A Jacksonville judge has dismissed a defamation lawsuit that Celebration Church’s founders filed over a church report accusing its former leader of fraud and enriching himself at the church’s expense.

Deciding the case “would require this court to impermissibly entangle itself within matters of church governance,” Circuit Judge Marianne Aho wrote in an order that lets former Pastor Stovall Weems and his wife, Kerri, amend their lawsuit within 20 days.

Weems resigned in April from the church he and his wife started in Jacksonville in 1998 and nurtured into an operation with thousands of members and satellite operations around the country and overseas.

Read the rest of this story at Jacksonville Today news partner The Florida Times-Union.