After extensive consultations across the church, the interim report from
the Boundaries Commission is proposing 17 regional councils be
established on January 1, 2019, if Remit 1 (Three Council Model) is
passed at the 43rd General Council in July 2018.
Please see the full report and related maps on
united-church.ca.
One significant early decision of the Commission was to honour a request
from the Caretakers of Our Indigenous Circle. They had prepared the
“Calls to the Church” document regarding the future place of the
Indigenous Church within The United Church of Canada (pages 56‒67 of the
complete
GCE Workbook November 18-20 2017.
Consistent with these Calls, the Caretakers asked the Commission to
honour the intent of the Indigenous Church to engage in a distinct
process to decide their relationships within the new church structure.
Feedback and suggestions on this interim decision will be accepted until
January 31, 2018, at
remits@united-church.ca.
If any church court (pastoral charge, presbytery, Conference) has a
suggestion for a specific change, that court’s governing body must pass a
motion naming the requested change. The motion can then be e-mailed to
regchange@united-church.ca
by January 31, 2018. The Commission will receive and study all feedback
and make decisions on all the requested changes. It will release its
final report no later than March 15, 2018, outlining the final
boundaries of the new regional councils.
Boundaries Commission Chairperson, the Rev. Andrew Richardson, will host
a YouTube Live event on the Commission’s processes on January 15, 2018:
10:00 a.m. PST; 11:00 a.m. MST; 12:00 noon CST; 1:00 p.m. EST; 2:00
p.m. AST; 2:30 p.m. NST. It will be recorded and available on
www.youtube.com/unitedchurchofcanada.
