0168 | The Bishops’ Progress – Mary Taylor Huber

REVIEW
This one might be hard to get hold of and I’m not entirely sure that if you have to work hard to get it, it’s going to be all that worthwhile.

It’s basically a history of the establishment of one wing of the Catholic church in Papua New Guinea . That wing is the Society of the Divine Word (SVD) and the book charts the establishment of the mission and it’s history right up until the late 20th century.

It was interesting to read how the SVD grappled with the issues of setting up mission in a place such as PNG. That’s the biggest benefit I got from reading the book.

I got to see how so much of life is practical necessity and that, if you’re someone who feels that God loves it better when we’re ‘ministering’ then the daily grind of construction, communication and logistics is going to leave you frustrated. Often though, and particularly in the early years, life consists of little else it seems. It takes time to develop relationships that are meaningful. Time spent in the daily grind is thus the very investment that enables any ministry.

I also learned something about how the SVD went about handing the reigns over to the local people. I’m not sure they were successful here and so I felt it was more a case of reading how not to go about it.

All in all though, I’m not sure it has much to offer the average PNG surveyor. Sure, there’s some relevant history that will be useful if you work anywhere along the northern coast from Madang but I felt this would be of more use to church planters and people managing mission stations than for a surveyor.

RATING
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