Religion · Dallas-Fort Worth, TX Metro · August 27, 2026
UMC Bishop Defends Lawsuit Against Highland Park Church Over Bylaws
What Alinsky tactic is being used
2 of the thirteen rules are in play here — campaigns rarely run just one.
Rule 4
“Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules.”
The conference's whole case is Rule 4 run straight: it is not arguing theology, it is holding the congregation to the denomination's own written rulebook — the Book of Discipline's trust clause and its requirement that members be brought into decisions — and to the church's own prior bylaws, which the amended petition attaches as exhibits alongside the 1999 and 2024 versions. The alleged gap is procedural and documentary: articles and bylaws restated in 2022–23 with no member vote, then the same process repeated at The Grove. Where a gap between stated polity and actual practice exists, this tactic needs no rhetoric to work.
Counter-Rule 4 · Radical Integrity
Close the gap between stated values and actual practice before anyone else finds it. This tactic only works where the gap is real.
Close the gap in your own congregation before a court or a conference finds it. This month, ask for the current articles of incorporation and bylaws and read them beside the minutes of the meetings that adopted them: do the documents say what the leadership says they say, and was the vote taken by the body the documents require? If a change your leaders want is genuinely right, insist it be made by the documented procedure and recorded — refuse to accept a governance change that cannot show its own paper trail, even one you agree with.
Rule 3
“Whenever possible, go outside the expertise of the enemy.”
The fight was moved onto ground almost no layperson knows. Ordinary members follow sermons, budgets and pastoral appointments; they do not follow restated certificates of formation, corporate name changes and state nonprofit filings — which is where the 2022–23 changes were made, reportedly without members being told, and where they were later repeated for the satellite campus. By the time congregants heard about it, the venue was a Dallas County civil court and a bishop's statement, not a church conference.
Counter-Rule 3 · Preparation and Width
Prepare the unfamiliar ground before you are dragged onto it. "I don't know, I'll find out and come back" beats an improvised answer.
Prepare that ground before you are dragged onto it. Look up your church's corporate filings with your Secretary of State's business-entity search and note the entity name, the date of the most recent restated or amended filing, and who signed it; then read your own bylaws' amendment article. At a town hall, ask for the filing date and the authorizing minutes rather than improvising a legal opinion — "I don't know, send me the document and I'll come back" is the strongest thing you can say.
Chapter 3 sets out the rules; Chapter 15 answers each of them in turn. This is that pairing applied to this story.
Know where you stand
The free 4-minute assessment identifies your mountain and your institution’s capture phase — so alerts like this one arrive matched to where you actually stand.
Facing this yourself? Ask. Describe what is happening and get what the book, Scripture, and the law of your state say, with the exact words to use. Your first one is free.