Mergers can be tricky whether it’s two businesses or two churches.

Somehow, though, the joining of Real Life Church and Covington Christian Fellowship could be an example of how smoothly a merger can go.

Though it won’t be official until a vote is taken at CCF Oct. 14, explained longtime Senior Pastor Kevin Holland, the response from his leadership team as well the congregation has largely been positive especially once the flock learned he would be staying with the church.

This merger actually would not have happened, in fact, had Real Life’s efforts to purchase Lake Retreat Camp in Ravensdale hadn’t worked out.

Steve Murray, senior pastor at RLC, said his church had to give up the purchase camp in August.

“In our due diligence process, the more we dug into the camp, the more we liked the camp, the more we could see how we could use it,” Murray said. “Then toward the end of the process we discovered some issues that would make it financially unreasonable for us to pursue. Some of the improvements and adjustments to the property, the cost started going up. When the costs had exceeded a threshold beyond our ability to responsibly purchase the camp our board decided unless an outside source comes to help us purchase this that there is no way that we can put the church in the camp and run the camp in a way that financially makes sense.”

It proved to be frustrating for Murray, members of the church as well as the owners of Lake Retreat, Converge NW.

Not buying the camp was particularly difficult because Murray felt that it could fulfill a vision he’s had since RLC began 14 years ago of providing not only a place for members to worship but also being a greater asset to the community.

Add to that the fact there was considerable time and energy put into the process, Murray said, which included taking 250 groups to tour the camp including investors, work parties at the property, repaired buildings and equipment as well as hosting the church’s Fourth of July picnic there.

For as long as Real Life has existed, it has been a mobile church, in recent years meeting Sunday mornings at Kentlake High. Finding a place to call home was appealing.

During the time the church staff was researching the costs of purchasing the camp, Murray said, they were looking at possibly doing a second service because of the size of the chapel at Lake Retreat and for those who weren’t interested in doing church at the camp.

“That’s when Kevin and I renewed an old conversation about doing some things together,” Murray said. “I’d always known Kevin liked doing community stuff and international work, so, for the last two years we’ve been exploring ways to do joint ventures.”

And, over the years, the two pastors have sort of jokingly discussed merging their churches because their congregations have so much in common as Murray and Holland are alike in how they lead as pastors.

“There’s always a bit of truth in humor,” Murray said. “We’ve basically come from the same church tradition. We have the same heart. We’re both basically community guys that don’t take ourselves too seriously. At he same time we both have a love and a passion for the church and what the church can do for the community and the community can do for the church.”

That idea, though, went up on a shelf again in December 2010 when Real Life was initially approached to purchase the camp. Murray didn’t want to have the focus of the church split in two quite different directions.

In the meantime, though, they did begin working together on international projects in countries such as Bulgaria, Ghana, Turkey, India, to name a few.

“We realized this was bigger than either one of us individually,” Murray said. “It was going to need some focus and time. It had some great potential for us as churches but for us as individuals, as well.”

At the same time, Murray said, he wasn’t ready to talk about who would have what role if they did merge their churches.

“I wasn’t ready yet to not be a senior pastor and I didn’t want to assume that I would be the senior pastor,” Murray said. “Neither of us wanted to assume it. But, when (Kevin) made that decision, I thought, ‘OK, I can see a path forward with this.’”

Holland said he knew he had to address the issue, “the elephant in the room,” so to speak of who would lead the church.

During his time with CCF, he spent his first 10 years as an associate pastor and the past 24 as senior pastor, so it was time for him to let someone else lead.

“In February I began feeling strongly that it was time for me to step aside for new leadership because I want our church to stay young,” Holland said. “I shared it with my leadership team. We began talking and praying about our options. The two strongest options would be that my son Nathan would take the church or we would approach Real Life Church about merging.”

In April, not long after RLC had made an offer on Lake Retreat, Holland’s board of directors suggested he speak with Murray.

But, it wasn’t the right time.

Eventually, though, Murray went back to Holland to resume serious discussions about merging.

Both sides decided to take the summer to think it over, pray about it then talk again.

“Nathan, my son, and his wife Tiffany, said, ‘We don’t think it’s ours to take,’” Holland said. “From our side we believe merging with Real Life as a church is the way to go and everybody on our leadership team and agreed with them. All that went through my head, two great churches are even better together. For both of us it expanded our area of potential impact.”

Holland said church mergers don’t work if two weak congregations join or if a weak one becomes part of a strong one but in this case, both bring many strengths to the table which means all the ingredients are there for a successful partnership.

Members of both churches had questions, of course, regarding the continuation of events, the existence of The Storehouse, which is a food bank located on CCF’s property and operated by Holland’s wife, Meg, just as a few examples.

Once the merger is complete and official, the plan is to begin to hold services at CCF in November, though the new church will be called Real Life.

Murray said they are working on the logistics of that because fitting close to 600 people in that building could be a bit snug.

But, Murray said the way the two churches do things separately so similarly it should be an easy transition. Plus, nearly 40 percent of his congregation lives in Covington anyway so it be a shorter commute to services on Sunday mornings.

“They’re really excited,” Murray said. “The biggest thing, they’re excited to have a place to call home.”

In the end, Holland said, “We’re going to be much better for it.”