What, after all, is Apollos? And what is Paul? Only servants, through whom you came to believe as the Lord has assigned to each his task. I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God made it grow. So, neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow. The man who plants and the man who waters have one purpose, and each will be rewarded according to his own labor. For we are God's fellow workers; you are God's field, God's building.
(1 Corinthians 3:5-9 NIV)

As I sit down to write this report, Cindy and I have just returned from attending church on the island of St. Lucia, in the West Indies.  We are on holidays, but I looked up the Pentecostal Assemblies of the West Indies (PAWI) and found Bethel Tabernacle.  The church is celebrating 50 years since it was founded.  In 1968, Jack and Daisy Keys together with Holmes Williams conducted a series of crusades on the island and Bethel was birthed.  This morning a vibrant congregation of about 500 people worshipped in two services. The preaching was biblical, the worship was God focused and the fellowship was warm and joyful. Quite a few young people responded to the invitation to receive salvation at the close of the service. We can count the seeds planted by our pioneer missionaries, but we cannot measure the fruit, for it is God who gives the increase.

The Principle of Alignment

In writing to the church in Corinth, Paul reminds us that our mission must be aligned to God’s mission. God asked the church in Antioch to set apart Paul and Barnabas for the “work to which I have called them” (Acts 13:2). The work was first God’s work and then Paul’s work.  Human tendency is to pray for great ‘outcomes’ as we do our work and focus on the things we want accomplished. However, when Jesus prayed, his mind was focused on ‘alignment’ to God’s work: Not what I will but what You will.   ‘Alignment’ calls us to surrender our ambitions, dreams, plans and strategies to what God is doing, in contrast to what we think God should do and what we want to do. We must align ourselves with Him in His work and when we do, we can rejoice in the planting, the watering and the harvesting.

Our Story

As we, the PAOC, begin our Centenary year as a fellowship, I wish to honour the missionaries who laid the foundations and worked in God’s field, ensuring the incredible harvest that we have witnessed over these 100 years. As noted in 1914, by J Roswell Flower, the first editor of the Evangel, “when the Holy Spirit comes into our hearts, the missionary spirit comes in with it; they are inseparable, as the missionary spirit is but one of the fruits of the Holy Spirit.  Carrying the gospel to hungry souls in this and other lands is but a natural result of receiving the baptism of the Holy Spirit.” Pentecost and Mission belong together and you cannot understand the DNA and history of our fellowship without understanding its missionary vision and work. We are and always have been a missionary movement.

Shortly after the Azusa Street revival, Canadians obeyed the missionary call and left Canada for the nations. In 1908, Charles and Emma Chawner left for South Africa, Arthur and Jessie Atter for China and Barbara Johnston of Sarnia, Ontario travelled to India. Within a few short years, others travelled to nations like Liberia, Egypt, Tanganyika, Kenya, Argentina and the West Indies.  Collaborating for mission was a prime motivating reason for the founding of the Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada in 1919 as a fellowship of affiliated, self-governing churches. Over the last 100 years, we have sent over 3000 full-time global workers who worked with thousands of fellow believers in over 80 countries. Over 50,000 churches have been planted and 40,000 leaders have been equipped. Over the years our missionaries established over 50 Bible Colleges and multiple social ministries that served the vulnerable and marginalized in society. They lived out an integral, justice oriented understanding of God’s purposes and heart. The ministries and churches established by our Global Workers are almost all self-sustaining, self-governing, self-propagating and are now active in sending their own missionaries to the ends of the earth.

We are very thankful to God for the incredible impact our fellowship has had around the world. We can be proud of the men and women who have represented us to the nations, for they were sacrificial, creative and faithful in their service to God. We are also thankful for the legacies our local churches across Canada have built by sending their best, giving their first-fruits, and keeping the missional spirit thriving in their congregations. As we enter our second century we have much to be thankful for. 

Personnel

This vital missionary spirit is evident in the continued growth of our Global Worker Family. Since my last report we have added a net of six global workers into ministerial vocational (MV) appointment to the field. In addition, we continue to facilitate the sending of Global Professionals and Mid-Term Workers (MTM). Billy Graham noted that “one of the next great moves of God is going to be through believers in the work place”. We desire to facilitate the sending of teachers, business persons, medical personnel, tradespersons, consultants and people from every walk of life. Reaching hard places will require those called to go and dwell amongst the unreached, bearing witness while they work. With respect to our Global Family, let me note two important facts. First, we have experienced heightened attrition over the last two years primarily due to the retirement of long standing global workers. I would like to mention, Bev Pharand, Helen McMinn, and Marylin Bush, who have faithfully served for a combined 105 years. Many of those who have retired continue to serve as part-time volunteers thereby retaining their experience and wisdom. Second, there has been a strategic shift towards the 10/40 window and the unreached, unengaged people of the world. In the last two years, we deployed an additional 10 workers to restricted access nations. In addition, we have moved our Africa office to Ethiopia with a view to reach North Africa.

3.1 Billion

While we can take heart in the 100 years of incredible Kingdom impact, we must never be satisfied! 3.1 billion people remain part of unreached people groups as defined by the Joshua project. These billions have little or no access to the gospel and as Oswald J. Smith noted, why should some hear the gospel twice when many have never heard it once. As we enter our second centenary, that same missionary spirit that sent our founders to the nations must continue to motivate us, for we must serve God in our own generation. The work that our Lord gave to the church remains unfinished.

Operations

Income

2017 donations reached a total of $20.8 Million (Including RAN and Mission Link) designated towards global workers, projects and partnerships. In addition, ERDO, Villages of Hope and Asian Outreach received an additional $12.7 Million for a total of $32.5 Million in Mission Giving to our PAOC mission. Donations from churches and individuals increased slightly for a combined growth of 2% per year. Because net deployments and funding growth are correlated, in years with higher than average net attrition, we experience limited revenue growth and 2017 was one such year. Nevertheless, the continued generosity of the Canadian church anchors the shared ministry account of our workers and we celebrate the faithfulness of these partnerships.  The result is that only 6% of our Global Workers began 2018 with a deficit in their accounts. However, many are still not fully funded and are making sacrifices to ensure that they do not incur debt.  I remain convinced that as a Canadian church, we still have the capacity for increased investment in God’s Mission in the world today.

Missional Family

* To avoid counting a donation twice, anything initially received by IM but allocated towards another charity within the Missional Family was deducted from the IM total income

** RPEC International is our US Charity and the amounts reflected are in USD

* This income total reflects all donations directly received by IM whether allocated to another charity within the missional family

Where Most Needed

When we made the shift to Shared-Funding from a Central-Funding model, it gave the missions department a new lease on life. With our churches more engaged, we overcame a decade of stagnation and much of our current growth and the expanding impact internationally are linked to this change. However, one of the effects was that central discretionary funds decreased. This impacts our ability to work with international partners, to respond to opportunities that may not have a Global Worker champion and to assist our Global Workers when they face financial challenges. Our Where Most Needed (WMN) fund is one of the ways we bridge this gap.

Last year, we provided $245,000 in commitments around the world that otherwise would not have been resourced. For example, we supported the Middle East and Egypt Theological Seminary which trains leaders and church planters for the Middle East and North Africa focused on the Muslim world. We also funded an outreach to Islamic people in Central India, supported the training of pastors and leaders in colleges in the Ukraine, Zimbabwe and provided funds for radio outreach in Thailand.

If your church mission budget does not include a contribution to WMN funding, I encourage you to consider including it as a part of your contribution to International Missions. Where Most Needed Funding is critical to responding to open doors that God places before us.

Expenses

Our costs for administration, development and member care as a percentage of gross income remains well below industry standards. Our administrative costs, including resource development are only 10% of total revenue. An additional 3% is expensed from the department directly on member care, training and programming such as GlobalED, the Zoe Network and Mission and Kids.  87% of revenue was directly expensed for ministry work on the field, which includes our global workers, ministry programs and partners all around the world.  I also want to commend our Global Workers for managing within the income they received and for adjusting expenses to help minimize potential deficits. I want to thank each Global Worker for their good stewardship; we continue to pray for increase for every budget as we note the sacrifices they have made to ensure they remain debt free. I would also like to thank the staff that serves on the “Home Team” at International Missions, ERDO, RAN, Villages of Hope and PAOC Fellowship Services, for providing excellent and efficient support services to our Global Workers. 

Closing Remarks         

Let me thank all those who participated in the Points of Light Sundays. This initiative is primarily a visionary prayer. Jesus instructed us to pray for workers in the harvest field. In the next five years let us collectively ask the God of the Harvest for 100 new Global Workers to send primarily to the unreached 3.1 billion people with little or no access to the gospel.

North Africa, South East Asia, India, Central Asia, the Middle East and much of post-Christian Europe must be the burden of our hearts and minds. In addition, we will continue to encourage and partner with our African, Asian and Latin American fellowships to send their own workers to unreached nations.  Countries like Brazil, Mozambique, Kenya and Cuba are actively preparing and sending workers into hard places. Workers are going from every nation to every nation as God empowers his church. We must work collaboratively with God’s people everywhere.

Back to my holidays.  Much to the amusement of my wife Cindy, as we landed on the various islands of the Caribbean I would look up the local Pentecostal Assemblies of the West Indies (PAWI) church and go “walk about” to visit the pastor.  I found the People’s Cathedral in Barbados and Saint John’s Pentecostal Church in Antigua. PAOC Global Workers were part of the history of all these churches.  Names like Marion Parkinson, Jack and Aleta Piper, and Jack and Daisy Keys are integral to the church planting work.  They had all worked in God’s field and they left a great legacy. I would also find the names of West Indian workers who served alongside our PAOC workers. People like Dennis and Esther White, Trevor and Calma Campbell and Winston and Gloria Broomes. The West Indies became a missionary sending fellowship.

We are and always have been a church planting, multiplying, Spirit-led and vital fellowship.  Where God is at work, where life and health are present, things grow and multiply.

All over the world this gospel is bearing fruit and growing, just as it has been doing among you since the day you heard it and understood God's grace in all its truth. (Colossians 1:6 NIV)

Respectfully submitted,

D. Murray Cornelius, Executive Director of International Missions.