Photo: Franklin Mennonite Conference meetings in 2015. Conference photo. 

Franklin Mennonite Conference, a former Mennonite Church USA conference, will vote this fall on a proposal to join Lancaster Mennonite Conference.

Franklin voted to leave Mennonite Church USA in April 2016. Given its small size—14 congregations with about 1,000 members—many people expressed interest in connecting with a larger conference, said Franklin conference minister Allen Lehman in an Aug. 22 phone interview.

About a year after leaving MC USA, said Lehman, Franklin named a seven-member Way Forward Committee that met with representatives of Lancaster Mennonite Conference. LMC had voted in November 2015 to leave MC USA. At the time, it was the largest area conference in the denomination.

This committee brought a proposal to Franklin’s board to become a district of LMC, said Lehman. The

committee said LMC had made it clear that this was an option. Its representatives said, “We’re processing this together,” according to Lehman. The board adopted the recommendation and sent it to member congregations at Franklin’s spring meeting.

If the congregations vote in favor of the proposal, said Lehman, “we’ll become a district of [LMC].” That voting is to take place later in September.

Franklin would become the first group of churches to join LMC, said Lehman. He said “it feels like it will happen, and to be connected to a larger entity is something our people feel good about.” Very few have raised any caution, he added.

Lehman’s role as conference minister would continue, he said, though his title would become bishop or overseer. “We will continue as we are until changes are needed. We will be more developed than some of LC’s districts,” he said.

Franklin’s congregations are located in Pennsylvania and Maryland, and their locations don’t overlap with Lancaster’s congregations, which are mostly in eastern Pennsylvania, with others in New York, Maryland, New Jersey, Delaware, Virginia, Hawaii, Indiana and Washington, D.C.

LMC executive conference minister Keith Weaver and the LMC offices did not return multiple phone calls with requests for comments.