And so it begins. I struggled to understand why on earth the Methodist Church would appoint me its President. Maybe you were equally bewildered? It was as I was coming to the end of my term that I realised what a gift it had been to me personally. Whether it had been such a positive experience for the Church is for others to judge.

I now find myself facing a new future. Not retirement. At the end of 2021 I was approached by UCANZ to consider the role of UCANZ Executive Officer, starting at the beginning of 2023. As one who has never served in a Cooperating venture, and knew little about how they worked, this didn’t seem like a viable option. Yet here I am. Stepping again into a role of which I, as yet, have limited understanding.

Yet there is a sense of full circle for me. Before becoming grafted into the Methodist Church I described myself as an ecclesiastical gypsy. I’d tried a number of churches and rarely settled. For an extended period I was part of what I can now only describe as a cult. The Methodist Church was part of the journey that ‘delivered’ me from it.

I’m excited by both the challenges and the opportunities that UCANZ offers. One of the key challenges is getting Partner churches – Anglican, Methodist, Presbyterian, and Christian churches - to more fully understand that Cooperating Ventures (CVs) are part of them.

According to our MCNZ stationing sheet, Tauiwi has 211 Parishes. 148 of them are ‘English Speaking’. Of that number 103 are in Cooperating Ventures. The Anglicans are represented in 35 parishes and the Presbyterians in 104. For MCNZ that represents 70 percent of English speaking parishes. Once we add in the Pacifica Synods, a whisker under a half of the total of Tauiwi.

It’s easy to miss the significance of these numbers. This is a group that should not and cannot be ignored.

By way of illustration. In my previous role, in November 2021, we issued an instruction for Methodist Churches on vaccine passes and the use of church buildings. The Presbyterians issued their own guidance. And the Anglicans their own ruling. A day or so later the UCANZ Executive Officer approached us all and asked if we had considered talking to them, or even to each other? It appeared that the answer was ‘no’. The question of Cooperating Ventures and how our rulings or guidance would affect them had not occurred to me. Not for a second. It seems that it didn’t occurred to those people advising me either. And further, it seems this pattern was repeated in our partner churches. Yet CVs are a significant part of our constituency.

This should be telling us something. In my short time in the role, it is apparent that CVs have significant obstacles to overcome in dealing with the partner churches. Everything is more complex and duplication with significant policy variations is part of their everyday life. The partner churches would wish that CVs were more sympathetic to their own policies, and CVs are caught between competing power structures. I have no doubt (I’ve seen it first hand) this also allows CVs to play a form of divide-and-rule when it suits them. One can hardly blame them - small compensation for the additional challenges they face in simply being the local church while meeting the expectations of the partner churches.

There is work ahead. Time to get to it.