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Written by: Richard Trist

“As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another” (Proverbs 27:17).

Intentional time spent reflecting on past actions for more effective future actions is vital for gospel ministry. Deep learning occurs when we are able to regularly slow down and consider in fresh ways issues that have impacted us. To do this with another trusted person can enable us to see past personal blind spots and lead to new possibilities.

In the light of dioceses across Australia rolling out programs of professional supervision or coaching/supervision^[i] for clergy and lay workers, what are we to make of such programs? What benefits might emerge from them? How can we make them work for us and our own ministry situation?

WHAT IS PROFESSIONAL SUPERVISION?

In many occupations the term supervision is synonymous with line-management. However, in the so-called helping professions the term is used to speak of a consultative relationship between an external supervisor and a worker, where the supervisee consults with their supervisor who is neither their trainer nor manager. This is not what someone has called “snooper-vision” but rather an intentional time for reflection on work practice for the purpose of pastoral support and better ministry outcomes for the worker and for the people they serve.Accountability is not to a boss such as a Bishop or Board of Management, but rather to the ethical framework in which the work or ministry is being undertaken (eg Faithfulness in Service).

As professional supervision becomes more of a norm for Christian ministers, there is a need for clarity as to how it is different from other activities such as counselling, spiritual direction, mentoring and coaching. The following table may help to clarify these differences. 2 Each of these different modes of support are important and useful. It is likely that we will all utilise them in different seasons of our ministry careers. ^[ii]

THE BENEFIT OF PROFESSIONAL SUPERVISION

The benefit of professional supervision lies in its ability to bring clarity and focus upon the complex nature of parish or chaplaincy ministry. Authors Jane Leach and Michael Paterson utilise a three-legged stool model to explain its three tasks:

1. The formative task – an educative aspect where the supervisor helps the supervisee come to a clearer knowledge of the issues they are facing leading to equipping and resourcing.

2. The restorative task – a supportive function which understands the challenges of the supervisee’s work and provides a place for the “recharging” of emotional and spiritual energy.

3. The normative task – assisting the supervisee to attend to issues of wellbeing, boundaries, and professional expectations.^[iii]

In a pilot study of clergy in the Diocese of Sydney, over 90% agreed that professional supervision (either one-toone or in a group) was helpful for their ministry and personal well-being, leading to a greater ability to be reflective and self-aware. 75% of participants indicated that it developed their ability to be resilient. ^[iv]

Although initially mandated by dioceses as a result of the recommendations of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse^[v], the adoption of supervision is having a far-reaching impact for the good of the church, leading to growth, learning, support and healthier ministers and ministries.

PREPARING FOR SUPERVISION

It is important to remember that a supervision session is always for the benefit of the supervisee not the supervisor! It is important to spend time prior to a session thinking about what you want to talk about. This includes anything that arises from actual experiences which is affecting the quality of our ministry. Examples could be our role in a particular situation, our current priorities,  issues of time management and boundaries, new ideas and insights, people we are finding it hard to work with, changes that are happening within our system, general pressures or needs.

The following may be helpful prompts:

• I am feeling [tired, miserable, elated, inspired, challenged, worried] ...
• This concern keeps pushing into my mind…
• I seem to keep putting off...
• I want help to clarify where I stand on this issue…
• I feel torn between these priorities…
• When [this] happens, it seems to be a pattern repeating itself...
• I want to stop something like [this] happening again...
• I want to get something like [this] to happen more often...

FINDING A GOOD SUPERVISOR

The key issue in finding a good supervisor is to find someone who is not only well trained, but someone we can trust. Someone with whom we are willing to speak about the ups and downs of ministry. A person who will enable us to grow and to learn.

Supervision used to be the sole domain of clinical practitioners such as psychologists or those trained in CPE, but more and more people with pastoral and church experience are undertaking this work. It has a rich theological and pastoral undergirding and many theological colleges including Ridley College, Moore College, and St Marks National Theological Centre offer training in this field.

Look out for trusted people on your diocesan lists, or check out the following:

• Red Sheep Supervision – a ministry that equips ministry leaders from different organisations and denominations.
• Pastoral Supervision Alliance – a collective of supervisors mostly from Sydney and Melbourne.
• Partners in Ministry – offers consulting, training, as well as coaching and supervision.
• Envisager Supervision – provides professional reflective supervision, coaching, and consulting services to teachers, school leaders, school chaplains, and pastors.

When you find someone contact them to arrange an initial meeting. Such meetings usually involve a discussion about the areas of your ministry that you are keen to explore, the ethical framework that will undergird the conversations, and mutual expectations such as frequency of meetings (four to eight times a year), mode of meeting (face to face or zoom), fees, etc. This will lead to a contract/agreement that will likely be sent into the diocese to inform them of the arrangement. Having done this you are set and ready to go.

IN CONCLUSION

Despite being yet another thing to add to our busy diaries, my hope is that we will find professional supervision as not just something we ‘have-to-do’. Rather may it be a space for refreshment, restoration and the re-forming of ourselves to enable us to fulfil the great calling God has

given us “…to prepare God’s people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up ...and become mature attaining to the whole measure of the fulness of Christ “(Eph 4:12-13).

Richard Trist is the Chaplain to the Anglican Institute and Adjunct Lecturer in Professional Pastoral Supervision at Ridley College. He runs his own supervision practice as well as being a member of the Pastoral Supervision Alliance and Chair of the Pastoral Supervision Network. He enjoys occasional preaching at his local church in West Brunswick, and trying to work out what semi-retirement really means!

Footnotes

^[i] In the Diocese of Melbourne there has been a temporary blending of its successful coaching program to enable a faster roll out of professional supervision – hence the term coaching/supervision.

^[ii] Adapted from a table in the St Marks National Theological Centre Graduate Certificate in Professional Supervision Students Manual.

^[iii] See Pastoral Supervision: A Handbook (Second Ed), pp 20-23.

^[iv] Southern Cross, Nov-Dec 2023, p.4

^[v] 5 See https://www.childabuseroyalcommission.gov.au/sites/default/files/final_report_-_recommendations.pdf

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Written by: Chris Porter

“What to do with the humble parish?” Why do we seem to be so entrenched within ideas of “my parish” or “their church?” Why do parishioners identify as more “members of the Parish of St Aethelredstone” rather than as “Anglican,” and why may they identify with their parish in opposition to say the Parish of St Cuthbertstonwick? [names changed to protect the guilty everywhere] Setting aside the ecclesiological and pastoral specifics of Anglican parishes, I want to consider here the sociological challenges of the parish, for these sociological challenges lie at the heart of a wide variety of present questions for our church. While the questions of parish boundaries, church mergers, church planting, minster models, evangelism, normativity, and diversity, all have theological, ecclesiological, and pastoral dimensions, their sociological aspects are often left uninterrogated. Therefore, here I want to consider these social aspects and how they may contribute to our understanding of parish life.

For all of the other services of the parish one of the most significant is the social group which is formed around the parish, one for which those within the parish—and those attending from outside—find their identity. Parishioners are not merely “Jane” or “John,” but “Jane member of Parish X.” The formation of these social identities around the parish structure are sociologically one of its greatest strengths—and I would also argue its greatest weakness.

Leaving aside specifically Christian aspects of the parish, and the appropriate benefits of public worship etc—as these will logically continue with or without parish boundaries—we may consider the great benefits of social groups to be also applicable to the social group of the parish. Individuals who identify with a social group are more likely to engage with the work of that group—in this case the work of the parish—which in turn is more  likely to impact on their own personal identity and sense of belonging within the social group—the church.

Formally we can understand “social identity … as that part of the individuals’ self- concept which derives from their knowledge of their membership of a social group together with the value and emotional significance attached to that membership” (Tajfel, 1982: 2). As Christians we value this identity structure, especially as it is positively correlated with other social items such as belonging, behaviour change, self-value, etc. Indeed, as we can see with civil parishes, and other local social enterprises such as “Good-Karma” Facebook groups, this desire for social connection and engagement is also highly sought after and valued in our broader community.

However, it is this same desire for social engagement and identity which is perhaps also its greatest Achilles heel. For with strong identity structures, comes the challenge of what is technically termed as “positive distinctiveness.” That is the challenge for a social group to be sufficiently different from other competing social groups such that members feel attracted to and can identify with their specific social group over and above other groups. This is especially the case where those competing social groups are normatively and geographically close, and in these cases “positive distinctiveness” will often require exclusive claims about one’s own social group, and similarly denigrating claims regarding others nearby. For example, the members of the Parish of St Cuthbertstonwick may pride themselves on their liturgical style and support their own sense of belonging in that parish by referring the members of the Parish of St Aethelredstone as “Aethelredstoners” and generating negative appellations regarding their musical preferences.

This is further exacerbated in situations where near neighbours share the same normative belief and identity structures, as the demands of positive distinctiveness require sharper invective to create points of division. As Lewis Coser observed “A conflict is more passionate and more radical when it arises out of close relationships. The coexistence of union and opposition in such relations makes for the peculiar sharpness of the conflict. Enmity calls forth deeper and more violent reactions, the greater the involvement of the parties among whom it originates”

(1998, 71).

Is this a good argument then for the abolition of parish boundaries, to remove the competition for positive distinctiveness? While this may seem like a logical way of reducing these challenges and uniting the church around a single focus for distinctiveness, unfortunately it only leads to further competition. For as groups cease to have avenues for generating positive distinctiveness outside of the groups the natural place to derive distinctiveness is within the group. This is usually seen through internal perceptions that certain members are not sufficiently normative, or somehow abrogate what some members consider the “core” identity of the group, despite remaining within the group. Indeed, this can be clearly observed within the Good Karma Network phenomenon, as, a couple of years into the project, large numbers of these neighbourhood groups devolved into schismatic fractures over internal accusations of members not upholding the norms of the groups, and significant disagreement over what these norms are, and their relative importance. Similar examples are found in civil parishes— and especially their American counterpart, the Homeowner Association. Lest we think that the church is immune from such debates one need only look at the plethora of churches which have split over musical styles, modes of preaching, or a host of other disputed norms. Schisms and the exclusion of members as black sheep for not being normative enough are part and parcel of group existence.

So far this seems to be a fairly dismal view of parish life: conflict with or without boundaries. Are there any avenues out of this social quagmire? Perhaps somewhat ironically the same ecclesial inheritance that gave the Anglican church the parish structure has also provided a resource for addressing the impetus towards division for positive distinctiveness: episcopal structures. While evangelical Anglicanism tends toward a congregational—and parish— emphasis, the proven mechanism for defusing schism within groups is to direct social impetus towards finding social distinctiveness within larger groups, rather than the smaller immediate—local—group. Indeed, theologically, this is the purpose of the church universal.

How then can we leverage these oft-denigrated structures towards that bigger theological vision and social purpose? A significant part of this is the need for a distinctive vision for the larger structure to inhabit. What is the purpose of the episcopacy? What is a diocese for? But, as part of that vision for there to be positive distinctiveness of the whole, there must be a similar allowance of diversity within the subgroups which make up the superordinate, the parishes which constitute a diocese, the churches which contribute to the denomination—lest there be a devolution to solely finding distinctiveness in the local. Such that the Parishes of St Cuthbertstonwick and St Aethelredstone can engage in that same vision side by side. This vision setting and diversity of engagement can find a wide range of expressions and outcomes, and while it is well beyond the scope of this piece to provide a singular answer, we can find a series of biblical and historical examples for inspiration. Indeed, one example is given by Scott Goode’s examination of 1 Corinthians, where he finds Paul organising that nascent church around the framework of “Salvific Intentionality” that allows for both coherent missional imagination alongside diversity in the Corinthian community (review in this issue).

Ultimately the overriding question about the parish is not whether it stays or whether it goes, but rather what should we look to as a means to present an encompassing vision to unify the church around, with or without historical geographical and social boundaries?

Rev Dr Chris Porter is Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at Trinity College Theological School.

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Written by: Anonymous

What is it like to be the part-time minister of a church that was filled with children and families fifty years ago, with two Sunday school sittings per Sunday, Mother’s Union and much more, but as COVID plunged us into new territory in 2020, had an average of 20 attendees on a Sunday?

Where do you start?

There’s a story of three decades of decline with lightness and deep shadows. The current worship comprises four hymns, four Bible readings, a ten-minute reflection and Holy Communion. There are the faithful who have remained well, faithful, and are an inspiring ‘treasured possession’, ‘oaks of righteousness’.

Yet, everything I pray will happen, with the eyes of faith and imagination, seems so fragile and experimental. Then one Sunday morning when ten masked people are allowed to gather at some point in the twilight of lockdowns, I hear myself confidently say through my mask, ‘A church re-grows through small steps, micro actions’. This sounded comforting and manageable to me, in the first weeks, which became months.

I’d already found a puppet and as we live-streamed the second service I’d ever taken as the ‘priest-in-charge’, with a phone and laptop, I did a very average ‘kidult talk’ (kid+adult) in front of the phone, to set a tone of hope.

I bravely believed that somehow, our God was going to begin a new chapter and that a small suburban church could be a bright light for the kingdom. My missionary childhood had given me a love for people, challenge, and confidence that the gospel can do unexpectedly creative things.

So throughout lockdowns, I rang people, dropped off little parcels of cake if it was their birthday, and newsletters. That’s right – the old parish newsletter came into it’s own and was read! It kept us together! It was emailed to most and printed and mailed to the non-techy elderly.

We used a zoom option where you could dial in from your landline! One lovely senior told me, ‘I’m in my dressing gown in my comfy chair, listening on speaker phone, but when I close my eyes, I’m there, in church!’

As lockdowns ended, my garden produced roses in amazing abundance, so I picked them, removed thorns, wrapped them in wet cotton wool and foil (yes, micro actions speak) and presented each returning person with a rose and ‘Welcome back to church!’ I had not met them in person, though I picked quite a few from their voices!

The following list in no particular order, gives a snapshot of the variety of ministries in a small church that’s kept us focussed, joyful and yes, hopeful, over the past three years:

• Ministry to ageing saints, as their lives end and they go Home. This has become a ministry I cherish, both with them and their families, many of whom have lost faith. The care of the dying and their funerals, have grown me. I hope I’ve also sown lots of seeds in family and friends or thrown compost on the soil of dry hearts.
• Ministry to very competent and mature people as they retire and are the core volunteers.
• Re-starting church morning teas by baking cakes, especially for each birthday!
• Ministry to a small number of new members who have joined our worshipping congregation, including parents and families, mainly from Asia, and their preschoolers, children and young people.
• The start of ministries to young people on Sunday.
• Ministry to grow people who are gifted to lead these groups.
• Ministry to grow young people’s faith practice, through being on appropriate rosters: Bible reading, tech desk, welcoming-sides person, helping cook sausages after church for a simple lunch.
• Ministry to make every Sunday service a time of spiritual refreshment, through song, the Scriptures and the Sacraments.
• Ministry through weddings and baptisms.
• Ministry to the church building and gardens, needing repairs and refreshing – so fundraising and hard yakka.
• Ministry to the local community through fortnightly iGen (intergenerational) ‘Play’ Group, loosely based on the ABC’s TV series, ‘Old People’s Home for Four year olds’.
• Ministry to university students as an honorary chaplain at a nearby University.
• Ministry to two local retirement villages.
• Ministry to colleagues through Deanery.
• Ministry to become financially viable.
• Ministry to grow a paid lay leader to begin local missional activities.
• Ministry to pray for and financially support a missionary family as they travel overseas.

Caroline is Priest in Charge of a Melbourne Parish (name changed due to pastoral sensitivity).

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Written by: Tracy Lauersen

I led a parish in a country town in Victoria from 2018-2023. I loved it. It was a growing tree-change town an hour from Melbourne off the Monash motorway in Gippsland. Originally a wealthy dairy farming and regional hub, it was experiencing something of an identity change as the dairy farmers sold off and as young families bought up plots of land, city professionals sought an alternative lifestyle on hobby farms and retirees downsized from city dwellings to country digs with large gardens and chickens. The parish was over a hundred years old and there were some amazing old saints in their 80’s who had been in the church since their infancy. The parish had an 8am prayer book service, a 9.45am contemporary family service and an occasional evening youth service. There was a smallish youth group (12 or so) and quite a large children’s ministry. During my time as Rector, we worked on our parish vision and a five-year strategy, we weathered the lockdown years and worked to build up the youth and children’s ministry.

Read more: Writing The Future of the Parish in Growing Country Towns

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Written by: James Hornby

I landed in Launceston in 2017 to begin as Rector of St John’s and joined a Diocese that has an incredible vision ‘to be a Church for Tasmania making disciples of Jesus.’ My problem wasn’t ‘what’; it was ‘how’. How would we take that vision and, under God, attempt to see that come to pass in our little neck of the woods? It became clear we weren’t alone in that wondering. Nine other Anglican churches across greater Launceston were wrestling with the same. That’s right, ten Anglican churches across a regional city. Where I’m from, given the population, that sounded like a lot. And these other nine, like us, were largely struggling to reach people with the good news of Jesus. Faithful in worship. Absent (almost) in mission, Struggling with discipleship. I’m sure not an isolated story.

A year later, I’d been meeting with a small group of visionary, strategic Anglicans, representing several churches and an idea emerged. What if we came together? Our collective response was ‘Impossible!’ If there’s one thing true about Tasmania, it’s how parochial we are. But the idea wouldn’t go away. A nurse doing her PhD offered us the latest demographic data from her research, and the idea began to take shape. I met with all the local clergy, and together, choosing to put aside any differences for the sake of the Kingdom, we developed a strategic approach to future Anglican ministry in Launceston and surrounds.

Read more: The Future of Multi-site Churches

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Written by: Matt Williams

“The system is breaking. Let it break. Your first job is to ensure it doesn’t break you. Then stick around to help us build the new one.”

It seems a bit pompous to begin an article quoting myself, but I do so to illustrate that this has been going on for some time.

Back when the Diocese of Melbourne invested in a solid program for equipping new Priests-in-Charge of parishes (EPIC) they used to invite me back for some frank talk with my colleagues. I always said something along these lines.

Let it break. Your first job is to ensure it doesn’t break you.

The overall structure of our church is not fit for purpose. In many ways, we still have a nineteenth-century structure attempting to satisfy twenty-first century compliance demands. The inevitable result of this is a failure to comply, massive inefficiencies in resource allocation, and the burnout of many of those trying to hold things together in the interim with string and spreadsheets.

Let it break. Your first job is to ensure it doesn’t break you.

We should notice that we’re not alone here. This issue is not peculiar to the church. It’s a widespread problem in professional vocations – education, health, and social workers are all drowning in it, vocationally disoriented, burning out, and leaving in droves.

The whole approach of society to risk is to imagine that everything could have been prevented if only another piece of paper had been filled out. So, each time something goes wrong somewhere sometime; the paperwork and mental load is increased for everyone everywhere all the time.

This is unsustainable. Something bigger must come eventually, in the break of this whole system and the approach of our society to risk management. The pendulum is swinging to maximal red tape.

Let it break. Your first job is to ensure it doesn’t break you.

And yet, the problem in the church is worse. Because even if that pendulum swings back to a reasonable centre, our structures are still not fit for purpose.

Let us speak frankly, for the time is short. These are our problems:

1. We do not have an alignment of responsibility, visibility, and capacity to act.
2. We cannot create that alignment with a heavily decentralised system, which is what we have.
3. Parishes do not trust the centre enough to allow it to centralise.
4. The centre does not have the visibility of the parishes to centralise competently.
5. Therefore the work of bearing responsibility is shafted onto vicars; the work of being the conduit of visibility is shafted onto vicars; and all expectations of action are shafted onto vicars.
6. Vicars have not been selected or trained for anything like that skill set.

These are problems which have proved intractable for a long time. This is not something solved by pat answers, like “just preach the gospel”. We need strategic managerial reform, because bad management hinders gospel preaching. We need, in a word, centralisation.

But can we trust our centre to competently centralise? From a long history of past performance and false starts, not really.

To break this impasse, we need to solve the fourth problem, and then use that to solve the third. We need to engineer systems that build visibility of parish life to the centre. Then – and only then - parishes should hand the centre trust to take over safety, compliance and property management tasks based upon that visibility. If the centre can truly see them, we might believe they can actually do them, and let go.

The order is important. Centralising before visibility will fail to solve the problem and damage trust further, because the centre will be working blind, and we will both fall into a pit.

If we can achieve those two things, building a virtuous circle of central competence and parish trust, a world of good can break out. Management tasks will disappear from vicar’s heads, they will be vocationally realigned, spend more time on the things they are trained for and passionate about, and more missionally effective.

The people responsible for things will be able to see if they are actually doing them right down to the parish level, through a series of reports.

And so responsibility, visibility, and capacity to act will belong to the same people, those people will be selected and trained for those tasks, and they won’t be the vicars.

That’s the dream. But the reality will be bumpier than that. Real people doing real jobs make real mistakes. Parishes are notoriously suspicious of giving up power. And this is definitely that.

But it’s the only way out. We must support and encourage the centralisation of safety, compliance and property management tasks – even if our own parish can currently do it better than the centre.

We must encourage and honour those doing the slog work of compliance for us, not allowing them to be invisible.

We must use our power to strengthen others, rather than to think of our power as something to be grasped.

Huh. Sounds like someone else I know. Perhaps the solution lies in preaching the gospel after all.

Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus… Philippians 2:5

 Rev'd Canon Matt Williams is the Vicar at St James' Old Cathedral, Melbourne West