Difficult few months for the United Church’s PAR program

If you had issues with The United Church of Canada’s Pre-Authorized Remittance (PAR) program this year, you were not alone. Broadview heard stories this summer of incorrect, missed or even extra payments taken out of users’ accounts. We were told that some individuals and churches gave up on the program altogether out of frustration.

When we contacted Harry Li, the General Council office’s executive minister of pension and finance, he confirmed there had been problems with the PAR system.

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“I’m sorry to say that there were lots of complaints in the first few months [of 2026],” he said.

The United Church launched the PAR program several decades ago to make it easier for congregants to donate regularly and for church administrators to manage donations. The General Council office handles the automatic deductions and distributes the funds to the designated churches. The service is so cost efficient that other denominations have signed up for it. Currently, there are about 50,000 donors registered with the program, supporting more than 2,400 United, Anglican and Presbyterian churches.

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So what went wrong at the start of 2026? A few things all at once, Li said. The longtime PAR administrator retired; the United Church moved offices; the PAR program underwent a software upgrade; and it all happened in December and January — the busiest time of the year for donations.

“It was a very rough journey, I have to say,” Li admitted. In January, operations went smoothly. “But then during the second month and the third month, I think, we started to have some issues with the PAR [program].”

At their peak, the number of official complaints Li’s office received amounted to a small percentage of users, but he says even one complaint is too many. “It’s really zero error tolerance because we are dealing with donors,” he said.

Steps taken to fix the system included adding temporary positions to help clear a backlog of service requests received by mail, fax and email. Next, a digital ticketing system was created to track requests and resolve issues. By early August, the kinks seemed to have been mostly worked out. Li said he hadn’t received a complaint since sometime in June. “I’m quite confident that the problem has been addressed,” he said.

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Janice Young was a Broadview’s United Church in Focus editor, covering a parental leave position.

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