Professional supervision has been something which has been normal, in caring professions for a long time, but has not been the case for ministry workers until recently. It has been recommended by the Royal Commission into institutional responses into child sexual abuse that “each religious institution should ensure that all people in religious or pastoral ministry, including religious leaders, have professional supervision with a trained professional or pastoral supervisor who has a degree of independence from the institution within which the person is in ministry.” (Recommendation 16.45 https://www.childabuseroyalcommission.gov.au/recommendations)

Supervision at it’s most basic is an opportunity to talk about what is going on for you in your ministry situation, there are a number of analogies used to describe it, one is that described as pit head time, where Miners fought for the right to wash off the coal dust before they went home. Ministry is often dirty, you deal with real people and real hardships, it is good to have someone to talk about what is going on rather than allowing what you are going through at church to impact your home and family life.

A second analogy is that of the three legged stool, with three functions restorative, formative and normative:

Restorative: The goal is that the supervisee feel supported, and remember how to be themselves.

Formative: helping the supervisee to grow, to fill in the gaps of their knowledge of how to do their job, especially with those things that others might deem you “should know”.

Normative: deals with ethical, managerial and boundary issues, helping the supervisee to work within his own code of ethics, and consider when they might be or in danger of being outside that framework, while speaking to someone outside of the hierarchy of your system.

The idea is that the supervisor provides the supervisee with a listening ear and a focus on them, I like to think that my role as supervisor is to help the supervisee to be best able to use their gifts to serve their church and their family.