Virginia Supreme Court rejects McLean Bible Church’s attempt to end lawsuit
The Virginia Supreme Court has declined a rehearing request from McLean Bible Church over a lawsuit brought by longtime members about the church’s 2021 elder election and other concerns.
In an order issued Monday, a copy of which was emailed to The Christian Post, the state high court denied a petition for rehearing in the case of McLean Bible Church v. Steve Gaskins et al.
The one-sentence order affirms a Court of Appeals ruling from May that sent the case back to the circuit court to determine whether the plaintiffs can prevail in their legal arguments.
Rick Boyer, an attorney with Integrity Law Firm who represents the plaintiffs, wrote in an email to CP that the plaintiffs are currently “preparing the first installment of jurisdictional discovery requests and will be submitting them in Fairfax County Circuit Court in the near future.”
MBC Pastor Wade Burnett said in a statement emailed to CP that "McLean Bible Church has been responding to litigation against our church by a small number of individuals who wanted different leaders here."
"Recently, an appellate court sent a small part of this case back to the trial court once again. We strongly disagree with the opinion, especially since it denies our independent, nondenominational church the very same religious protections that the court guaranteed for denominational churches," Burnett said.
"Looking forward, we will continue to work and pray toward a full and final dismissal of this litigation. In the meantime, we will also pray and work toward peace and reconciliation with this group, but not at the expense of our convictions as a church."
Monday’s order builds on a brief ruling released by the Virginia Supreme Court last month that rejected MBC’s appeal because of a procedural error in the church’s filing.
Based in Northern Virginia, MBC is a nondenominational, multisite congregation co-led by evangelist Mike Kelsey and Pastor David Platt, a bestselling author and former head of the Southern Baptist Convention International Mission Board.
Longtime MBC members Steve Gaskins, Michael Manfredi, Roland Smith, Deborah Ash and Kevin Elwell filed a complaint against the church over its July 2021 elder election.
The members alleged that MBC leaders violated the church constitution by denying members the chance to cast secret ballots in the election and did so to remove theological conservatives from positions of power.
The complaint also alleged that the MBC board tried to disqualify members from voting by “attempting to purge members by designating them ‘inactive’ on an arbitrary basis, with no record that the members had missed eight consecutive Sundays, and without investigation into whether the members had ‘reasonable excuse,’ such as missing services for fear of the coronavirus, or even from the Church’s own cancellation of in-person services due to the coronavirus.”
MBC leaders said they tried to resolve the dispute and invited the plaintiffs to pursue “Christian mediation and reconciliation.” They also held a new elder election.
The Fairfax County Circuit Court dismissed the members’ complaint in 2022, but the Court of Appeals of Virginia reversed that decision in June 2023. In December 2024, the circuit court dismissed the lawsuit again.
In a statement released after the December 2024 dismissal, the MBC elders denounced the litigation as coming from “a small group of members and non-members at MBC” who were carrying out “a coordinated and stated strategy to deride and ‘oust’ David Platt as well as other elders, pastors, and/or staff leaders who are committed to leading the church according to God’s Word instead of this group’s particular ideologies.”
“As part of this strategy, almost a dozen people in this group have filed an ongoing series of separate lawsuits, followed by multiple amended complaints, injunctions, and appeals against our church family regarding our church’s constitution,” the elders wrote.
“Over the course of almost four years of litigation, every single one of these legal claims has either been rejected or dismissed by the courts and/or withdrawn by the plaintiffs themselves.”
In an interview with CP last month, Boyer said MBC could not use the church autonomy doctrine, which says secular courts cannot intervene in religious disputes, to avoid litigation.
“The underlying dispute here is not a religious decision at all,” Boyer said, but rather “a pure contract dispute, centered around the fact that the church constitution permits all members 16 and older to vote in elections for the board of elders unless they are inactive.”
