Print
this page
Email
this page Enrolling to a Vision - Interview
Rev Japé Heath – Anglican priest and rector of Christ Church, Mayfair
I was a participant at the All Africa Anglican Conference on HIV/AIDS but then went on to become a facilitator at the diocese planning workshops which took place regionally.
The All Africa Anglican Conference was incredibly positive because leadership was integrally involved and there was enormous goodwill and commitment to transformation. Even those leaders who hadn’t prioritised HIV/AIDS before were moved.
Unfortunately, broad leadership involvement isn’t so strong at a diocese level and, as such, there isn’t as much engagement as we experienced at the conference. Committed individuals have been driving the process, but this doesn’t carry the same weight as a very strong directive from above.
One of the things that I think worked really well at the All Africa Anglican Conference was the concept of residential time. For the period of the conference, participants were taken away from their everyday lives and immersed in HIV/AIDS and strategic planning. Because everything was taken care of, it meant that everyone could give their full attention to the task and, as a result, we achieved really good results. We didn’t replicate this at the diocese workshops, however, and in retrospect this was a mistake. At these training workshops everybody went home at the end of the day so they didn’t become completely absorbed by the process – or come to understand it as fully as we had done at the conference.
Another shortcoming at the diocese level was that each diocese was only able to send two representatives. This wasn’t a problem when the diocese was small but Johannesburg, for instance, is vast and has 66 pastoral charges. This meant that the enthusiasm and broad buy-in we experienced at the All Africa Anglican Conference was lost as only two people had been through the training and had to report back to the others.
One way to remedy this information gap between the people who attended the training and those who didn’t, would have been to provide a comprehensive summary of the proceedings. Although minutes were written up, they were done so by somebody who didn’t attend the conference and in places they weren’t able to understand exactly what went on. Unfortunately, their notes reflect this and part of the training process was lost.
Top
