Quote:
Originally Posted by TrueNorth
I will try to respond to some of your points.
Whether in Canada or the US evangelism and planting churches is a district operation, not national. As you know Home Missionaries are approved by their districts before receiving funding. Having a national organization will not jump start the process.
In my opinion the UPCI has one of the better Missions programs in existence. Currently with the joint venture working as it is Canadian Missionaries receive tremendous benefit. Why change it now?
Canadians may want on one level to be a separate organization however on a practical level there are benefits to remaining as part of the UPCI. A separate organization creates another level of bureaucracy with all of it's attendant costs.
I don't know very many Canadian ministers or leaders who are dependent on Hazelwood for much of anything. I do think Canadians are realists - recognizing that the united thrusts of evangelism and missions that we share with our US brothers and sisters are more effective than what we can do on our own.
It might just be me, but I don't see the ACOP as being a shining example of a Canadian success story. It has neither a great organized missions program or coordinated Home Missions program and remains primarily a western organization with no clear definition of what it is.
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I can see the present benefit of belonging to a larger organization. It's like Atlantic Canada being the "have not" provinces that they are relying on the rest of Canada to provide them with the benefits that Canadians in other provinces enjoy.
While I agree that the ACOP has an identity problem, I have to disagree with what seems to be a deficient knowledge of their missions program. I was quite impressed actually with what is a strong missions emphasis with very active involvement in missions on the local level. You can't judge their progam by what flows through Calgary. For example, our church sent perhaps $50,000 - $60,000 to Calgary last year, yet we gave around $100,000 to missions. I think you would be surprised at the depth of their missionary involvement.