Encouraging Supervision & Supervision Training for Pacific Ordained and Lay Leaders

Most, if not all of our current Tongan, Fijian and Samoan presbyters and lay leaders are people who were born and have lived a significant part of their lives in their respective home countries before migrating to New Zealand. This means these people have made huge adaptations / adjustments and even transformations to the needs of ministry in the NZ context and the multicultural nature of the Church and society, and will continue to do so. One significant aspect in this process of ongoing learning and development of presbyters and lay leaders is the need for ministry supervision.

Since the Methodist Church made ministry supervision compulsory for all presbyters and lay workers of the church, there has been a growing realization of the difficulty of this policy amongst the Pacific leaders. This is partly due to the misunderstanding of the concept of supervision, and partly due to the fact that there is lack of qualified supervisors who could conduct supervision in Pacific languages. In reflection, there have been situations of leaders in conflicts where the outcomes could have been more positive and constructive had there been appropriate pastoral and ministry supervision for those involved.

This project aims to encourage Tongan, Samoan and Fijian lay and ordained leaders to take up ministry and pastoral supervision training with the aim of being able to offer supervision in their own language within ministry in a New Zealand context.

The Mission Resourcing Director of Pacific Ministries, Rev Aso Samoa Saleupolu will be doing this by working with CAIRA (Collegiality, Authority, Identity, Responsibility, Accountability) Ministry Supervision Training to do the training.  The course is taught by Marilyn Welch.

Together, Marilyn and Aso will identify the structures for monitoring those who undertake the training as well as monitor the effectiveness of supervision within Pacific Synods.

They will be working in consultation with superintendents of the Pasifika Synods, to identify those who would undertake this training, beginning in 2011.