The founders and former leaders of a Florida church have named the lead and associate pastors of Church of the Highlands as defendants in a lawsuit for “engineering” a takeover of their congregation.

The suit, filed this month in U.S. District Court in Florida’s middle district, names as defendants Chris Hodges and Dino Rizzo, and the Association of Related Churches (ARC), a global cooperative of thousands of evangelical churches co-founded by Hodges.

Rizzo is the executive director of ARC. John Seibeling of The Life Church, a founding board member of ARC, is also listed as a defendant.

The suit was filed on July 12 by Stovall Weems and his wife Kerri Weems, who founded Celebration Church of Jacksonville, Fla. back in 1998.

The Weems were ousted in April 2022 from church leadership over issues of alleged financial mismanagement and abusive conduct toward staff members.

The suit seeks compensatory and punitive damages.

According to the lawsuit, the Weems accuse ARC, Hodges, Rizzo and Seibeling of a “continuing unlawful conspiracy,” framing the Weems for financial improprieties in order “to protect and expand their church growth business interests and endeavors…”

The defendants are accused, out of “greed and the desire to advance their own…interests,” of engineering a takeover of the church that “deliberately targeted Pastor Weems and those closest to him because he rejected their unbridled church growth model and was focused on missionary work and developing supporting businesses that Defendants perceived as a significant threat to their economic interests.”

Efforts to reach Church of the Highlands for comment were not immediately successful.

Christian Post reported that ARC, in a statement, said the lawsuit “included unfounded and inaccurate accusations.”

“We are confident…that the truth will ultimately prevail. We respect the judicial process and look forward to addressing these matters in the courtroom,” the statement reads.

The lawsuit lays out a host of accusations, claiming that Hodges benefits from not only ARC, but Church of the Highlands and its affiliated ministries, which includes The Lodge at Grants Mill on its main campus in Irondale, a pastor restoration program that in the past has sparked controversy and drawn scrutiny.

The Lodge, according to the plaintiffs, is a copy of their Honey Lake Farms’ Lodge, operating since December 2020. “Honey Lake Farms’ Lodge had a significant advantage because it was already operational and had numerous retreats, counseling and restorative programs led by professional therapists,” the lawsuit states.

According to the lawsuit, Celebration Church was not a church planted by ARC, but consistently gave about $150,000 to $200,000 a year to its efforts to create churches. However, ARC and the defendants kept pushing Weems to donate 2% of the church’s yearly income to the organization.

Weems’ eventually decided to move away from the high-growth strategy of Hodges and ARC, due to the “significant negative psychological and health impacts” on pastors because of the growth model, the suit claims.

At the same time, Weems committed to transitioning out of the senior pastor role and moving the church more toward mission work. As a result, the defendants moved to “oust” Weems and “plant an ARC-affiliated pastor they knew they could control…”

They did this, the suit claims, by spreading word that the Weems were under investigation for financial mismanagement, believing “that their nefarious plot would never be exposed because it would be protected by the secrecy of ecclesiastical abstention.”