United Church of Canada. Committee on Education for Mission and Stewardship.

• United Church of Canada. Department on Education for Mission.
• United Church of Canada. Committee on Missionary Education.

The General Council of 1932 directed that a Commission be appointed by the Executive to examine and survey the place of missionary education in the life of the Church. A report was submitted to the 1934 General Council recommending that a new Committee on Missionary Education be established and it subsequently was. The function of missionary education was transferred to the Board of Information and Stewardship in 1955 from the Committee on Missionary Education. Priorities were set for mission education work in cooperation with the Church's mission Boards and served as the main channel for the promotion of missions through study materials, publications, and publicity. Charles M. Stewart, as Associate Secretary of the Board, had special responsibility for missionary education. The committee which oversaw this function in the Board was called the Committee on Missionary Education until 1962, and subsequently the Committee on Mission Education. Missionary education was transferred to the new Division of Congregational Life and Work in 1966. When the Division of Congregational Life and Work disbanded in 1971 the Committee was transferred to the Division of Communication. This was decided by the Executive of the Church as a means of ensuring that education for mission and stewardship continued to be an identifiable responsibility of the national church. The Committee was responsible for informing, educating and motivating congregations in mission and stewardship areas, and acted as a coordinating centre for activities in the Division of Mission in Canada's Department of Christian Development and the Division of Finance's Department of Stewardship Services. Among its activities were the production of publications including Mandate (and later Mandate/Newsletter); Project Book, an annual mission-oriented production; the Canadian Church Calendar, in cooperation with the Anglican Church; and Worldwind, for children. CEMS also produced an annual print resource in collaboration with Friendship Press, National Council of Churches USA, which featured a country mission focus, e.g. "Angola.” AVEL was the primary distributor of the visual materials which were almost exclusively filmstrips with the occasional 16mm film (usually one or two a year were produced, often with a national TV audience through the CBC series "Man Alive"). The Committee sponsored local mission awareness activities and arranged speaking tours for missionaries home on furlough. In 1981 the Department on Education for Mission was established as the secretariat for the Committee, but it was short-lived as the Committee joined with Media Services in 1983 to form the Department of Media Resources. In 1989 the Division of Communication formed the Department of Education and Information which adopted Mission Education from the Department of Media Resources.

Created July 2019, AZ