A City Mission sings 'Hosanna'

We started on the steps of the Flea Market on Palm Sunday. And why not? Wesley City Mission had booked the stage and space at Sukuna Park this year for open air worship so we processed there - about 10 mins walk - with much waving and singing, as you can imagine. Worship in the park, which is town centre by the sea front, was a great witness, and some extra holiday 'entertainment'  too for day trippers off one of the cruise ships in port for the day. 

Also it's 'Children's Sunday' in the Methodist Church of Fiji and Rotuma, so the worship was led almost entirely by children and young people. See below the Sunday School choir just before the service started. Skin colour, climate and geographical location differ of course, but I couldn't help but see British Methodist family photos of Sunday School anniversaries in the 1940s and 50s in my mind's eye. My Manchester Sunday School in the 1960s certainly dressed us in white and had us parading at Whitsuntide. And here we are in Fiji in 2015.

During worship - I was one of the gathered throng, not up front - it was great to sit with the Revd Magdalena M. Kafiar from GKN Tanah Papua - the Christian Evangelical Church in the land of Papua. Here's a bit about her Church.

Magdalena is at our Pacific Theological College for a three month programme called English for Ecumenical Cooperation, but I hadn't had chance to speak to her apart from briefly one break time. Some of her work among indigenous communities is inspirational and can be read about here with a short extract below.

Papua, a province of Indonesia, comprises most of the western half of the island of New Guinea and nearby islands. The region is administered as two provinces: Papua and West Papua. The eastern half of New Guinea is Papua New Guinea. The population of approximately 3.6 million comprises ethnic Papuans, Melanesians, and Austronesians. The region is predominantly dense forest where numerous traditional tribes live such as the Dani of the Baliem Valley, although the majority of the population lives in or near coastal areas. Although the official and most commonly spoken language is Bahasa Indonesian, estimates of the number of tribal languages in the region range from 200 to over 700, with the most widely spoken including Dani, Yali, Ekari and Biak. The predominant religion is Christianity (often combined with traditional beliefs) followed by Islam, while the main industries include agriculture, fishing, oil production, and mining. One of the world’s biggest deposits of copper and gold ore is located at Tembagapura, in the west-central part of the province. 

Magdalena Kafiar explains that her organization “conducts focused group discussions about women’s participation and women’s role.” She notes that usually a woman’s role in her community is “to get married, have a child, and serve the husband, and so on.” “We have traditional gatherings. Women prepare food for the men’s meeting; women serve the men, but they are not involved in the decision-making. The women can only serve.” Arranged marriages are part of the tradition. If a man wants to marry a woman, he must bring a woman from his family to marry into the family of the woman. In some cases, young girls are forced into marrying much older men. Papua has one of the highest illiteracy rates in Indonesia. Magdalena says, “Most of the people, especially women, are illiterate so we teach them how to write.” There are 26,000 hectares occupied by private companies in Papua. “The people eventually became laborers in their own land, especially women and children. The children no longer go to school; they work in the plantations instead. There is widespread logging in our area.” Magdalena adds that technically the logging is legal since the big private companies have been granted permits by the state without prior community consent. The expansion of mining has also affected the region, with complaints against mining companies for violations of human and environmental rights on the rise.

Yet again I was moved by how profoundly the liturgical cycle of the Christian year speaks to the real-life settings of God's people. The traditional cries of 'Hosanna!' on Palm Sunday are firmly rooted in Hebrew and Greek terms meaning, 'rescue', 'save' and saviour'. I was privileged to have as a worship companion on this Palm Sunday, a woman who is playing her part significantly in the liberation and salvation of her people.

Palm Sunday - and every day...

Come on now, clear your throat and do your best Sinatra...

The falling leaves drift by the window....     

(With a creak and then one almighty thud...)

The autumn leaves of red and gold....

(Of brittle, faded brown...)

I see your lips, the summer kisses

(I see the mess, Autumn's detritus...)

The sunburned hands I used to hold

(Scratched & scabby more like from heaving trees 

around...)

Since you I went away the days grow long

(Well a bit shorter over here actually..)

And soon I'll hear old winter's song

(But it'll still be in the high 20s so not to worry...)

But I miss you most of all my darling

(My darling blog readers, naturally...)

When autumn leaves start to fall

(Give us a lift with this one would you?)

(Thanks. Got your chopper handy?)

With apologies to Joseph Kosma; Jacques Prevert, Marie Andre and Johnny Mercer.

And the next news?

Vanuatu didn't occupy the top slot in the global headlines for long, but Cyclone Pam's wreckage and aftermath is of course inescapable for those affected. PTC has organised a College appeal in consultation with families from the islands, including parts of Kiribati and Tuvalu. There is huge appreciation of solidarity and aid from further afield - thank you if you're able. The Methodist Church in Britain's development arm All We Can has an emergency appeal if you'd like to respond that way.

Meanwhile back at base this week, we welcomed Dr Andrew Thornley to the Education by Extension office to ''sign off', as it were, the Bachelor of Divinity module that he wrote and that I've been editing on 20th Century Pacific Church history. It's now all ready to go - and we praise God for that! Dr Thornley in the past taught at both Davuilevu, the Methodist Theological College in Fiji, and here at the Pacific Theological College and is well known in these parts, not least because of his commitment to reviving and reprinting the first ever Bible produced in the iTaukei (Fijian) language. A 2012 Fiji Times report - of which you can read the full text here - notes the considerable achievement.

The effort was undertaken by two very distinguished Fijian Methodism scholars of late, the Doctor Andrew Thornley and Tauga Vulaono. Between the two, they have published four books since 2000, on the lives of early English missionaries as well as a book on the modern history of the iTaukei in the pre and post Christian era. The first iTaukei bible was translated directly from Greek, the original language of the Bible, to the Bauan dialect by the Reverend John Hunt or Jone Oniti, as he was known to the Fijians back then. Hunt was credited with the translation because he did much of the work but the work to translate the Bible into the iTaukei form was previously taken up by several other missionaries including Thomas Jagger, William Cross, David Cargill, James Calvert, Richard Lacey, Thomas Williams and many more.

(We'll leave for discussion at a later date, perhaps, the phrase '...Greek, the original language of the Bible...') 

The Pacific Church History course owes a great deal to a textbook by the late Dr Charles Forman, The Island Churches of the South Pacific, and although it's officially out of print, PTCEE was given permission to reprint it by the author himself not long before his death. Credit and thanks for obtaining this permission must go to Deidre Madden, PTCEE Director until November 2013. Here are, from the left, myself, Dr Andrew Thornley and PTCEE's administrator Salome celebrating the course's completion. 

The 'task within the task' of being PTCEE Director is to keep all these new or revised BD courses rolling off the press. Next up for editing - ethics! There's a lot of goggle-eyed, computer-screen work in this slice of ministry it has to be said - a musing rather than a complaint. What we're really keen to do though - with no disrespect whatsoever intended to Dr Thornley and others - is to encourage a far richer ethnic mix of course writers from across Oceania. There ARE indigenous, Pacific theologians, historians, Biblical scholars, ministry specialists etc around us - they're just not writing for PTCEE at the moment. Mmm... Some Pacific pestering called for maybe...

A big banner went up at the University of the South Pacific 'round the corner. I saw it as I got off the jolly green bus.....

....and thought, 'Oh yes, I'm up for that!' So Fragrance, my lovely new neighbour and I went along. She's the one on the far right here - Mum to Jeffy and Julia and wife to Rayappan. 

Schools from across Fiji had been invited to submit poems, videos, artwork etc on the theme and the various winners were presented with awards. You can see some of them on the Citizen's Constitutional Forum Facebook page.

Here, for example, are students from St Joseph's receiving awards for their photo and video entries. Methodists in Britain who've been hanging around for too many years (like yours truly...) may well recognise CCF's Director the Revd Akuila Yabaki who's a former Asia-Pacific regional co-ordinator from our World Church team It''s been good to link up with him again since being in Suva.

Do take a minute to click on this CCF video and pause with the picture below. Our prayer, as ever, is for the world to reconsider, repent and recommit. 

Cyclone Pam

Cyclone Pam didn't hit Fiji. Our neighbours in Vanuatu have borne the brunt.

I'm writing on Sunday 13th March 2015 and news is still very sketchy because communications are down in Vanuatu. The category 5 cyclone appears to have devastated a significant proportion of the capital, Port Vila, but a country is more than its capital city and what it all means in terms of losses and deaths overall will become clear as the days unfold.

Here in the community at Pacific Theological College we have Rev Leinamau Seru from the Presbyterian Church of Vanuatu along with Rev Collin and Mrs Roslyne Keleb and their family. From the Anglican Church of Melanesia, also from Vanuatu are Fr John Hinge with his wife Rossalie and family. The Hinge family are pastoral group members and I'm just back from visiting them and praying together. I happened to call by as the little boys were watching a cartoon about Moses' victory over the Red Sea. Very excitedly they told me the story. No sceptism in those young minds about who has ultimate control over the elements!

I conveyed the concern and prayers of the Methodist Church in Britain, via our Partnership Coordinator for Asia and the Pacific, Steve Pearce. Fr John's response was:

Thank you for the prayers - that is everything we need. This is natural disaster. Every year in Vanuatu we get warnings because we are right on the cyclone path, but only sometimes it is very bad like this year. We always remember 1985 and the cyclones Eric and Nigel which were devastating. This appears to be bad too, but we will wait for the news, trusting in God. 

The Hinge family are concerned about the state of things back 'home' - of course they are. But they convey the quiet confidence and solid faith of Christians who are well used to living in a cyclone belt where 'death' and 'resurrection' are realities played out in daily life, not confined to clinical discussion in the confines of a Theological College classroom.

I'll keep in close touch, of course, with the Vanuatuan community here at PTC and convey news from them, with their permission, as I have it. In the meantime, please pray...

for whatever is needful in Vanuatu's present situation to be provided 

speedily, generously and justly 

for those away from home with no news or minimal news: for confidence, calmness and the wisdom to make the right responses when news comes

for the Pacific region as a whole, as climate concerns and natural disasters again become headline news globally

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50 years of the Pacific Theological College

Friday 6th March: a day bursting at the seams with pomp, ceremony and celebration for our 50th Annniversary. Where were you? 

Never mind, I've saved you a programme. I know it looks a bit dense on the blog, but a read through offers the best overview of an extraordinary day which kicked off at 8.00am and ended at midnight, though many hadn't slept the night before because of the pressure of final preparations.

There was a fair bit of media coverage too. Here's the Fiji Times article

and click here for the FBC 6pm News which features us briefly, 13 mins in. 

I'm going to give myself a few days before posting any kind of considered reflection on the whole event. There's much to process. 

My role on the actual day, was to be the Methodist Church in Britain's official representative, at the request of the Connexion, via our World Church Relationships team. This was a humbing and lovely task of course, but at the same time it felt a little strange to be dual-purpose for the day: garlanded, seated apart and served differently from my PTC colleagues. The multi-tasking called for a bit of liturgical drapery I felt. At least for the formalities of the Eucharist. Unusual for me, being a collar but not a vestments type. But hey, maybe sometimes a stole can make a suitable ecumenical statement.