Maine church sues UMC, claims denomination is wrongfully trying to take over property
Quick Summary
- Broad Cove Church in Maine sues UMC New England Annual Conference, claiming wrongful property takeover.
- The church alleges the conference is attempting to enforce exclusive affiliation and rewrite bylaws.
- Broad Cove seeks a preliminary injunction to prevent UMC from acquiring its property.
A small Maine congregation is suing a regional body of The United Methodist Church, claiming that the mainline denomination is trying to take over its property.
Broad Cove Church of Cushing, a small congregation that identifies as independent, filed a complaint earlier this month against the UMC New England Annual Conference.
According to the complaint, Broad Cove is a non-denominational church that has a working relationship with the UMC in which the denomination sends a pastor, and the church compensates the denomination for the clergy.
But according to Broad Cove, the most recent pastor sent to the church has been trying to rewrite the bylaws to make it an exclusively UMC congregation, reports the Camden, Maine-based Midcoast Villager. The church maintains that its members have never voted to affiliate with the UMC.
"UMC seeks to expand its shrinking holdings by fiat, declaring that Broad Cove is a Methodist-only community and forcing its non-Methodist members either to submit or find other churches," the lawsuit alleges, as quoted by the Villager.
"The UMC demands that Broad Cove knuckle under to the UMC's 'Book of Discipline', with the ultimate goal of seizing Broad Cove's real and personal property."
The congregation is seeking a preliminary injunction to halt the UMC acquisition of their property, with a court decision still pending, reports the Villager.
As of Monday, the UMC New England Conference lists Broad Cove as one of its member churches online, with Michael Leonard listed as its current pastor.
The lawsuit claims that Leonard, who became pastor of the church in 2023, “began insisting on changes to the Church's building and its congregation's practices, with the ultimate purpose of dragging the unwilling Church into the UMC.”
“The conflict came to a boil in June 2025 during revision of the Church's bylaws. Leonard insisted that the word 'non-denominational' not be used to describe the church,” stated the complaint.
The church members ultimately voted to terminate Leonard's employment, which prompted a letter from the UMC claiming that the property is not owned by the congregation but is held in a UMC trust, according to The Villager. The congregation contends that deeds and other legal records refute the denomination's property claims.
The UMC denomination was founded in 1968 in Dallas, Texas, with the merger of the Evangelical United Brethren Church and the Methodist Church.
In recent years, the UMC has seen thousands of member congregations disaffiliate from the denomination due to its internal debate over LGBT issues.
According to numbers compiled by UM News, from 2019 to 2023, over 7,500 mostly theologically conservative churches left the UMC over the ongoing debate.
At the UMC General Conference in 2024, delegates voted to remove the denominational ban on same-sex marriage and non-celibate homosexual ordination from their official rule book, the Book of Discipline.
However, many regional bodies and member congregations within the UMC maintained the biblical standards on sexual ethics, while still more decided to leave the denomination.
In November, a majority of UMC annual conferences had approved a measure known as regionalization, which allows different regional bodies of the denomination to edit parts of the Book of Discipline to fit their cultural context.
