Quote:
Originally Posted by Truly Blessed
The UPC of Canada is roughly the same size as the ACOP, perhaps a little bit smaller. We seem to function very well on a national level. I personally believe an independent Canadian organization would serve the best interest of future growth in the Canadian church.
I would be interested in specific commentary on the points I have made in the earlier post. Why would Canadians not want to be a national body like every other UPC cosnstituency? Have they become so dependent upon Hazelwood that they simply don't believe in their own potential?
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This is purely an academic discussion for me, but one that interests me enough that I'll play devil's advocate for the sake of conversation.
The first point that should be clarified is that Canada is not a mission field to be nationalized, but a partner in the UPCI. The UPCI is not an American organization, but a joint Canadian/American organization.
It could as easily be argued that the American churches need to be nationalized as to argue for the nationalization of the Canadian churches. The UPCI is an international organization, not a national body.
Removing the Canadian component from the UPCI would limit opportunity for Canadian missionaries. There are 15+ Canadian missionaries in the UPCI, with an approximate total annual budget of 1.8+ million Canadian dollars. The total Missions giving for the Canadian churches, for the last year reported on UPCI.org was 1.2 million Canadian dollars. Canada does not produce enough missions revenue to fund Canadian missionaries.
An independent UPCC would be faced with the choice of reducing the number of missionaries, or slashing the budgets of the existing missionaries.