Organization
The basic governmental structure of the UPCI is congregational. Local churches are autonomous, electing their own pastors and other leaders, owning their own property, deciding their own budgets, establishing their membership, and conducting all necessary local business. The central organization embraces a modified presbyterian system: ministers meet in sectional, district, and general conferences to elect officers and to conduct the church's affairs. The annual General Conference is the highest authority in the UPCI, with power to determine articles of faith, elect officers and determine policy. A General Superintendent is elected to preside over the church as a whole. On October 1, 2009, Dr. David K. Bernard was announced as the new General Superintendent.
Ministers at all levels are allowed to marry and have children, but homosexuality is forbidden.
According to the UPCI, in the United States and Canada it has grown from 521 member churches in 1946 to 4,305 churches in 2011, with 9,193 ministers. The UPCI has a presence in 193 other nations with 34,133 licensed ministers, 19,686 churches and meeting places, 748 missionaries, and a foreign membership of about 2.2 million. Total worldwide membership, including North America, is estimated at 3,000,000.
Read more about this topic: United Pentecostal Church International
Famous quotes containing the word organization:
“Democracy means the organization of society for the benefit and at the expense of everybody indiscriminately and not for the benefit of a privileged class.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“The newly-formed clothing unions are ready to welcome her; but woman shrinks back from organization, Heaven knows why! It is perhaps because in organization one find the truest freedom, and woman has been a slave too long to know what freedom means.”
—Katharine Pearson Woods (1853–1923)
“I will never accept that I got a free ride. It wasn’t free at all. My ancestors were brought here against their will. They were made to work and help build the country. I worked in the cotton fields from the age of seven. I worked in the laundry for twenty- three years. I worked for the national organization for nine years. I just retired from city government after twelve-and-a- half years.”
—Johnnie Tillmon (b. 1926)