Around thirty (30) church leaders comprising heads of departments at the ACoM Provincial head office, Diocesan Mission Secretaries, heads of training institutions and religious orders under take a two days Stewardship and Leadership Training. The Training was officially opened on Wednesday 18th March at the Melanesian Haus and involves the Training of Trainers on the above topics.
The Training is being facilitated by Mr.AisakeCasimira from the Pacific Council of Churches.
The Theme of this conference is “Rethinking the household of God in the Solomon Islands”.
“What that means is that we shall use the opportunity in this conference to reflect and focus our attention on God’s purpose in his creation”, the Archbishop of the Anglican Church of Melanesia the Most Rev’d David Vunagi said in his address to mark the opening of the conference.
“To allow that to happen we need to listen to each other especially how we can achieve authentic physical, economic, administrative, moral and spiritual developments that are compatible with God’s purpose in creation”, Archbishop Vunagi said.
“In our different ways, we have distorted the horizontal relationship – the kind of relationship that unites people – the kind of relationship that promotes good governance”.
“It has become common knowledge in this country that corruption and other acts of justice have taken precedent over acceptable norms and systems that promotes good governance. In view of that, we do not know who to trust in the bureaucratic system of Government”, Archbishop Vunagi continued.
In Stewardship, Archbishop Vunagi said highlighted that we are destroying and doing damage to our natural environment.
“In that regard, Church leaders as stewards of God’s creation, stewards of God’s people and stewards of the environment must enter into serious dialogue with the government and other stakeholders and see if they could listen to the voice of the church in regarding to logging and mining”, Archbishop Vunagi said.
Another part of the training will continue tomorrow (Friday 20th March) with other church members and Organisations advocating for West Papuapeople’s desire for self-rule and determination.