Big Brother's Syndrome: They Shall Know You By ...

[DAII]

Here's the crazy thing ... TW is slamming the national works that have kept the "brand name" but if memory serves when Stairs left the org ... he started a separate mission board that ... I believe retained the United Pentecostal Church name in Canada .... along with the United Pentecostal Church of Colombia ...

The two splinter groups commissioned Larsen and his own dad, Bill Drost ... who left the International ... during the Canadian/Colombian rift of the mid 1960's ...

Stairs and several of the Canadian brethren left because they were discontent with percentage of money that missionaries were getting ...

Sociologist Cornelia Butler Flora writes in her book Pentecostalism in Colombia, Baptism by Spirit and Fire:

Division in the United Pentecostal Church in North America affected Colombian Pentecostals. Brother Stairs, of the Canadian Branch of the United Pentecostal Church, led a separation movement of Canadian churches from the parent body.

A separate Canadian mission board was set up. The Larsens, in Colombia, and the Drosts, now in Uruguay, went with the Canadian branch of the church, becoming their missionaries, financially dependent upon them instead of the United States. The Thompson and Morleys stayed with the U.S. branch of the church. The U.S. church was given Colombia as a missions field. The Canadians began urging the Colombian Pentecostals to separate for the United States, make themselves independent and join in partnership with the Canadians.

Nationalization allowed the Colombian Church to work more closely with the Canadians. Conflict ensued between the Canadian and American interests in Colombia, the former being represented by the Larsens and the latter by the Thompsons and the Morleys.

The Larsen's daughter married a Colombian believer, and together with the Drosts and another Colombian couple were the first Latin American missionaries to Spain, funded jointly by the Colombian and Canadian United Pentecostal Churches.

The new constitution that came with nationalization relegated the missionaries that were in Colombia to an advisory role and explicitly forbade new foreign missionaries to enter the country. The missionaries were now to report their actions to the national junta, which would then decide whether or not the missionaries could go ahead with their proposed projects (pg 64).

source:
http://books.google.com/books?id=8MC...larsen&f=false

This would appear to be an indictment of his own father and Wynn Stairs, as well ... for using the UPC name.

In the coming days I hope to get my hands on primary documents that show the work in Canada used this name.