Changin' times

Come gather ’round people

Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You’ll be drenched to the bone
If your time to you is worth savin’
Then you better start swimmin’ or you’ll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin’

https://nobodysingsdylanlikedylan.com/lyrics/rewritten-lyrics/the-climate-is-a-changin

Climate change warriors have been colonizing Bob Dylan’s lyrics for a good ten years or so now. ‘Hard rain’s gonna fall’ was used by the UN at Copenhagen 2009 as the soundtrack to a dramatic film showing some of the worst of global effects. The altered lyrics of the last line in ‘Times’, ‘for the climate is a-changin’’ has become popular and makes an impact.

Another line, ‘Admit that the waters around you have grown…’ isn’t a difficult call, if the topic is indeed climate change and you live on Kiribati, for example. 

But the topic I want to touch on in this post features another sort of climate: the current climate of theological, ecumenical and missiological education in the Pacific – and indeed globally - where there are different kinds of surging seas and expanding pools needing critical attention. The educational and formational waters we’re immersed in have also grown rapidly in the 52 years since PTC was founded. 



I’m not the only one around here who’s desperately hoping the call to admit this (as Dylan urges) was heard loud and clear by the Council of the Pacific Theological College when it met last November.

Full Council only meets once every two years and my colleagues and I who are Programme Directors at PTC don’t have a seat on it. (The Constitution may have changed on that point by now, but we wait for the official word). I don’t take offence personally, but just believe that policy is (or possibly was by now?) quite bonkers. Justification for that sentiment? Because Programme Directors do, bizarrely, have a seat on the Council Executive which meets three or four times a year to do the business of Council in-between its sittings. But Executive is a much smaller affair with minimal representation from Church leaders outside Suva. As PTC is owned by a wide range of Pacific Churches across the region, it’s the biennial meeting, residential over three days which is likely to speak and act much more representatively and with some kind of credible, regional voice. And it’s that wider group, presumably, who would like to know what PTC programmes (Mission & Research, Theological Education by Extension, Women’s Programme) have been up to in their name, ask questions and make suggestions. Wouldn’t they? One would hope?

Am I missing something?

So those of us responsible for them sincerely hope the Programme reports and recommendations from two years’ worth of Executive meetings, stuffed into a cardboard folder and distributed, were eagerly pored over, thoroughly digested and cheered Council members’ hearts.

#WordsMadeFleshNot

Our fathers and mothers (but you had to look really hard to spot the mothers) from the Pacific Churches, who gathered for the 2017 Council and so decided on direction and policy for the next stage in PTCs life, were:

Rev Dr Elder Leatulagi, Fa’alevao Congregational Christian Church in American Samoa, Chair

Rev Professor Feleterika Nokise, Principal

Right Rev Apimeleki Qiliho Anglican Diocese of Polynesia (Vice Chair)

Right Rev Nathan Tome, Anglican Church of Melanesia

Rev Elder Tunu Moso Siliola Iosia, Congregational Christian Church in Samoa

Rev Ioelu Onesemo, Congregational Christian Church in American Samoa

Mr Nga Mataio, Cook Islands Christian Church

Rev Dr Here J. Hoiore,  Etaretia Porotetani Maohi

Rev Tiia Manaima,  Kiribati Uniting Church

Rev R. Mwareow, Nauru Congregational Church

Rev Apisalome Tudreu, Methodist Church in Fiji & Rotuma

Rev Apineru Lafai Methodist Church in Samoa

Rev Allen Nafuki, Presbyterian Church of Vanuatu.

Rev Wakaine Wakira, Eglise Protestante Kanaky-Nouvelle Caledonie [fromTuesday]

Rev Francois Pihaatae, General Secretary, Pacific Conference of Churches

Rev Rusiate Tuidrakulu, South Pacific Association of Theological Schools

Dr. Tessa Mackenzie, Secretary

Mr. Joseph Mow, Treasurer

Rev Dr Upolu Vaai,  Faculty Representative

Rev Fatilua Fatilua, Student Body Representative

Mr Sanjeet Singh,  Director Finance & Administration

But I was so very, very sad to learn that representation from the following owner Churches didn’t happen: they are such significant partners. And sad particularly for our present students from those Churches when their leadership isn’t seen to be present.

Ekalesia Kelisiano Niue

Ekalesia Kelisiano Tuvalu

Evangelical Lutheran Church of Papua New Guinea

Free Wesleyan Church of Tonga

United Church in Papua New Guinea

United Church in Solomon Islands 

United Church of Christ in Marshall Islands

United Church of Christ in Pohnpei

Reasons I know not. Perhaps I guess a little, but it's not for the blog. Just wondering if any more could have been done to enable us to get a Council ‘full house’?

Reprising Bob Dylan, I wonder how this verse of ‘Times’ would have gone down at Council?

Come mothers and fathers
Throughout the land
And don’t criticize
What you can’t understand
Your sons and your daughters
Are beyond your command
Your old road is rapidly agein’
Please get out of the new one if you can’t lend your hand
For the times they are a-changin’

Bit rude, Bob. 

We don’t address our respected Pacific fathers and mothers like that. 

But we do grasp what you’re getting at. The old road of PTC is without doubt ‘rapidly agein’. PTC was set up at a certain time, in a certain way and has to deal with the institutional things that grind and creak after 50 years. But more than that; it has to be sure, under God, that it really is serving the present-day needs of Pacific Churches, their leaders and communities in a ‘Pacific Way’ – this is spoken about all the time – and yet in a way which works for 2018 and beyond. Many waters have grown (a PhD programme; the library; campus housing; computers, technology and media). Some have receded (residential student numbers for the BD; fees from churches). And some threaten to crash over us like waves, (PTC wants to be a University but so do lots of its owner Churches, separately: the familiar ‘Denomination First’ model).

Does that amount to the same as Trump’s ‘America First’? Might set that as an essay question…

Our Principal has been on sabbatical for one year, thinking and writing about this potential PTC University. A 30 page document went to Council, of which I’ve only as yet seen these few lines of extract, which may or may not be direction quotation.

We need to keep Christian community focus; include research into how Pacific indigenous knowledge, value systems, and cultures combine with our Christian heritage and understanding and can bring new understanding of humanity as the digital world impacts our lives.  Modern universities are focused on Job Creation. The structure of our University needs to de-centralise, be inclusive and protect the ecumenical spirit.

Universities which champion indigenous knowledge and are committed to flipping over educational systems derived from the West are certainly fascinating creatures. Te Tumu at the University of Otago, Aoteroa New Zealand says of its research programmes, for example:

As a School of Māori, Pacific and Indigenous Studies, Te Tumu is a lively department that conducts cutting-edge research for Māori, Pacific and indigenous communities throughout New Zealand and the South Pacific. We contribute to community – including marae, hapū and iwi – and government policies and programmes on pressing cultural, economic and environmental issues.As a progressive team of research scholars, we model new directions for suitable land innovation, we develop indigenous language growth strategies and we explore cultural and economic pathways for communities against histories of colonisation and urbanisation. We also address major issues confronting humanity including climate change threats to low lying communities and increasing challenges and opportunities of urban development for indigenous peoples.

We all live in a world of other day to day realities including increased digital connection, increased environmental resource quality issues and increased financial pressures on families. We therefore turn our attention to intrinsic issues that matters most to individuals, their families and their communities: wellbeing, identity and security. While we are concerned with these cross-generational matters, we also have a diverse research reach extending through our nationally-renown teaching in the performing arts programme, and through our in-house museum and cultural heritage expertise. The past informs and shapes the present and the future, and historical enquiry forms one of Te Tumu’s research strengths, looking at Māori and Pacific histories from pre-contact, colonial through to post-colonial times.

http://www.otago.ac.nz/te-tumu/research/index.html

So perhaps we’re in for a bit of that? There’s a Faculty Retreat coming up this week and the Principal will address us, so maybe some more then.

But something else that’s been floating around in the Pacific breezes and currents for ages is a different kind of trinitarian puzzle. And I know for sure this came up at Council. The Pacific Theological College; the holy ground on which I sit and scribe, came into being in 1965. The regional body of the Pacific Conference of Churches was born out of a consultation in 1961, at Malua, Western Samoa and officially established in 1966, at its first assembly, on the Loyalty Island of Lifou, New Caledonia. And then there’s the South Pacific Association of Theological Schools (SPATS) – there’s also a Melanesian version (MATS) - who sort of do what it says on the tin, being the umbrella organization for theological schools across the region and dealing with the sticky business of accredition and validation and all that jazz.

So here’s the thing. The headquarters of PTC, PCC and SPATS are all in Suva. And Suva’s only little, as capital cities go. Basically, if we sung the hymns at our respective morning prayers loud enough and had the windows open, we could be one choir. As regional bodies, we all relate – give or take - to the same owners/partners/churches. We’re certainly all trying to squeeze money out of the same funder pots – Methodist Church in Britain supports all three - and near enough the same people turn up at most meetings. We run similar programmes: we've all got one for women, for a start! And here in Suva, we’re all trying to maintain HQ buildings and not necessarily succeeding.

For these reasons, and an expanding ocean of more, the suggestion of a PEC was made in 2010. A Pacific Ecumenical Council. This would potentially sweep us all up, put us in a big hairy sack, say a prayer, shake us up a bit, spill us out and see where the coconuts rolled. Who knows what the Lord might do in the aftermath of that? Could we share rather than territorialise space? Could we deliver programmes more effectively and avoid duplicating them? Could staff with certain talents operate out of their safe little boxes?

Now anyone reading this who has been seriously involved in the nitty gritty of structural re-envisioning and re-organisation – especially of the Church and ecumenical variety – will be falling about with hilarity at this point and doing the ‘Yeah right!’ line. It can be so, so hard to contemplate different ways. Strata upon strata of complications emerge over the years. I’ve done some of this and I know.

Except, friends: in this case, there is to be a bright and bushy tailed new meeting this very year in April, (only eight years after the original mooting – come on…), to – and I quote from an official document - ‘re-ignite the process’.

And because God persists, adamantly, in keeping me far more ecumenical than cynical in spirit, even though there’s every reason to be more of the latter, I can’t help feeling a bit excited! Whatever else Learned Council got up to, if it did indeed manage to re-ignite that particular spark, well hallelujah.

Would you join me in a song?

‘Let there be P-E-C and let it begin with me…..’

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

And in other more casual news...

My hilarious god-daughter sent me a scary, special edition of The Boston Gazette...

...and Suva's latest supermarket chain is boldly declaring what you would naturally expect of your mission partner.

Indeed. A bonanza every day.

Please, no autographs.