Day 2
The second day opened with worship lead by Rev Kyungin Kim.
His devotion was based around the story of Naboth’s vineyard. The greed, power
dynamics, manipulation, vulnerability and abuse of power spoke into many of our lives and relationships we
have known. We all identified at
different levels with the traits displayed by all the characters in the story.
We heard the stories of two Partners in Mission Derek and
Edith Silwenga from the UCZ who are working in Botswana in pastoral ministry
caring for differing community needs, including
the twinning of churches, manse-building, buying a minibus to help
transport older people to services and communion. The younger members of the
congregation are deeply involved in community work as well. We saw a video from
Charles and Molly Lim Chau from Singapore who look after two Churches in Wales.
While many of the congregants are elderly both do a wonderful ministry amongst
the overseas students at Swansea University.
We also heard from the Rev Moya from Mizoram Presbyterian
Church which was originally founded by the mission of the Presbyterian Church of Wales in the
late 1890s. Its mission now is to reach the
unreached, strengthen believers and plant churches. It has a membership of
around 500,000. It is a sending Church and has mission partners in India, Nepal, Taiwan, Solomon Island, UK
Samoa, Tuvalu, Madagascar and Kiribati. It runs a Hindi Bible School, a Mission
Development Training Centre as well as a theological college. Other ministries
include Health and Education with the Church running High Schools, Middle
Schools and Primary Schools as well as hospitals and health centres.
Rose Widderburn then gave an excellent presentation on the
United Church of Jamaica and Cayman Island Churches process in dealing with
Partners in Mission as a receiving Church and the different stages involved in
the process including orientation and preparation of the PIM, integration, the
Administrative Process of who does what until the stationing take place. She
also discussed the arrangements for the sending back at the end of service.
Our group on Table 5 was then asked to look at and draft a programme for a returning Partner
in Mission. We saw it as a two phase process, the closure and sending back from
the receiving church. Firstly it was suggested that a Farewell, Appreciation
and Thanksgiving should be held for the PIM by the receiving church. Some free
time was required to unwind and arrange the packing and practicalities for the
move. Before leaving a debrief or Exit Interview should be held covering what
have we learnt, what have we done together and what we have not done: What are our
achievements?Where are our challenges? What were your frustrations? How can we improve
things for other PIMs?
The next phase after leaving is the reorientation on
arriving back. The sending Church should have been preparing to receive the PIM
back. Again before anything takes place the PIM needs some personal time for
reorientation and resettlement There are things like housing, family, schools,
health matters and future employment to sort out. After a reasonable time the
Debriefing Sessions should take place where the MOU is discussed and any
package and entitlements acknowledged. Help and advice should be available if
required for housing, employment, reintegrating into the local Church. A formal
receiving back and thanksgiving from the sending church should be organised and
discussions on how the local Church can best use your overseas experience. The
Church Headquarters should also be involved as they too can in-put as to where
the PIM can make the best impact. Links and connections should be maintained
with the former receiving church so that a more formalised twinning arrangement
may be made and the receiving Church still benefit from the partnership. Some
process also needs to be in place for those who unfortunately do not cope or
fail to complete their term of service for whatever reason.
As regards Succession Plans and Development in the interests
of sustainability a local counterpart should be appointed if practicable. The
exit plan should be there from the beginning of the planning stages. However,
the receiving church needs to identify the local counterpart not the PIM. The
Church should draw on the resources of the partner. It must be a dynamic
process of learning, growing ,transferring and giving but it will not always be
possible nor is it always desirable to reproduce a successor. However, if an
understudy is selected 3 stages are involved in
the process of succession. The pre-appointment phase where the
understudy helps with the job to do it, the next is the actual training to do
the job and the final phase is the mentor overseeing and observing the
understudy at work. Gap-fillers are not enough as sustainability is necessary
to reduce dependency.
Although both are vocations there may be a difference in
approach depending on the role of the PIM. For Finance or Admin the above
process can be used in a pasturing role the local church may need to break down the job into smaller
areas and arrange external training for the understudy to develop capacity and encourage sustainability.
The Listening and Discernment group reported back on the
themes, patterns and ideas that had come to the fore throughout the 2 days.
The Closing Prayers were offered by the Rev Eric So on the
pruning of the vine. We were challenged to consider what we needed to prune and
how we could stay close and still grafted to the Lord Jesus.
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