2022 National Assembly

Introduction to Recommendations for the SPA and MOU Agreements

June 7-9, 2022

To help understand the intent, process, and issues around the Agreements being recommended for approval at the National Assembly, we have prepared a short introduction.

There are two types of agreements being proposed:

  1. An agreement among all CUSP partners focused on our work together on the CUSP we call the Canadian MB CUSP Strategic Partnership Agreement (SPA).
  1. MOU’s delineating non-CUSP points of relationship and partnership between CCMBC and Member Agencies: Legacy, MB Seminary,

All come to the National Assembly following much consultation and discernment by many parties and come recommended by both the CCMBC Executive Board and Partner Boards.

 

Initial work on the SPAs began several years ago with the conceptualizing and approval of the Collaborative Model at the 2019 AGM. This Collaborative Model seeks to ensure that our national work is built upon a “bottom-up” approach to planning and action. While our churches and provinces have had the historical voice in shaping our national work, this new model also seeks to give voice to National Ministry partners such as Legacy, MB Seminary, and Multiply.

Experience in making a partnership for a common collective impact has shown that it is important for there to be clarity regarding roles, expectations, and communication among the partners. This is what the SPA is intended to accomplish; it is not a legally binding contract to specify financial or other commitments. The existence of an SPA around the CUSP was also incorporated into our new Bylaws.

After considerable work by our National Director, the project was picked up in 2020 by a Task Force consisting of:

Provincial Partner Reps: Denis Federau (BCMB) and Harold Froese (MBCM),

Member Organization Reps: Mark Wessner (MB Seminary) and Jason Krueger (Legacy),

CCMBC Reps: Ron Penner (Moderator) and Elton DaSilva (National Director).

This group has worked on the project for about a year and the editions you find attached have gone through several rounds of review by various groups including:

  • Provincial and Partner Boards,
  • National Ministry Team,
  • CCMBC Governance Committee,
  • National Council with reps from all the boards,
  • National Executive Board,
  • A National Townhall, and
  • Legal Review.

Through the process a number of good questions and suggestions were made, and we have worked through them including testing them with our legal counsel.

MOU’s are long-standing documents between CCMBC and Partner Agencies addressing aspects of our relationship and have a set period when they need to be reviewed and reaffirmed. The revised MOU’s coming to National Assembly were up for review and renewal. Work is still in process on MOU’s for Multiply and the Historical Commission; these should be ready for NA 2023.

The Task Force also included work with the MOU’s alongside the CUSP SPA and the reviews have included the same spheres of processing. Initially, it was thought that the SPA’s could include all the features of the MOU’s in the CUSP SPA, but as we worked on the project, we concluded it was simpler and less complicated to keep the CUSP SPAs and MOUs separate. To make one giant document, would have been too hard to follow the differences in the relationships with the MOU partners.

While Legacy, MB Seminary, and Multiply have their own Bylaws, the MOU seeks to summarize and describe key relationship areas, using these bylaws as well as those of CCMBC. In short, they provide a useful summary of the relationship described in the wider set of bylaws.

The areas the MOU’s cover include:

  • Legal status and ownership,
  • Governance and accountability,
  • Funding and financial management, and
  • Dispute resolution.

Our hope is that this Introduction, the Documents themselves, and the Thursday evening Discussion session will provide sufficient information for delegates to make a well-informed decision at the Saturday AGM.