What Is the Global Council?
by David K. Bernard
Podcast recording (no venue stated in the delivered transcript)
Kind: teaching

Source: https://acts238.life/repository/sermons/david-k-bernard--what-is-the-global-council
Published by Acts 2:38 Life from the sermon transcript on that page.
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sure let me give you a little bit of background on the upci the United Pentecostal Church International Sign is a in worldwide organization we are now have some kind of presence in 199 out of 210 nations in some cases it might be just a contact a Bible study someone we've won to the Lord in other cases we might have a few churches under the supervision of a missionary uh in other cases we may have a strong National church and then finally we may have what we call a nationalized church which means the leaders are all chosen uh by the national leadership and so uh so to be an organization akin to what we have here in North America yes uh but it would be have its own Constitution its own bylaws it would adopt the international articles of Faith so we have common articles of Faith but as far as their governance they would have their own structure they would elect their own leaders and legally they would be a separate entity under the uh the nation's laws so and and by the way so I said two uh 190 199 out of 210 Nations but we also count territories for example Guam is U.S territory but it's separated and we have a work there so we count that separately and likewise Hong Kong is part of China but it has a different governance and and we have missionaries there in a way that we can't have in mainland China so we count that separately so when you count the territories I believe we're now at somewhere around 238 Nations and territories and so the the upci as such is a legal entity in the United States and Canada so we treat those two Nations as one and then most of the missionaries around the world come from the U.S and Canada so we hear from our headquarters in St Louis the um Missouri USA we oversee all the missionaries so the upci technically as a legal entity consists of the churches in the U.S and Canada the governance structure for the U.S and Canada and the oversight of all the missionaries around the world but but as Mission as churches come to maturity they establish their own Constitution their own governance elect their own leaders then technically that's a different legal organization so to keep us all in one Fellowship we have What's called the global Council

I don't know the exact number but it would be uh probably you're talking about 50 or so um and that of course that fluctuates that changes from year to year our goal is to have the each Church uh it's called the three selves uh self-governing self-supporting and self-propagating so in a national church has mature leaders and they can elect their own leaders they don't need leaders from the US and Canada that's self-governing when they're self-supporting that means they can operate their normal operations through their own tithes and offerings so they don't need us to pay salaries they don't need us to support the Bible school now we may still give special contributions on for special projects or to supplement or to help them and we may still have send missionaries not as Leaders national leaders anymore but as a teachers or facilitators but essentially they're able to support their own regular operations that's self-supporting and then self-propagating is they are growing through their own National efforts so they're planting churches they're when winning souls and again we might still have some missionaries who are helping them to evangelize or to reach new areas but we see that the National Church is able to continue growing and reaching its own country that's called self-propagating so when they've achieved those three goals then we we have a ceremony we call it nationalizing the church so go let's go back to the global Council then so each nation that has an organized work sends two delegates to the global Council it meets once every five years then in between at the two and a half year mark we have the executive Global Council which is a smaller unit that's selected from the larger group and the goal is to coordinate International efforts so um so again the delegates can come from organized works and from National nationalized work so an organized work is strong enough to have an organization but missionaries are still uh in leadership at least in part the church is still getting support from the U.S and Canada for its operations so it's not fully nationalized but it is organized so both the organized works and The nationalized Works will send delegates to the global Council now the global Council does not govern the internal structure of each Nation but rather the global Council coordinates International efforts so we coordinate International evangelism we coordinate the global Association of theological studies which consists of our Bible colleges and training seminars all across the world uh we we have policies such as the international transfer of credentials so if a minister moves from one nation to another what are the guidelines for accepting their credentials or International Ministry so let's say someone has a contact in another Nation they want to start a church well they need to go get approval from that country where they're wanting to start a church not just from their home country so we have policies of for International Ministry International transfer of credentials we have judicial procedure so what if a minister in one country does something allegedly wrong in another country or what if a church in one country has an accusation or complaint or at least a grievance against a church minister of another country well how do we handle that internationally and as I mentioned earlier the international articles of faith we have articles of faith in the U.S and Canada but some of them have statements that are more relative to our culture such as public schools and things that would relate to the North American context so we have the international articles of faith is very similar but it just omits a few paragraphs that don't that are not Doctrine primary Doctrine in nature but would a deal with once a certain cultural or governmental issues but not others and so the international articles of Faith would have 95 percent but all the nations of the world vote on on those and have and have voters have adopted them so what we're trying to do with the global council is even as each nation has its own National Church with its own governance its own legal status and could operate independently for everybody else but the global Council organizes us on the basis of Fellowship first and foremost doctrinal Unity then our in International Evangelistic efforts our international prayer the world network of prayer things that we all cooperate on together and what we're also trying to do is create a culture so if there's a problem in one country technically that nation is an independent nation in that National Church is a self-governing church but yet the influence of the International Fellowship can help guide that that Nation that's going through a struggle so that instead of it looking like or being that well someone in the U.S is dictating to someone another country no it's the whole world in a consensus saying this is what we believe or these are our best practices or these are problems and we would like to help you with those problems and that has really come to pass that as there have been issues in different nations we don't go in there if the church already has national government we don't go in there and try to tell them what to do but we can't advise them we can't come alongside to help them we can share this is the consensus of the international body in situations like this and that has proven very helpful to create that International Fellowship camaraderie maintaining doctrinal Integrity maintaining our teachings of Holiness maintaining uh standards for our ministry as far as what is appropriate for ministerial ethics and ministerial life all those things are strengthened because we have a global Council and so we're coming the exciting thing for the first time ever we're coming to the U.S we're coming to the St Louis area and so many of our national leaders will get to see our headquarters we'll get to see the urchin college and urson graduate school campus the center for the study of one is Pentecostalism with the Historic Museum and archives so they'll get a better picture and appreciation of our International efforts now uh right now the chair of the global council is the general superintendent of the upci because we're the mother Church the other churches have all come out of the mission's efforts of the mother church and they still look to us in that way um the the co-chair is the director of global missions but we elect a secretary from the various regions they rotate from the regions of the world so this is a way to incorporate leadership from outside the U.S and Canada and I think one day when almost all the churches would be nationalized we would probably rotate the chairmanship as well but right now we haven't gotten that far and even most of the Nations that are nationalized would prefer a leader from the North American church because they look to us as as the world leaders but but we're we're really evolving into a truly International Fellowship and as one practical example of that is missionaries we now have I don't know the latest statistics but I think it's 60 or more what we call Regional missionaries they are not from the U.S and Canada but they're from another Nation like Madagascar going to another country in Africa or Brazil going to portuguese-speaking Nations uh around the world and or one nation of Europe to another another nation of Europe so that's another purpose of the global council is to coordinate International missions efforts and so even though the vast majority of missions efforts the finances and the personal have historically come from the U.S and Canada that's gradually changing so that missions efforts are truly International from one nation to another so that we're coming becoming a truly International Fellowship so so let me contrast this with a hierarchical church like the Roman Catholic Church well the pope is the head and he appoints all the Bishops all over the world in regards to what nation they're in the Vatican controls the governance from A to Z we're not like that we're self-governing we're more on the model of what you might call the United Nations where each member nation is Sovereign well in our case each church is self-governing but we're different from the U.N in that we have common values and common uh Doctrine a common lifestyle we all get along a lot better we all get along a lot better and there's a much closer inner working because as I said we have missionaries now not only from North America from other countries and so we're interwoven um so that's why somebody might ask well your general board why don't you have people from other nations of the world well actually the general board is for the U.S and Canada and uh Great Britain and Ireland they have a general board and uh you know uh Brazil they have a general board but what unites all of us uh around the world is the global Council

I can give you some highlights our biggest National Church which probably has even exceeded the amount of constituents in in the U.S would be the Philippines they have over 1 million constituents now when we say constituents uh we're counting uh all those who identify with the church even if they don't regularly attend and the reason why we do that that's our reach that's our influence and if you wanted to compare what we're doing with what the Baptists are doing what the Catholics are doing they would count everybody that ever got baptized whether they go to church or not well our constituents numbers will be much more closely aligned to the numbers for actually attending those who baptized in Jesus name receiving the Holy Ghost so the Philippines will be our number one uh Nation with well over a million estimated constituents and the place where we have the largest concentration of constituents in the whole world is in Northeast India in that we have in in India we actually have three different units because India is such a big nation with different uh tribes and languages so we actually have three National organizations but the upci of Northeast India the core of that is this the state of mizoram the Miso people and mizoram has perhaps about 700 000 in the population and over 70 000 United Pentecostal constituents so there we have 10 of the population of the state identifies with the United Pentecostal Church that's the highest concentration of any in the world any other National works that stand out uh Uganda in East Africa is perhaps um and again I'd have to look at the statistics because they can change but possibly our most rapidly growing uh in in maybe 25 years ago we had a very small constituency now we have one of the largest in the world uh well over two hundred thousand uh Madagascar is another example of rapid growth over somewhat longer time but well over 200 000 constituents our largest constituency in South America is Venezuela where we have over 400 000 and even though the economies in shambles the government is socialist and uh there's you know it's a very difficult to operate yet the churches and and many people have immigrated out of the nation because of economic hardship still we have a rapidly growing church so I'm just giving you some of our numeric the largest Brazil is also over two hundred thousand what's interesting about that we're heavily concentrated in the Amazon basis uh in manaus which is kind of the the the capital of the Amazon region we have many churches thousands of Believers and of course that was pioneered by brother and sister de Merchant but as I mentioned earlier uh Brazil is Portuguese speaking so with since the Brazilian church is so strong it has National leadership and they have missionaries so almost if not every country now I think in every portuguese-speaking nation around the world uh we now have um Believers I think maybe there's one more we're trying to open there's one remaining uh small country in in Africa they were trying to open but most of those have been opened or assisted by people from Brazil