88Warrior said:

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And the band played on until the Titanic went under….

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That is a powerful analogy of what is happening. The sad part is the "band" is thousands of deceived Methodists who are playing the song the bishops are telling them to play. We need to be in prayer for those who are caught up in the marching orders, that God may deliver them from the deception.

UTExan said:

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The bishops have no one to blame but themselves.

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My comment was about the congregations who are deceived.

But, and this is an important but, the bishops are deceived as well. The deception originated with the devil. The bishops hearts are hardened and they need prayer too. We have a hard time praying for those who hurt and deceive us, but when we do we begin to better understand the depth of God's grace, love, and mercy.

I think we, as lay persons, deserve some blame as well. We (me included) all sat there over the years and saw where the UMC was headed year by year. In my head it was like "oh that's in LA or San Francisco..won't happen here"…then it was…"Well Austin is gonna Austin"…didn't take long before the whole thing came crashing down…we should have put up a fight before it got to where it is..but we've moved on…Our church left the UMC a couple of years ago and we haven't looked back…We've experienced tremendous growth and have renewed energy! Hope others are seeing this as well! God Bless you all!

Our church received GREAT news yesterday. The long going court battle might be over. There are 28 churches battling Rio Texas Conference. They are saying we cannot leave the conference without paying "exit fees", even though my local church has already been in Global Methodist for 2 years. The 28 churches won a court case last year that Rio Texas immediately appealed. The appeal was heard in San Antonio yesterday (Wednesday). The findings of the 3 judges were against Rio Texas. It appears that at long last this court case might be over. I have enclosed the link to the findings. The last page of the findings I copied and pasted below if y'all don't want to read through the entire link. The last 2 pages on the findings show what I posted below


"The supreme court held that "if courts could not decide the case without resolving a religious question or impeding the church's authority to manage its own affairs, the result would be dismissal for lack of jurisdiction, not rendition of judgment granting the Conference (or any other party) affirmative relief." Id. (internal quotation marks and citations omitted). Having concluded the courts are unable to decide this case without impeding the church's authority to manage its own affairs, we have no choice but to affirm the trial court's order granting the local churches' plea to the jurisdiction and dismissing the case for lack of jurisdiction. Accordingly, the Conferences' second issue is overruled.

CONCLUSION
We affirm the trial court's order granting the local churches' plea to the jurisdiction and dismissing this case for lack of jurisdiction.

Irene Rios, Justice"



Not only should this release us, it also should provide a path for other churches in Rio Texas to escape if they did not have the funds to pay the "exit fees".



https://law.justia.com/cases/texas/fourth-court-of-appeals/2025/04-24-00424-cv.html