During a regularly scheduled meeting, December 4, 2018, the Upper Columbia Conference executive committee voted an official conference position banning activities of the group calling themselves the World Church Affirmation Sabbath (WCAS).
Following a thoughtful and open discussion of the distractions being created in UCC churches as a result of WCAS activities and actions, the conference executive committee overwhelmingly voted to ban WCAS public or private activities from UCC churches, schools and property. Furthermore, UCC pulpits are not to be used to promote the WCAS or their divisive agenda.
“We do not have time for false alarms that divide our members” said Elder Minner Labrador, Jr., Upper Columbia Conference president. “The true emergency we face as a church is our low growth rate. We have a vital work to do both in sharing the gospel and in seeking to bring back our missing members.”
A document outlining the conference position on the WCAS and its activities was shared with pastors and church leaders across the conference.
Read the statement here:
This article was written by Jay Wintermeyer, assistant to the president for communication in the Upper Columbia Conference. It originally appeared on the conference website and is republished here with permission.
Image courtesy of Upper Columbia Conference.
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It’s great to see Upper Columbia Conference take a strong stand on divisive independent ministries who fuel and drive dissention against established church doctrines like FB 14.
Excellent response. However, I think this one sentence was entirely too gracious, “We do not impugn the WCAS members’ motives or character or their desire to serve the mission of our church.” Jesus told us that we could judge a prophet by his fruit. The fruit of these types of groups is always rotten. If you have to meet in secret for any purpose other than worship, under threat of persecution, then what you are doing is probably not being prompted by the Spirit of God, which is not a Spirit of fear, but of power, love, and self-control.
My dog is well aware of what to do if any of those fanatics, self-appointed church police, shows up at my door.
They should just be kicked out if they show up at any Union, Conference, Church, or church member home.
They all should be given a T-shirt with “PERSONA NON GRATA” stamped on both front and back!
I don’t understand why the UCC is so agitated over the WCAS. Why can’t we get alone together and be tolerant of each other? Why are we tearing each other apart? Such actions that the UCC has taken will only widen the breach between leadership and lay members, between liberals and conservatives. In the end the leadership creates a loss of membership and trust, a decline in tithe–just what the WCC doesn’t wants. ,
On their Web page they say:
World Church Affirmation Sabbath (WCAS) exists to affirm the leadership of the General Conference and the beliefs of the Seventh-day Adventist Church around the world.
We affirm these beliefs in accordance with the teachings of the Holy Bible and the writings of Ellen G. White.
We share this mission with like-minded Adventists who choose to stand for these beliefs and share the Three Angel’s Messages with the world; that the world may become of Christ convicted, to Christ committed, for Christ compelled.
Well, a male Labrador started the job. I think my little female Chihuahua will be able to finish it by scaring out those chickens. If they go after women…, they must not be that great fighters…
You are trying (hard) to be nice to the GC…
Do you think that this GC would skip any such opportunity to have a militia like that working for free on behalf of the GC’s most important cause (ministry)? I bet the GC already welcomed those people aboard!!!
Sure I, along with millions, hold to the equality of women in spiritual leadership. The problem is both sides of the equity issue–have become intolerant. We have lost the art of great leadership, which seeks to find ways for each side to work together, although they disagree. For both viewpoints to make room for the other, on issues that cannot be clearly supported by Scriptures.
The issue I am very concerned is that institualized Conference offices, due to salary and power-positions, will form a wall around themselves to destroy all who refuse to conform to their authority. It is death to all non-conformity. Trouble makers must be dealt with, maybe as in the case of Katherine Finch who “spoke against the magistrates, against the Churches, and against the Elders” and was ordered whipped on October 10, 1638 in Boston. Fleeing from the church are true visionary leaders-- Roger Williams and Ann Hutchinson.
Harrpa –
Don’t forget the lady from the Michigan Conference who said the same thing at an
event at Andrews. It has been quite a while ago, but was posted on Spectrum. And
I believe there was a Video of her talk available at the time.
Yes, WOMEN IN POWER has been termed Spiritualism by several prominent persons.
We have had Brain Washing of the pew sitter for a long time now.
Cant recall her name.
Bohr
Doug B.
3ABN has not been all that passive on the issue of Women In Power.
It is evident that the opposing sides are politically motivated.
Whereas the UCC banned the WCAS, thereby utilizing political measures to silence non-conformity to its own non-conformity, the WCAS exists, by its own admission, firstly “to affirm the leadership of the General Conference”, a political posture of its own. They are really both propaganda machines masquerading under the banner of Christ, one suddenly crying foul, declaring, “We have a vital work to do … in sharing the gospel” and the other plastering on to their lofty motto, “of Christ convicted, to Christ committed, for Christ compelled”. It’s a bitter struggle between camps of men striving for power, a proxy war of sorts.
But each day, and moment by moment, the Holy Spirit is quietly, tirelessly working through the lives of the humble to lift the burdens of life and give hope to the weary, gathering a people to God for that Great Day when He shall appear.
I am really saddened by where our church is. Can’t our leaders see that we need to humble ourselves NOT the other side. Can’t someone negotiate a cease fire for a few years on this issue? We have an enemy, and it’s not other church members.
This quote was in today’s Sabbath School lesson:
“When the laborers have an abiding Christ in their own souls, when all selfishness is dead, when there is no rivalry, no strife for the supremacy, when oneness exists, when they sanctify themselves, so that love for one another is seen and felt, then the showers of the grace of the Holy Spirit will just as surely come upon them as that God’s promise will never fail in one jot or tittle. But when the work of others is discounted, that the workers may show their own superiority, they prove that their own work does not bear the signature it should. God cannot bless them.” - Manuscript 24, 1896. 1SM 175.2
Steve,
Aren’t you referring to Laurel Damsteegt who spoke at one of those meetings against WO a few years ago that were sponsored by Bachelor, Bohr, etc?
That was, indeed, outrageous.
No, not so far. Neither side shown even one great leader that can bring healing to an increasingly divided church and suspension of judgment. The leadership seems to want to fight to the last man standing. The remnant is being torn apart, not by Rome or Sunday advocates, but through warring factions inside the church. Rome is no longer our common enemy–we are becoming enemies to one another of like faith.
