Members of Second Baptist Church Houston have filed a lawsuit against the megachurch and its leadership, claiming they usurped members' voting rights as part of changes to the church's bylaws. 

Jeremiah Counsel Corporation (also “Jeremiah” in this article), a nonprofit formed by a group of concerned members and past members of Second Baptist Church, on April 15 filed an unusual court petition in Judge Latosha Lewis Paynes’s District Court 55 against the current leadership of Second Baptist Church Houston, requesting church governance reforms and restoration of members’ voting rights taken away in secret.

Jeremiah Counsel Corporation (also “Jeremiah” in this article), a nonprofit formed by a group of concerned members and past members of Second Baptist Church, on April 15 filed an unusual court petition in Judge Latosha Lewis Paynes’s District Court 55 against the current leadership of Second Baptist Church Houston, requesting church governance reforms and restoration of members’ voting rights taken away in secret.

Defendants named in the 123 page petition are Ben Young, Homer Edwin Young, Lee Maxcy, Dennis Brewer Jr., and the Second Baptist Church Corporation, collectively called the “Young Group” throughout the filing.

On April 23, Jeremiah Counsel Corporation issued a press release and an open letter to Second Baptist’s “90,000 +” members at large from its new website.

What happened? A radical change in church governance

At a sparsely attended May 31, 2023, church business meeting, members in attendance either “unknowingly or unwittingly” rubber-stamped the church’s new regulations (its bylaws) without having the opportunity to inspect or read what they were being asked to approve, according to two letters signed by dozens of concerned members and sent directly to Pastor Ben Young months before the filing of this petition.

Section (H) of Jeremiah’s lawsuit gives examples of the “deliberately inconspicuous, legally insufficient, and intentionally vague” purported notices advising recipients of the May 31 membership meeting. According to the petition, “These statements were part of an intentional plan to alert as few members as possible to the other purpose for this church meeting and to mislead those who did see the notices.”

Section (M) of the petition states, “only about 200 of Second Baptist’s 94,000 members attended on May 31” and that those at the meeting represented less than “one quarter of one percent” of Second Baptist’s members.

What does Plaintiff Jeremiah Counsel Corporation want?

Typical lawsuits request pecuniary relief, often in the millions. However, apart from legal fees, Jeremiah’s petition doesn’t ask for monetary damages to its members but rather requests a return to the Church’s 2005 bylaws and does request money damages for Second Baptist Church from the Young Group and injunctive relief to cease and desist all conduct or actions stemming from the May 31 bylaws “updates.”

Section (I) of the lawsuit details how Second Baptist trustees, who had met for church business only a few weeks prior to the meeting, were completely unaware of the severity of the bylaw’s changes, before, during, and even after the scantly attended May 31 meeting — changes that eliminated and replaced their own positions.

According to the lawsuit, the Young Group permanently abolished:“(1) church members’ rights to vote and elect, e.g., Second Baptists Pastor and officers, to the governing body of the church, (2) church members’ rights to inspect Second Baptist’s books, financial records, and governing documents, and to provide input on its financial direction and obligations, and (3) church members’ rights to provide input on church policies.” (wording bolded in the lawsuit, p. 15)

Background

Second Baptist Church of Houston grew phenomenally under 46 years of leadership of Homer Edwin Young (also known as H. Edwin Young and sometimes as Ed Young Sr.) to its current size with six campuses and over 94,000 registered members, according to the lawsuit, and tens of thousands of regular attendees.

The new nonprofit, Jeremiah Counsel Corporation, states that Second Baptist Church Houston has a longtime reputation for “doing things right” and being a model church for other Christian churches to follow, not to mention stepping up and helping Houston and other cities recover on numerous occasions during natural disasters such as Hurricanes Katrina and Harvey, two of the costliest in U.S. History.

A 'lack of informed consent'

In the summer of 2024, a group of church members became aware of bylaws changes approved in 2023 by several hundred members and began to educate themselves on how the changes were made “under the radar” without the knowledge or consent of the majority of the over 90,000-member congregation and the implications to the future of the church.

They believe the church is now facing a governance crisis characterized by a lack of transparency and the complete exclusion of its membership from all decision-making — financial or otherwise — without the independent oversight that is fundamental to well established and highly respected institutions in both the corporate and nonprofit sectors.

On May 31, 2023, the church held what appeared at first glance to be a nondescript, run-of-the-mill business meeting to update outdated bylaws and seemingly to protect the church from liberal ideology. From the lawsuit, “The represented and ostensible purpose for these amendments was to clarify the church’s beliefs, and to reinforce its stance on social issues such as marriage and family, in response to the woke agenda.”

“However the true objective for the amendments was to radically alter Second Baptist's long-observed democratic governance processes—and to eliminate the congregants’ voice in church matters in its entirety—by, e.g., abolishing church members’ right to vote, installing an unelected and unaccountable board, and concentrating almost all power, including the power to select the future church Pastor, in the Pastor alone.”

Neither the new bylaws nor any summary of these bylaws were distributed or read in their entirety or at all at the meeting, according to concerned members. This can also be called “lack of informed consent.”

Page 28 of the lawsuit details two sections of the Texas business code that were not followed by not providing written copies to members; and which articles of Second Baptist’s 2005 bylaws were violated.

Ben Young named senior pastor

On May 26, 2024, Homer Edwin Young stepped away from his position as senior pastor and appointed his son Benjamin “Ben” Young (hereafter, Ben) as the new head pastor.  Ed Young told the congregation that he “was not stepping down, he was stepping up” (i.e., he was not leaving the church’s covering).

The following day, Ben told his own father to clean out his office, that he was going to remodel it. He was also told that his ministry would no longer be needed, according to members of the Jeremiah Counsel Corporation.

The new bylaws gave Ben unrestricted control of Second Baptist, according to concerned church members. Ben then hand-picked his new board of directors, now called a Ministry Leadership Team (MLT).

At least three different individuals have informed the Trinity Foundation that Homer Edwin Young told them in private that he had made a big mistake. To one church member Homer Young said, “I made the worst mistake of my life” and to another he allegedly said, “I really messed up.”

Read the full article at the Trinity Foundation 

News Source : https://www.christianpost.com/news/second-baptist-houston-members-file-suit-to-regain-voting-rights.html