Introduction
An unsafe church is a malfunctioning church. The final report of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse concluded, after careful listening to victims’ testimony, considering the responses of Church leaders, with the legal verdict, that many clergy and church workers (termed ‘religious leaders’ in the reports) were guilty of misconduct and malfeasance.Footnote 2 In Australia, unsafe churches have resulted in criminal convictions and lengthy prison sentences, the de-frocking of bishops and clergy, and deeper suspicion about the integrity of mission and ministry among vulnerable people, such as children. The reputation of the Anglican Church is diminishing, the witness to the gospel of Jesus Christ is devalued and the morale of faithful Christians and leaders is declining. Contributing factors include the isolation and irreverence that characterize Australia and Australians. Positively, isolation and irreverence can be enjoyed and celebrated, such as the lonely character in Australia’s unofficial natural anthem, Once a Jolly Swagman. The tragic end of the swagman highlights the darker side of isolation and irreverence (that disregards authority and received wisdom).Footnote 3 Individuals not only turn to themselves, but inevitably turn in on themselves as captured in Augustine’s phrase, incurvates in se. Moreover, institutional isolation and irreverence leads to impotence, characterized by spiritual anaemia and systemic anxiety.Footnote 4 An impotent church, led by those turned in on themselves, can never be a safe church.
The national Anglican Church in Australia seeks to introduce and implement standards for pastoral supervision, professional development and ministry reviews as key components to make the church safer. Pastoral supervision is the regular, planned, safe space where clergy (or, church workers) bring issues related to their ministry practice to the supervision session with a trained pastoral supervisor.Footnote 5 Pastoral supervision is emerging at the intersection of major cross-currents for the Church and related faith-based organizations such as education, social welfare and aged care. Pastoral supervision has three main goals of being a formative, normative and restorative conversation which promotes faithful practice. In this article I will address three primary functions of pastoral supervision as relational (a collaborative culture), reflective (a critiquing conversation) and rightness (a competence/compliance component). The relational aspect sustains and nurtures ministerial well-being and flourishing in light of new and urgent questions about clergy and church worker burnout. The rightness dimension addresses clergy misuse of power (e.g. bullying) and abuse scandals (e.g. the Royal Commission), which have put oversight and accountability in the spotlight.Footnote 6 The reflective component is indispensable. Not only did Socrates caution against the unexamined life, but the apostle urged ministry practitioners to ‘watch your life and doctrine closely’ (1 Tim. 4.16).
This essay will examine the role of pastoral (professional) supervision in enabling and ensuring a safe church. The quest to make churches safe begins with an obvious question: how did churches become unsafe, particularly for children and other vulnerable people called the little ones (to mikro, Mt. 18.14) by Jesus?
The Making of an Unsafe Church
How did the Church, founded on Jesus Christ, who said ‘let the little children come to me’ (Mk 10.14) become guilty of sexual abuse of children? There are many troubling answers to this question, ranging across the very different contexts of the worldwide Anglican communion. For Anglicans in Australia, several friends and colleagues offer some critical insights in addressing these questions.Footnote 7
Isolation
During the COVID pandemic that gripped the globe throughout 2020, the word ‘isolation’ has developed potent and personal connotations. The word is now recognizable in its shortened form: ‘iso’. Until 2020, isolation was a choice for the privileged: a remote holiday destination, a quiet corner of the house or a voluntary period ‘off the grid’. The less privileged always knew, of course, that isolation is not always a choice. The imprisoned, those living with disabilities or mental health, the aged and lonely and those living in regional and remote locations have long known the debilitating effects of too much isolation. Throughout 2020, those accustomed to freedom of movement were restricted to their homes, those blessed with good health saw infection lurking beneath every physical encounter, those with a robust and energetic spirit experienced a new and surprising fragility and lethargy, and those living in crowded cities felt the loneliness of deserted streets and shopping centres in their bones. For many across the globe, the word isolation became intimately associated with a new qualifier: mandatory isolation. As the medical community has warned throughout 2020, while accepting the public health needs of isolation, it is unsafe for a range of people: those living with family and domestic violence and those living with mental health issues are clear examples.
The story of isolation – its promises and pitfalls – is writ large in the Australian psyche. Here I identity three aspects of isolation – sometimes sought, but mostly mandated – that have made the church unsafe: vast distances, vocational dilemmas and virtual developments. First, the vast distances of Australia – from the rest of the world and across the continent – leaves a more sinister legacy: out of sight, out of mind. Second, the vocational dilemmas, decision-making and directions of clergy and church workers over their lifetimes is ad hoc and arbitrary. Third, accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic, are the virtual developments which significantly erode – or eradicate – well-being in ministry.
Vast Distances
Australia is only beginning to break its silence on the atrocities committed during settlement: Aboriginal dispossession and the frontier wars (including hundreds of documented massacres of Aboriginal men, women and children).Footnote 8 The violence of powerful men perpetrated on vulnerable children, followed by silence and cover-up, is a deep stain in the Australian soul, almost as old as settlement itself. Again, there are Anglican atrocities that must be faced. Too many Aboriginal missions were complicit with government policies of separating families (the stolen generations) and assimilation.Footnote 9 We must not delude ourselves with reassurances that these were isolated incidents. Systemic abuse has been an integral – if invisible – thread woven through Australian and Anglican occupation.
Vocational Dilemmas
Insecurity and self-doubt are the harshest critics for a growing proportion of ministry workers. Insecurity is an ugly monster that rears its head in even the most confident-looking pastor. Many cope by plunging into more ministry activities. Others less fortunate find themselves battling depression and isolation. Either is a terrible bondage. Although many begin their life of ministry with a true sense of calling or vocation, far too few end their life of ministry with a deep sense of ‘well done, good and faithful servant’ (Mt. 25.21, 23). The dilemmas of vocational ministry are many. Under-acknowledged and unattended they can lead to anxiety and stress, mental health issues and/or burn out. Well-being in ministry, energized by a true sense of vocation, grounded in an identity as a child of God, valued in and for who the minister is and not what career they carve out and what they do with our lives, makes church workers safer to themselves and others. For most in ministry, however, the opportunities to have good conversation about their vocation is few and far between: the second form of isolation.
Virtual Developments
Two quotes, spanning the thirty years since I entered theological college, capture the promise and the peril of virtual developments in ministry. In 1985, Jacque Ellul insisted that ‘the spoken word … ushers us into another dimension: relationship with other living beings, with persons’. Footnote 10 By 2015, Sherry Turkle was sounding a dire warning, that ‘we live in a technological universe in which we are always communicating. And yet we have sacrificed conversation for mere connection.’ Footnote 11 The impact of virtual development (particularly in a year of enforced lockdowns) – with church and ministry exclusively conducted on digital platforms – needs to be assessed. Some are asking how to be more present and limit distractions.Footnote 12 Others are noticing that being online is killing our ability to think creatively.Footnote 13 Research documents that the increased time spent on Instagram, Facebook, Tik-Tok and other social media platforms is linked to poorer sleep in teens, a growing concern for many parents.Footnote 14 And spiritual and theological reflection on the paradox of virtual ministry is just beginning.Footnote 15
The cumulative impacts of these forms of isolation – vast distances, vocational dilemmas and virtual developments contributes to individuals whose ministry life is turned in on itself – incurvates in se, and institutionally to ecclesial and evangelistic impotence. Before addressing the malfunctions of spiritual anaemia and systemic anxiety, making the church unsafe, three additional factors are briefly noted under the rubric of Aussie irreverence.
Irreverence
The irreverent attitude and actions of Australians are (in)famous. Is it a cause for concern or celebration? Most Australians celebrate their love of the vernacular, lack of formality and a life of volunteerism. I remember being told what most offended other Anglicans – even more than theological differences – was the reputation Sydney Anglicans had for a lack of civility, courtesy and good manners. At the time, having been raised and nurtured in that iconoclastic culture, I was genuinely unsure if this was a compliment or a criticism. The ghost of bushranger Ned Kelly is alive in the Australian – and Australian Anglican – soul. Despite his escapades and evasion of the police, Ned’s over-confidence in his thick skin (in the form of a tin helmet) ultimately led to his own demise and death. Australians have not fully reckoned with an irreverent and iconoclastic mythology that makes people – and institutions – unsafe for others. How does isolation, combined with irreverence lead to institutional impotence?
The Malfunctions of an Unsafe Church
In the previous section I suggested physical isolation and cultural irreverence have also shaped the Australian Church – isolation, which renders violence and abuse out of sight and out of mind; and irreverence, which disregards authority and received wisdom. The Church was impotent in making churches safe. Enough Australian Anglicans, it appears, conceded isolated and irreverent clergy broad leeway in their practice. An impotent Church is an unsafe Church, what Martyn Percy has termed, ‘institutional narcolepsy’.Footnote 16 An impotent Church is an unsafe Church, because Percy provocatively argues that they became ‘the best Petri dishes for developing and growing cultures of abuse’.Footnote 17 Additional factors can be named: spiritual anaemia and systemic anxiety. These are profoundly theological issues that professional supervision alone can only partially rectify. The twenty-first century has witnessed (and mostly welcomed!) a greater scrutiny and sanction of those with power. The misuse and abuse of power is becoming more transparent: from movements such as #metoo to the ancient biblical warning, ‘the time has come for judgment to begin with the household of God’ (1 Pet. 4.17). The final chapter of 1 Peter finishes with a series of instructions and admonitions regarding the responsibility of pastoral leaders and ministry workers that begin specifically with congregational leadership but end with exhortation for the whole household of God. The theological connection between pastor leaders and the wider group is easily missed. Yet according to Michael Paterson, ‘group supervision is more theologically sound than individual supervision’. Footnote 18 Christological convictions and corporate commitments underpin the kind of pastoral supervision that is equipped to reform spiritual anaemia and systemic anxiety.
The Royal Commission into Institutional Child Sexual Abuse
The horrendous accounts of child sexual abuse within the Church, heard as victims’ testimony during the Royal Commission, unmasked the unsafe church. While significant changes had already been made to current practices of child safety – the worst cases were mostly historical – many Anglicans were horrified to discover the errors of past inaction and the extent of priestly cover-up. I do not need to rehearse those shameful details here.Footnote 19
For decades those working in the clinical professions had been studying the factors that precipitate crises in ministry.Footnote 20 Some factors include long-standing ministry pressures such as expectations of the role (particularly the lack of clarity of the minister’s role); changes due to contemporary society; and faith-related crises such as spiritual burnout, a breakdown in spiritual discipline, spiritual neglect, poor development of spiritual practices, a personal crisis of faith, and even a loss of faith. Three factors deserving attention were, however, routinely neglected. First, the misuse of power demonstrated by more reports of abuse and bullying. Ministers experiencing interpersonal difficulties were not adequately supported nor supervised, often resulting in misconduct, sexual impropriety, abuse and bullying by clergy. Second, a widespread lack of self-awareness in clergy produced a lack of confidence in some, a lack of self-care in others, contributing to the rise in mental health issues among clergy. Insufficient and ineffective strategies existed for managing stress, overwork, burnout and regular exposure to the burdens of others. Third, calls for professional development and support through professional and pastoral supervision were ignored. Two key factors that precipitate crisis in ministry were the lack of caring support from others, specifically the lack of appropriate supervision.Footnote 21 The church had become unsafe, not only for the vulnerable, but for many clergy and church workers. In this context, the sense of isolation experienced by many clergy and church workers – what it means to be out of sight and out of mind (even in the midst of a large city or multi-staff ministry team) – revealed its darker side. Too many bishops and other senior leaders knew (or suspected) what was happening in their midst but were impotent. What, then, is the way out of the miasma?Footnote 22 The recommendations of the Royal Commission, summarized in the next section, were based on an emerging recognition of the role for pastoral supervision.Footnote 23
Making Churches Safe through Pastoral Supervision
One of the key recommendations to the Anglican Church is in Book 16.5:
The Anglican Church of Australia should develop and each diocese should implement mandatory national standards to ensure that all people in religious or pastoral ministry (bishops, clergy, religious and lay personnel):
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a. undertake mandatory, regular professional development, compulsory components being professional responsibility and boundaries, ethics in ministry and child safety
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b. undertake mandatory professional/pastoral supervision
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c. undergo regular performance appraisals.Footnote 24
Pastoral supervision, christologically grounded, provides three functions: the relational function through its collaborative culture; the reflective function through critiquing conversations; and the rightness function through its compliance frameworks.
The Safe Ministry Commission, on behalf of the General Synod, implemented a phased approach throughout 2019 for developing the mandatory national standards for Professional Development, Professional/Pastoral Supervision and Performance Appraisals. I was seconded to the General Synod office to undertake this work and here I will focus on pastoral (professional) supervision, while noting that the three strands should be nested together. The consultation canvassed six broad groups: the national consultation with Anglican bishops; other large gatherings of senior clergy and parish clergy; individual consultations with Anglican bishops and diocesan representatives; individual consultations with other denominational leaders and representatives; individual consultations with experienced supervisors, mentors and coaches; and individual consultations with clergy with experience of regulated supervision. The responses to the Royal Commission in Australia have focused attention on changing culture and not merely mandatory compliance. How far have we come?
In March 2019, more than two years after the final recommendations were made, a survey of 21 diocesan bishops found the extent of pastoral (professional) supervision is greater than anticipated, yet remaining inconsistent across the national church. The result from those dioceses with greater resources and those who implemented earlier tend to mask the reality for many rural and remote dioceses that had little or no existing supervision. A phased introduction of minimum standards became a practical necessity that encourages those dioceses well underway to continue and those only beginning to prioritize its implementation. A second question regarding what was learned during implementation resulted in (a) two, common themes of adequate resourcing – ‘the issue of supply of supervisors and the cost of supervision is significant’ and (b) anticipated resistance – ‘importance of accountability with respect to engaging in supervision and reporting on this. Clarity of the expected boundaries. Having good orientation and engagement with our team of supervisors.’Footnote 25 These comments capture the recurring theme from the entire consultation regarding resources for implementation: both diocesan and individual capacity constraints were consistently raised as the primary barriers.
The widespread support for minimum standards was perhaps the most surprising and encouraging aspect of all the consultations. There was not a single in principle objection to pastoral supervision becoming a national standard. A potential impediment to consistent national standards is that some dioceses have already adopted mandatory supervision (e.g. Perth, Newcastle), while the larger (metropolitan dioceses such as Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane) are close to adopting, or strengthening, local standards. At the time of writing, minimum national standards have not been adopted by the General Synod. The draft standards suggest, however, that accredited supervision can be delivered by a person who: (i) provides a formal, written agreement (contract, covenant) for supervision; (ii) is approved by the bishop (or delegate) to provide pastoral supervision in the diocese; (iii) undertakes regular supervision; (iv) for a minimum of six hours (individual) or twelve hours (peer/group).Footnote 26 Discerning the criteria for these standards, in order to comply with the recommendation of the Royal Commission, was only the first step to a safe Church.
Misconceptions about pastoral supervision were commonplace. Professional supervision is properly understood as the supervision of professionals and does not infantilize clergy and ministry workers. Only those with knowledge of the clinical and social work practice of professional supervision readily understood the purpose and practice of pastoral supervision.Footnote 27 Often the question concerned the differences (and similarities) between pastoral supervision and other one-to-one activities that clergy and ministry workers access, such as coaching, mentoring and spiritual direction. Some, with a background in line management (normative) or spiritual direction (formative) understood one key function of pastoral supervision but not its broad scope. Others, with a background in mentoring and coaching better appreciated the scope of pastoral supervision (e.g. supporting and educating) but often lacked the necessary structure (e.g. many mentors are not supervised for their work with those being mentored). Education about, and equipping for, pastoral supervision remains the unfinished business of the culture change required to enable and ensure faithful and safe practice by clergy and church workers. Developing deeper theological roots for the theory and practice of pastoral supervision is sketched in the final section.
A Christology for Pastoral Supervision
The emerging theory and practice of pastoral supervision is indebted to Scottish scholar-priest Michael Paterson who has been the main pioneer in the United Kingdom.Footnote 28 Paterson lays out clearly how he sees pastoral supervision differing from supervision as it is used in other professions.Footnote 29 Paterson highlights the focus as being on vision and the vocation to which God has called the supervisee.Footnote 30 He does not set out to reinvent supervision but instead to look at how the practices of supervision can be used to serve the aim of attending to the Christian call in the supervisee’s life.Footnote 31 One of the great strengths of Paterson’s pioneering work is the broad range of different approaches to supervision, abundantly clear that supervision is not simply about thinking. Good supervision, in the tradition of wise oversight, pays attention to what is not said as much as what is said, and understands the place of the story being told in supervision within the framework of the Christian story.Footnote 32 This, in fact, is the goal of pastoral supervision, that to help supervisees examine the story out of which they live so that they may minister more profoundly the good news of Jesus Christ.Footnote 33 Three functions of pastoral supervision can now be identifed for safe churches: relational, reflecting and rightness. The relational function, theologically understood as encompassing all relationships (with God, self and others), mitigates against isolation and incurvates in se. The reflecting function, as theological reflection, must challenge and critique the minister’s irreverence, which rejects godly authority and the wisdom of the cross. Thirdly – and crucially – rightness is both relational and cruciform.
The relational function is christologically grounded in the remembering Jesus, understood through Emil Brunner’s Christ as mediator. For Brunner, the divine encounter is always an encounter with truth, just as encountering the truth is a moment of transcendence and grace. All true encounters, therefore true relationships, are understood by Brunner as being in Christ. Brunner’s words, first penned for a world in crisis, bear repeating for our world in crisis:
Jesus Christ is the sole place one can see God, and because we see God there, we also see ourselves anew … Who God is, and who we are, is revealed to us in Jesus Christ by God Himself. Footnote 34
The reflecting function is christologically shaped by the revealing Jesus. While the practices of critical reflection are well attested in the supervision literature, the locus of critique for Luther’s Christ was the cross, the test of everything. Reflection – in light of the cross – converts clergy and ministry workers from pride, vanity and autonomy to humility, sober judgment and trust in God’s hidden work.
The rightness function is framed by the restoring Jesus. Beyond the rightness of compliance, is McClendon’s vision of convictions: the way of faith and faithfulness. Convictions are different and better than values and principles, competence and compliance, because, as McClendon understood, when you discover your convictions, you discover yourself. Here – in the true story of Jesus – is where true rightness is firmly located (as our stories embraced by God’s story). McClendon insists on the present demands of the restoring Jesus:
Our question is not past but present: Is the Risen One who confronts us here and now, today, in the common life of the church – is this one true God, true man, one risen Jesus Christ? For it is this present Christ with whom we must come to terms; it is in him that we must seek our answers. Footnote 35
Leading theological ethicist, Stanley Hauerwas, might grumpily insist that ‘safe’ is not a theological category. He has a point. The christological focus of the Anglican ordinal reflects the view that the Church is largely understood in christological terms and so too are the manifold ministries of Christ – both lay and ordained. There is very limited extent to which pastoral supervision has been understood in christological terms. Friend, colleague and pastoral supervisor Bishop Stephen Pickard has noted a worrying trend in the Anglican communion where the management or therapeutic paradigm of the episcopate too easily eclipses a theological and scholarly expertise in the office and functions of the overseer.Footnote 36 A Scripture-formed ministry of oversight calls people ‘to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ … to the truth as it is in Jesus’ (Eph. 4.13b, 21) – the faithful practice which lies at the heart of the overseers’ vocation. The overseer is always an exemplar of the life of following Jesus.
A practical Christology provides the emerging theory and practice of pastoral supervision grounded in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The Christ event – revealing, remembering and restoring – provides the theological basis necessary for the relational, reflective and rightness functions at the heart of good supervision practice.
Conclusion
The God of biblical revelation has a character. Divine action flows from that character. God is love and light. This is the story of both Old and New Testament, centred on the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.Footnote 37 Safe clergy and ministry workers will not be achieved merely through synods, their commissions nor through processes of compliance. The properly Christian way to change culture is through a rigorous grounding of pastoral supervision in the story of Jesus Christ. The faithful practice of clergy and church workers is secured and shaped by an identity in Christ, not the isolation of not out of sight, out of mind. The light and love of God-in-Christ redeems the isolation and irreverence of individual incurvates in se and the Church’s institutional impotence. A practical Christology for pastoral supervision, animating the three functions identified in this article – relation, reflection and rightness – critiques, then transcends, the isolation and irreverence of both individual clergy and the institutional Church. The relational function restores right relationships in Christ, the properly Christian way to understand all relationships (with God, self and others). The best safeguard against isolation is when the minister’s life is anchored in the Christian community. What mitigates against incurvates in se? Only by abiding in Christ and faithfulness to His call. The reflection function – bathed in the light of Luther’s cross – critiques and coverts the pride and autonomy of the minister’s irreverence, which rejects godly authority and the wisdom of the cross. Institutional irreverence must also be critiqued in the light of the cross. Too often ecclesial irreverence is merely an expression of theological pre-commitments or tribal alliances. Thirdly – and crucially – rightness is relational and cruciform. The impotence of a Church that could not protect vulnerable people is not made safe through strengthened policies and procedures alone. The safe church, a refuge and sanctuary for all people, is grounded in the God who is both Rock and Redeemer. The rightness of the safe church, therefore, is ensured with confession and faithfulness, not compliance and fault-finding. Pastoral supervision enables the Church and its ministers to be more relational, reflective and right. That is safe for everyone. And a safe church – with safe ministers and safe ministries – is ideally placed to reclaim its true role as the bride of Christ. As the bride of Christ, the safe Church promotes flourishing lives.
