The largest Lutheran denomination in the United States shouldn’t be dragged into a lawsuit among church groups fighting over valuable property in downtown Miami, an attorney for the denomination argued Friday during a court hearing.

There is no legal relationship between the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, Inc. (ELCA) and the church groups battling over the $30 million property, said Daniel Becka, an attorney for ELCA, during an online hearing over whether the denomination should be included in the lawsuit.

Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Lisa Walsh didn’t make an immediate ruling, asking instead that attorneys send her a proposed order within 10 days. But she seemed skeptical of bringing the denomination into the lawsuit.

“What does this have to do with the transaction that’s at issue in this case?” Walsh said at one point.

Becka asked the judge to block any effort to involve the denomination in the legal battle among the Florida-Bahamas Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, Immanuel Evangelical Lutheran Church of Miami and Crossbridge, a network of Miami churches that broke away from the Presbyterian Church in America a few years ago. Crossbridge has a congregation in Key Biscayne.

“It’s not like the Catholic Church where you have the pope up here, and you have the local church down lower in a hierarchical relationship,” Becka said. “The bottom line is, your honor, we just don’t belong in this case.”

The Florida-Bahamas Synod, the Lutheran church’s regional body, sued two years ago to cancel Immanuel’s transfer of the $30 million property in the upscale Brickell neighborhood to Crossbridge, which had been renting the space. 

At the same time, Crossbridge attempted to add the deeper-pocketed national Lutheran church to the lawsuit, saying the national organization would be unfairly enriched if the transfer is blocked. 

Crossbridge attorney Michael Green argued Friday that the court needed to allow him to examine the relationship between the national denomination and the local church to determine if there was a hierarchical structure, an issue relevant to Crossbridge’s legal claims. He cited as an example that the local church gives a percentage of donations to the national denomination.

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“When a member of the local congregation gives, a percentage of that gift money is shared with the ELCA,” Green said. “The ELCA wants to come in and argue they have no relationship at all with this local congregation, period, end of story. But I’ve made my allegations, and I’m trying to probe on that. I think my claim is tied to what is the structure of the church?”

In court papers, the Synod said the transfer to Crossbridge was part of a plot by Immanuel’’s interim leader, Rev. James Dunham, to put the church property out of the Synod’s control and allow him to start a new congregation, while Crossbridge’s lead pastor, Carter Brown, saw it as an opportunity to get a property worth $30 million — and allow Dunham to use the church for his new congregation.

A jury trial is scheduled for early next year. 

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MIKE SCHNEIDER is a reporter for the Key Biscayne Independent. He is an expert at finding the story in the data. An award-winning journalist with more than 30 years of experience. His reporting has focused on demographics, the U.S. Census Bureau the U.S. space program, tourism, agriculture, hurricanes and breaking news in Florida. He is the author of “Mickey and the Teamsters: A Fight for Fair Unions at Disney.”