A Request from your Vocational Minister- Annual Declaration

A Request from your Vocational Minister

Dear all ministry personnel in Pacific Mountain Region

As you are hopefully aware, the deadline for submitting your Annual Declaration that you have not been criminally charged since last year’s declaration is April 30, 2026. In addition, this year, you are required to attest to having read the Ethical Standards and Standards of Practice for Ministry Personnel, as well as the Creating Safe and Respectful Environments Policy and procedures of The United Church of Canada.

Many, many of you have already submitted, and this is really helpful in terms of your own good standing, and your ability to seek to be open for call and/or appointment in Church Hub. Thank you to everyone who has already completed the Annual Declaration for 2026.

For those who haven’t yet submitted the AD: please do this as soon as possible, and certainly before April 30, which is the final deadline before names of those who haven’t submitted will be shared with the Response Committee of the Office of Vocation, and follow-up will get more formal.

In order to submit your AD and attest to the policies, you need:

1. The date of your last Criminal Records/Police Records Check. If you have been regularly submitting your AD and have not been charged, you do NOT need to get a new PRC. You just need the date of the last one. (If you can’t find your last one in your files, then yes, it’s best to go get a new one… please do this RIGHT AWAY with your local police department/RCMP detachment as the turn-around time can very.)
2. You need not only to click on the links to the policies when you are trying to submit the AD, but you also need to scroll down and actually read the documents… even if you’ve read them before or consider yourself very familiar with them. The system will not let you submit unless you do both these things (click on each link, and scroll down to read the policies) each time you are trying to submit.

If you have struggled with Church Hub in the past, and are anxious about submitting your Annual Declaration (and therefore have been avoiding this task), please consult the helpful “cheat sheet” created by Marina Lecian of the PMR to assist you. It takes you through, step by step, and includes photos of each step.

Retired Ministers, if you are no longer active in ministry, and don’t expect any grandchildren to ask you to perform their marriages, you can ask to be exempt from these requirements, formally. (The thing is, once you do this, if someone does ask you to marry them, then you will have a lot of work to “catch up” with the requirements all at once. So please consider this carefully.) If are a retired minister and you’d like to request exemption, please email your Vocational Minister, the Rev. Cari Copeman-Haynes at ccopeman-haynes@united-church.ca.

Those in Active Ministry (even if you’re retiring at the end of June of this year) are NOT exempt from this requirement, however! Those who have not submitted by April 22 will start to experience individual reminders in the form of direct calls from their Vocational Minister. This will continue til the end of the month, after which the Response Committee will send formal notice to seek compliance from those outstanding. Please save yourself (and your Vocational Minister) time and stress by submitting now. Thank you so much.

Grace and peace in this Easter season,