas Court of Appeals, 7th District, the case of In Re Jorge Torres and Templo Bautista, Slip Op. (Tex. Civ. App. 7th, 2019) is unusual because none of the allegations concerned the church property. The trial court originally granted a Plea to the Jurisdiction on Ecclesiastical Abstention Doctrine grounds, dismissing the case, but later reconsidered the decision to dismiss. That might have led to discovery through document demands and depositions. It might have ended by summary judgment. Or, it might have led to an actual trial before the bench or a jury. However, the case was taken by one party to the appellate level seeking a writ of mandamus to order the trial court to reinstate its original decision dismissing the case. The appellate court granted the writ ordering the trial court to dismiss the case. The appellate court noted that although the litigants alluded to the church property, all their claims were regarding alleged impropriety in selecting a pastor and excluding dissenting members. Such issues are almost uniformly beyond resolution by a court because of the entanglement with ecclesiastical issues that is nearly always unavoidable.

As we have often seen in these reports, a church fighting over who should lead it might still be a living church but a church salvaging its assets is very far gone. Litigation is in most cases only symptomatic of a church salvage operation, regardless of which side might be in the “right.” Factional church litigation is usually driven by emotions or motives that an outsider cannot truly appreciate, much like most family law cases. However, if a cooler head can prevail, before such litigation is paid for with offering dollars, a clinical review of the likely outcomes and their respective cost effectiveness should be conducted.

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