This Library contains documents from all recent United Church governance meetings, including General Council and its Executive. It also includes “Our Beliefs Explained” official policy documents dating back several decades. If you can't find something you think should be included, contact gcbusiness@united-church.ca.
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The Call to Ministry is a sacred trust. The covenant of Ordered Ministry is Celebrated in sacred ceremony. In addition to this covenant, members of the order of ministry are also employees who deserve the rights and privileges of all workers in any station of life.
That the 41st General Council 2012, in order to continue the work of the Beaconsfield Initiative in the Cordillera region in the Philippines, direct the Executive of the General Council and General Secretary, General Council to:
Since at least 2010, the Manual has stated that ministry personnel not in a call or appointment in a pastoral charge, community of faith, paid accountable ministry, or recognized ministry must be in “formal association” with a pastoral charge/community of faith in order to carry out the “functions of ministry.”
The Pacific Mountain Regional Council is aware that those in ordered ministries have their salaries and benefits continued for 6-months if they die while in ministry. However, this policy does not apply to the General Council staff. Salary and benefits terminate immediately at the time of death.
WHEREAS The United Church of Canada, through its Commission on Christian Marriage and Divorce, has encouraged frank discussion of such subjects as sex, marriage and relationships between men and women, on a high level of respect for the dignity of these relationships as given of God to mankind, and particularly in order that youth may be properly instructed in such matters; and
Ministry personnel who are order of ministry and are appointed to administrative positions in the General Council and regional council offices (Manual section I.1.2.5) retain ministry personnel status and accountability to the Office of Vocation for compliance with the Ethical Standards and Standards of Practice for Ministry Personnel. Appointments to staff positions can be without term; the General Council and regional council offices are considered ministry sites.
We have witnessed in real time genocide against the people of Gaza - an atrocity that has challenged our morality, ethics and ultimately our theology. As we have watched this horror unfold, many have come to realize that the international rules-based order as well as many theological understandings that emerged after World War II now lay in ruin under the rubble of Gaza.
In 2021, the Ministry Streams task group submitted a report and proposal, “Ministry Leadership to Meet the Needs of the Church in the 2020s”, which acknowledged and commissioned the church to address the reality that United Church of Canada communities of faith are on the whole smaller, older, and less able to employ paid ministry personnel, making ordered ministry a less viable profession and lay leadership burdened by professional standards of accountability.
THEREFORE we call on the church to renounce its alliances with security and power; to name with courage the forces that militate for death and against life; to repent and to call for repentance all in the church who have allowed the longing for security to replace the love of freedom; optimism to replace hope, and fear to overcome faith. We call on the governments of the nations for an immediate end to the arms race, and to the production and deployment of nuclear weapons. We call instead for a serious commitment to a just social order with freedom and wholeness for all.
