***** (continued)
In the process we are in touch with our ServeBeyond Director, who was not consulted when this decision was made by the EFCC Executive Director and Board.

The reason for the layoffs has to do with the unavailability of liability insurance for overseas ServeBeyond missionaries. If any abuse cases arise overseas the EFCC, Board, and Board members have no legal protection and can easily be sued. This is the case only if EFCC/ServeBeyond has salaried workers. So the Board’s solution was to lay off salaried missionaries and retain only non-salaried “agents” or “contractors.”

There has been plenty of pushback from missionaries to this decision to lay off salaried missionaries by April 30, 2025 and retain only non-salaried “agents,” including non-Canadian residents.

See here for Jan. 16 letter from ServeBeyond Regional Coordinators to EFCC Board.
And see here for Jan. 16 letter from ServeBeyond Regional Coordinators to EFCC churches.

Reasons for pushback include: (1) this major decision was made only by the EFCC Board rather than at an EFCC Annual General Meeting. (2) Other mission agencies in Canada have found a solution to the same problem, and to which we are now told to transfer. (3) Missionaries need more time to make that transfer (Dec 31, 2025 is more realistic). But most importantly…

This decision invalidates the very purpose of the EFCC international mission arm.

The EFCC launched its mission agency in the mid-1980’s to be autonomous from the EFC of America so that we could send out our own salaried people into missions (Mt. 9:37-38, 28:18-20, Jn. 20:21, Acts 1:8). A mission agency that no longer sends its own salaried "flesh and blood" into international missions does not deserve to be called a mission.

Dale's father, Lea Little, was the founding EFCC mission director. He has been called the father of Canadian Free Church missions by Arvid Olson in his book, The Historical Development of the Evangelical Free Church of Canada Missions. From Lea Little’s time as the first EFCC Missions Director and others b like Arvid Olson, the very heartbeat of the EFCC mission has been to send out its own salaried workers.

For example, Calvin Hanson in his 1984 book, From Hardship to Harvest: The Development of the Evangelical Free Church of Canada, states “In recent years, more than any one individual, God has used Lea Little as a gadfly to provoke the Canadian Free Church into examining its denominational loyalty in relation to overseas missions… As Director Lea Little continues to challenge the EFCC not only to send out workers into the worldwide harvest field, but to pull its fair share of the missionary load.” (pp. 209-210) At the time significant funding for EFCC missionaries was coming from EFCA churches.

As another example, and an ironic one, Bill Taylor in his 2007 book, From Infancy to Adolescence: The Evangelical Free Church of Canada, 1984-2005, states “McKinley [EFC of Canada Mission Director at the time] believes that Lea Little’s legacy was to increase Canadian ownership of global missions and fields.” (p. 200) Is it possible that because Taylor has led the charge to push through this EFCC Board decision, as a historian in his book he chooses to hide his own position or intention behind the statements he quotes from others? Have EFCC churches in general and Taylor in particular not ever really wanted to own the international mission arm of the EFCC? I ask that because under his leadership...

The purpose of the EFCC international mission arm to send out its own salaried people has been abandoned.

I am saddened to see this dissolution and deconstruction of EFCC’s ServeBeyond. Could it be that this decision portends the decline of the EFCC itself? Because of Taylor’s historical awareness, it is not possible that current EFCC leaders have forgotten that mission was the heartbeat not only of its missionary leaders but also of EFCC’s founding leaders like the brothers Carl Fosmark and Lee Fosmark, after which the EFCC office building at TWU is named. It seems more likely that there is a hidden agenda at work. The heavy handed manner ServeBeyond missionaries, Director, and International Missions Committee have been treated in the EFCC Board's decision making process only increases my suspicion of that. If there is another agenda at play, then this decision has been communicated to ServeBeyond missionaries with neither truth nor grace.

"Lord, give me grace not to always interpret correspondence from Director Taylor about this decision with a hermeneutic of suspicion! Please prevent Taylor and the EFCC Board from undermining the international mission heartbeat of the EFCC, my denominational home in Canada since 1965 when as a child my parents transferred from Overseas Missionary Fellowship to the EFCC. And please help the EFCC churches to seek transparency and full disclosure about this decision from the Executive Director and the Board.”