Address to those attending the Service for Graduates of Nelson CAIRA Supervision Training Course by Marilyn Welch National Coordinator of CAIRANZ
Kia tau ki a koutou, te atawhai me te rangimarie o te Atua
Grace and peace to you from God.
Who would have thought that 5 seemingly insignificant words could have such a huge impact on our organisation and set us off on yet another path.
Those 5 words, “Together we can do this” have been the inspiration behind the idea of a pilot scheme for a new methodology of delivering our CAIRA supervision training course. Previous courses have been delivered by our trained volunteer educators. But our courses take two years to complete the twenty modules and with other commitments in the lives of our educators it just seemed a huge load for the two educators to carry. When this was put to the local CAIRA group those 5 words emerge: “Together we can do this” and as the first value of our CAIRA model is collegiality it seemed appropriate to take this to the next level so the next steps were put in place and consultation with the Advisory Group happened.
We thought this was an exciting possibility and I had the privilege of working with the Nelson group to see how this could come about. What might we lose by having different presenters each month? Would this have a negative effect on the group dynamics etc? As we considered all the hurdles we could see solutions to overcome them and our excitement and energy levels rose.
Further training sessions were held and then the group was ready to embark on this new adventure. Eleven persons enrolled for the course after having attended a Taste and See which gives everyone an opportunity to experience the methodology of the course and decide whether they want to commit to the two years.
Right from the first session we modelled experiential, co-created leadership with the whole team being present and then subsequent months it was just the delegated presenters with their specific curriculum topics. I was privileged to attend the last session of year one when each participant presented their learnings for the year. Wow what a variety of creative presentation styles.
Year two was predominately presented by the participants themselves, using a variety of resources from topics in the curriculum that they had chosen, as well as group supervision work.
And now today represents a culmination of great dedication, commitment, fun, and lots of group work. This could not have happened without the team of educators who gave so willingly of their time and talents and worked collaboratively. A special thanks has to go to Barbara for holding this all together and ensuring everyone was where they were supposed to be at any particular time, and preparing all the resources, evaluating with the team, report writing and photocopying.
This has been a huge success and a model we will be adopting for future groups and already we are hoping to run a group on the West Coast in 2020 where the course will be offered over 10 weekends thus reducing the time commitment to one year.
CAIRA is organic and we are continually re-evaluating what we are doing and especially listening to the voices of the church and community that guide our decision making.
Today we graduate our group. May God continue working with and through them as they seek to offer professional pastoral supervision to those in the church and other agencies who work with people in ministry and the helping professions.
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