Corporate body

United Church of Canada, Saskatchewan Conference

1925–2018

The United Church of Canada was formed in 1925, from a union of the Congregational Union of Canada, the Methodist Church and 70% of the Presbyterian Church in Canada, along with a number of churches organized under the General Council of Local Union Churches (mostly in Western Canada). Saskatchewan Conference was one of eleven regional Conferences established by the United Church of Canada General Council, at their inaugural meeting, in June 1925. Initially, the Conference contained 16 presbyteries but this number varied, in the years that followed.

In January 2019, as part of a larger restructuring of the United Church of Canada, Saskatchewan Conference and its seven existing presbyteries were combined into a single entity, initially identified as Region 4 and later renamed Living Skies Regional Council.

Terms for Church Union were set out in the "Basis of Union" (document), drafted by the Joint Union Committee in 1908 and revised through negotiation between the uniting denominations. The United Church of Canada Act was passed by the Parliament of Canada, in 1924, and related legislation from provincial governments, including Saskatchewan, followed soon after. Saskatchewan Conference was officially created by motion of the United Church First General Council (seventeenth session), in 1925.

Rules for governance are set out in the United Church of Canada Manual, which was first written in 1925 and has been revised several times since then.

The Conference was an administrative grouping of presbyteries (or districts), governed by a court of lay and ministerial delegates from presbyteries and pastoral charges. Traditionally, this court met yearly (at the Annual Meeting or "Conference") and an elected Conference Executive Committee governed between meetings. Conference office staff worked with committees, presbyteries and charges on a variety of tasks.

The term "Conference" had multiple meanings in the United Church, both administrative and geographic. It often referred to one of the eleven to thirteen regional governing bodies within the United Church of Canada (from 1925 to 2018) classified as Conferences, which made up one of the "court" levels of the Church, alongside the (national) General Council, and the various Presbyteries or Districts that made up each Conference. The regular (often annual) meeting of the court of lay and ministerial delegates from presbyteries and pastoral charges could also be referred to as the Conference. The term also sometimes meant the geographical area containing pastoral charges and presbyteries overseen and served by a particular Conference.

SCNUCSC

Draft

2017: drafted for SAIN;
2018-2019: revised.

• English

United Church of Canada, "Manual" (2016); United Church Year Books; Saskatchewan Conference Records of Proceedings.