IRVING, Texas (CNN) -- The United Methodist Church's highest judicial body met Friday to discuss whether ministers who conduct union ceremonies for gay and lesbian couples should face discipline.

The nine-member judicial council must decide whether a prohibition on same-sex ceremonies, inserted two years ago into the church's statement of social principles, is binding or merely advisory.

The council was to met again Saturday, but a final decision may not be released for two weeks, a church spokesman told CNN.

The issue came to the fore among Methodists in March when the Rev. Jimmy Creech, then pastor of a UMC church in Omaha, Nebraska, faced a disciplinary trial after conducting a union ceremony for a lesbian couple -- despite language in the church's social principles stating that "homosexual unions shall not be conducted by our ministers and shall not be conducted in our churches."

Creech argued that the social principles were guidelines for ministers, not binding law. Though a majority of the jury who heard the case disagreed and said that Creech did violate Methodist doctrine, the majority wasn't large enough to convict him of the charges under church law.

Opponents want the judicial council to take a more definitive stand against same-sex ceremonies, and some are even threatening to leave the 9.5-million member church -- the nation's second-largest Protestant denomination after the Southern Baptist Convention -- unless the court strictly interprets the prohibition adopted by the church's General Conference in 1996.

"We believe that what is at stake is whether there is integrity in the United Methodist Church," said Bruce Blake, a bishop from Dallas.

"It's not about whether or not homosexual people are of worth or dignity, because we say that they are," said Burt Palmer, past of a church in Allen, Texas. Rather, he said, it is about ministers making their own decisions about doctrine.

"If one person can do that on this issue, what precludes me from doing it on something that I think is different," he said.

But Creech called the anti-gay portions of the UMC's social principles "institutionalized bigotry" and said the church should "let the social principles speak to our heart. Don't make them law."

"The gospel of Jesus Christ is a message of God's love for all people and the inclusion of all people," he told reporters.

Because the church jury did not convict Creech, he was allowed to keep his credentials as a United Methodist minister. However, amidst the controversy, his church in Omaha did not renew him as its pastor. He now works as a janitor in North Carolina.

The judicial council contains five members of the clergy and four lay people, all of whom are lawyers.