A high-stakes church fight is rattling one of Houston’s biggest congregations, forcing thousands of Second Baptist members to decide whether to stay and challenge their own leaders in court or quietly move on. At the center of the storm are contested changes to the church’s bylaws and the installation of a new senior pastor, a combination that plaintiffs say concentrated power at the top and helped drive down attendance and volunteer ranks at the flagship Woodway campus. With a civil trial now set for April 29, 2026, the question of who controls Second Baptist’s pulpit and property is no longer just theological. It is a matter for a state business court.
Trial date and venue
The case is slated for trial on April 29, 2026, in the 11th Division of the Business Court of Texas, according to the Houston Chronicle. The lawsuit was first filed last spring by a group of current and former members who organized as the Jeremiah Counsel, and attorneys have spent months wrangling over where and how the case should be heard as it moved through local dockets.
What the lawsuit alleges
Coverage in the religious press notes that the 2023 governance shift came shortly before the May 2024 retirement of longtime senior pastor H. Edwin Young. Plaintiffs contend that the new system cleared the way for his son, Ben Young, to become senior pastor without a direct vote of the lay membership, a sequence described in reporting by Baptist Press.
Members weighing whether to stay
Inside the congregation, members say the dispute has turned Sunday worship into a running referendum on whether to stay put or seek a new church home. Some longtime leaders argue that remaining is the only way to push for change from within, while others have already left for churches they view as more transparent and participatory.
“I do not want to be part of any other church,” longtime member Archie Dunham told the Houston Chronicle, which also reported that he estimates attendance at the Woodway campus has dropped roughly 25 to 35 percent since the controversy erupted. Some volunteers and choir members say they were removed from roles or quietly sidelined as tensions rose, and the fallout has rippled into the small but telling routines of church life, from choir rehearsals to Bible-study rosters.
What is at stake financially and procedurally
The fight is not only about votes and titles. It is also about who manages a sprawling church enterprise that operates on a massive financial scale. Reporting has estimated Second Baptist’s holdings and operations in the hundreds of millions of dollars to roughly $1 billion in property and related assets, with the Ministry Leadership Team now overseeing the church’s annual budget and real estate portfolio, according to Baptist News Global.
Defense attorneys have pushed to move the dispute from Harris County’s 55th District Court into the state’s Business Court, a shift that casts the conflict less as an intramural church spat and more as a corporate governance case. That procedural move underscores how deeply the lawsuit intertwines spiritual leadership with nonprofit law and control of significant assets.
What plaintiffs are asking and the legal angle
The Jeremiah Counsel petition does not seek monetary damages. Instead, it asks a judge to invalidate the 2023 bylaw changes and restore the prior system so that members’ voting rights are reinstated. That request, and the underlying narrative of how the changes were adopted, is outlined in both the petition itself and reporting by The Christian Post…