NCCA Assembly Roundtable on Professional Supervision 

NCCA’s roundtable meeting on 18 July gathered 33 participants from Australia’s churches to discuss the opportunities and challenges of implementing Recommendation 16.45 of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, that:

“Consistent with Child Safe Standard 5, 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.”

In the Opening Prayer/Reflection by NCCA’s National Coordinator of Safe Church Program, Laura Cregan referenced insights shared in The Wounded Healer by Henri Nouwen (1979). The book is written as a model for ministry for men and women in service in their church and society through an analysis of sufferings and shared humanity.

Rev Dr Alan Niven from Melbourne University of Divinity led the theological input on the importance of professional supervision being embraced as a spiritual discipline and “authentic experience of spiritual growth and maturing”. Dr Niven proposed that those in religious and pastoral ministry and leadership in our churches have an “individual responsibility” conferred by baptism, “collegial responsibility” and “ecclesial responsibility” to each other. Dr Niven also posited that professional and pastoral supervision be embraced as a necessary component of ‘discipleship’ with an emphasis on guiding, nurturing, fostering and affirmation. He encouraged us to see professional supervision as an important tool of pastoral care.

Ms Nicky Lock, Counsellor and course facilitator for the Certificate of Clinical/Pastoral Supervision Charles Sturt University (CSU), presented on the practice of regular (at least quarterly, preferably monthly) supervision “effecting transition and transformation” quoting Pohly K in Transforming Rough Places (2001). Nicky also shared the analogy of professional supervision as a “three-legged stool” – providing restorative, formative and normative supports for those in religious ministry. Nicky’s presentation illuminated professional supervision “as a safe holding space” where churches and church agencies need to prioritise the cost and time for supervision and anticipate the challenges and resistance from people who have not experienced pastoral and professional supervision in ministry.

Ms Helen Blake, Practising Supervisor and Lecturer at St Mark’s Theological College (CSU) facilitated the afternoon session with Roundtable participants working on the ‘steps on the journey’ for our churches and church agencies to implement a program of professional supervision. The need to train up more supervisors was flagged as a major constraint to be overcome in order to have enough supervisors with “a degree of independence from the institution within which the person is in ministry.”

SAVE THE DATE – 31 October 2018 - St James Parish Hall, Sydney CBD – Next NCCA Assembly Roundtable takes Professional Supervision discussions into discussions on Performance Appraisal Frameworks for clergy and church workers in light of the recommendations of the Royal Commission.

AND THIS WEEK
Pictured below: Participants at a meeting of Australian National Dialogue of Christians, Muslims and Jews, hosted by NCCA on 25 July.