Today, we're announcing the results of the UB elections. Actually, I posted the results on the UB website yesterday, but without fanfare. The referendum intended to unite the United Brethren church with the Missionary Church failed, getting just 43% of the votes of UB members in the United States. I'm crushed. Have been for a week, actually, since I've known for that long that it would die.

The strongest opposition came from a group called UBHope, a group which I helped create (inadvertently) by launching a denominational discussion forum. That's where the UBHope people got acquainted. Stupid, stupid me.

Posting on the web was one of three parts of the plan to announce the results to the UB constituency, which is the responsibility of the bishop. But within hours of the results appearing on the website, UBHope sent an apparently already-prepared email newsletter to its own email list (which is pretty large). So, many UB people will hear the results first not from the Bishop, but from the group which fought so hard to defeat the referendum. It never crossed my mind that they would do that; otherwise, I would have waited to post the results on the web. Again, stupid, stupid, and terribly naive me.

The UBHope newsletter did a lot of preaching about kingdom-building and church growth and etc. The thing is, the churches that are fueling the bulk of the growth in our denomination are, for the most part, led by pastors who favored joining the Missionary Church--our larger churches, and our smaller progressive churches (like Anchor, my own church, which voted 35-0 in favor). And most of the people behind UBHope don't exactly come from cutting edge churches, though you wouldn't guess that by reading their progressive-sounding materials.

Oh my, I'm sounding like a very sore, embittered loser. In the grief process, I guess I'm in the Anger stage. Somewhere far out ahead lies Acceptance. I wonder when I'll arrive there. I'm venting here, on this little blog designed for my own amusement. I think I feel better already.