Use church funds on its facilities

I CONGRATULATE the Head Bishop, assistant Bishop, and the general-secretary for the Evangelical Lutheran Church of PNG (ELCPNG) for retaining their posts.
This reflects the good work you gentlemen have been doing and the consistency into the next four years.
As a project manager for the church in an isolated mission station, I strongly believe the church will do much better in adapting to the changes with our time and shrugging off bad practises that catches on during the past decade.
Despite being the second biggest religious organisation in PNG, all our mission stations are run down, circuit centres are covered in bushes, and almost all of the structures are remnants of what German and American missionaries built ages ago.
This can change if the church can alter the current trend of attending to its businesses.
For instance, we have so many gatherings such as Women’s Conference, Youth Conference, Pastor’s Conference, etc… with the grand biannual Synods.
From the financial, time, and resources perspective, much more than half of these scarce commodities of each district, circuit, parishes, and congregations are applied in travelling and meetings with almost nothing left to attend to matters back home.
The travels and gatherings have caused the districts, circuits, parishes, and congregations to becoming poorer as the prices of goods and services increase each year, hence; our mission stations are taken over by nature and church boundaries are recouped by the surrounding communities because of the church’s negligence and indecisive to act.
Tights and offerings from believer’s decreases dramatically when there was nothing to show on the ground as all resources were spent on travels and meetings.
This situation enables politicians and budding candidates to assist and entrap church members by coming to their aid in their next outing.
Such murky state of affairs emerged in the last decade and seems to be emboldened each time.
That is bad for the Lutheran Church.
The next synod will be held in Port Moresby in early 2022 and is already a huge burden to pastors and evangelists in remote communities who could hardly sustain their own livelihood.
I urge the men in position and their councils to reconsider, carefully analyse, and cut down all the conferences, gatherings, meetings.
And extend the synods to a five yearly event.
Remember the kina does not have the same value as it used to so change is inevitable with the times.

James Zoriong,
Gatop Mission Station,
Wasu