I was chatting with Andrew Doubleday last week, and we spoke about the fun he will have as the new UCANZ Ministry Facilitator. In our discussion, one of our shared experiences was the call to use vaccine passes and how this particularly affected the uniting parishes.

Until that point, the Methodist Church’s Covid-19 response plan had made an effort to highlight the areas of difference between our partner churches, government requirements and the path that the Methodist Church wanted to take. This was to make it easier for uniting parishes to pick their own path, especially considering some of the uniting parishes had to wade through four different sets of requirements (three partner churches plus the government requirements). That is a lot of additional work!

One of the questions I was often asked was why the Church’s advice differed from the governmental one. My reply was always the same. The government’s requirements are the bare minimum, and the Church wants to do more than the minimum.

Meeting more than the minimum requirements applies to all the information I provide. For example, for the requirements of an asbestos management plan or an emergency response plan to be useful and useable for parishes, they need to be more than the government requirements. However, coming back to the point of uniting parishes, this still leaves them in the bind of having to read up to four different sets of instructions.

Therefore I will share these messages:

1. I don’t care whose plan you use as long as you have one.

2. Own it and be intentional with it. Keep referring to it and keep it up to date.

3. Continuously improve it, as it will have a gap somewhere!

4. This applies to all of our parishes, whether Methodist or uniting.

Unless I work with people directly when they start their plan, any plan I provide will be generic. Therefore, I see owning a plan and being intentional means implementing the plan, practicing the plan and working out where the plan can be bolstered or improved.

Those four points will be critical when the Methodist Church formally and intentionally steps into safeguarding (we are currently in a planning phase). Not all safeguarding plans will be the same, and people’s actions always find a hole in policies and procedures. It will be up to all the partner Churches, and Andrew Doubleday of UCANZ, to help uniting parishes navigate safeguarding issues that stress the confines of written policies and procedures.

Rather than comparing government requirements and Church policies, I find it easiest to think of the intent of the government requirements and strive to fulfil that intent. For example, the government (via WorkSafe) published over 600 pages telling people how to manage asbestos, the intent of which is to keep people safe from the risks of asbestos-caused disease and death. From the Church’s perspective, this can be boiled down into four words: “Don’t know, don’t touch”. That simple phrase captures the intent of WorkSafe and all the instructions that people need to follow.

It all should be easy!

Trudy Downes is the Wellness, Safety and Risk Advisor for the Methodist Church of New Zealand. Definitions and generic plans mentioned in this article are available on the Wellness and Safety pages of the Church’s website. www.methodist.org.nz/tangata/wellness-and-safety/

Contact Trudy with any health, safety or safeguarding questions at healthandsafety@methodist.org.nz