I’ve heard lots of “exit polling” from the October elections in United Brethren churches regarding the referendum on our denomination joining the Missionary Church. Here’s my guess: it’ll pass with a 55-60% yes vote. We'll know soon enough. Conference boards of tellers are now compiling the results from conference churches, and they'll be forwarding the results to the Bishop's office. Maybe in a couple weeks, we'll know.

Right now, we're kind of in the eye of the hurricane--things are fairly calm. Have been, pretty much, since local church voting started at the beginning of October. But once the results are announced, things will heat up again, one way or the other. It's hard to predict what exactly will happen under any scenario. But it's good to be optimistic.

I remain very excited about the synergies that can happen in bringing our denominations together. It certainly won’t automatically make our churches healthy, and nobody’s claiming that that will happen. But there is a lot we can do together, and the United Brethren church is just too small—as a group of churches—to do a lot of things by ourselves. Plus, we’ll be good for the Missionary Church—a fresh infusion of good churches and seasoned leaders with new energy. And we’ll bring fresh perspectives, as outsiders always do. Like I said, it’s the synergies that really have me cranked.

If it fails, the United Brethren denomination can “keep the church doors” open indefinitely. But I’m concerned about long-term effectiveness. We’ve been on a certain trajectory for over 15 years, a trajectory toward being a group of merely affiliated churches that do less and less cooperatively. I don’t like that trajectory. Some people might prefer that, but I like the idea of being a denomination where churches cooperate to do meaningful things. That’s what I remember from my childhood and early adult years. That’s what I feel we can regain by uniting with the Missionary Church.

Some people argue that this issue is dividing our church. Well, there are certainly differing opinions about whether or not this is a good thing. But as a pastor pointed out to me earlier this week, we’re actually trying to do something that brings applause in heaven—uniting churches. Where you see dividing, I see uniting. For the sake of more effectively building the Kingdom.