Need a Good Driving Instructor? We All Do.
School is not yet out for the summer. Nevertheless, we’ve received our first summer assignment: driving lessons for our 15-year-old. For us, that includes lessons on a manual transmission car. Hello, Stick Shift! The irony is that our cars are automatics. We will borrow a friend’s car to teach our daughter. Why all of the effort? Because I believe that the felt experience of a jerking, stalling automobile also teaches us valuable lessons in meeting the challenges of our times.
As leaders of service, we are often under the illusion that we’re driving an automatic. Recently, a pastor said to me, “I knew ministry wasn’t going to be easy, but I didn’t think it would be so very, very hard.” The reality is that the gears of our ministries grind us to a halt regularly, and unfortunately, there are too few driving instructors.
Until now.
Over a decade ago, therapist Michael Paterson approached his friend, Jane Leach: “I am seeing a lot of clergy in my practice. The trouble is that many don’t need therapy. They need supervision.” In Michael’s profession and other people-helping professions like social work and healthcare, clinical supervision was required. Where could clergy get supervision? Jane responded, “They can’t because pastoral supervision doesn’t yet exist.” Therapy was there to aid clergy psyche, spiritual direction to strengthen their relationship with the Holy, and coaching to learn new skills. Each is able to assist our ministries, but that isn’t necessarily their primary goal. Supervision, however, is a disciplined and intentional reflection on our actual work, how our “manual driving” is going, allowing us to explore our actions and reactions to our ministries, and develop a response for moving forward, assessing risks along the way.
Following their conversation, Michael and Jane made a commitment to creating such a thing. Reflective Pastoral Supervision (RPS) launched in the UK and Australia a decade ago. In a large-scale study conducted by the Methodist Church of Britain, clergy participating in pastoral supervision reported significant benefits: 73% experienced reduced anxiety and stress; 68% improved their ability to identify and manage risk; 65% reported improvement in colleague relationships. The gears stopped grinding, and they began to move!
LeaderWise is now bringing RPS to the US, training new generations of driving instructors … err, supervisors … to support clergy out on the road.
Curious about finding a RPS supervisor? Attend a free 30-min Information Session
Tuesday, June 25 at 12 pm OR Tuesday, July 16 at 11 am Central Time Zone. Register here.
Each RPS session begins by inviting you to press the brakes on the busy-ness of ministry for 60-90 minutes every 4- 6 weeks. We then engage the clutch, holding time and space for the Holy, because at its core, RPS is spiritually and theologically grounded. You then bring an issue from your ministry to the space. Your supervisor helps you pinpoint the defining moment when your issue stops bucking and forms a clear question to explore.
Exploring the question is where it gets both deep and creative. Jane and Michael designed a process model for RPS and use Greenwich Foot Tunnel as a metaphor to describe it. The Greenwich Foot Tunnel is a pedestrian footpath that takes you deep into the river bed of the Thames River between the towns of Greenwich and Poplar. Your supervisor helps you notice and wonder both what is happening and what’s at stake. It’s at this confidential, safe-r and boundaried depth where you realize your answer(s) to the question and what’s necessary to drive this car better.
The Greenwich Foot Tunnel connects Greenwich with Island Gardens on the Isle of Dogs.
That’s when you identify your next best step, as you get ready to leave the tunnel. What do you need to learn? Whose support do you need to elicit? What courageous conversation do you need to have? What’s at risk if you take this step? What’s at risk if you don’t? For you. For your ministry. For your faith.
There is nothing automatic about ministry. It is hard work. But we’ll only break the engine if we don’t learn how to shift gears properly. And we can’t do so without adequate support. Like good driving instructors.
Curious about getting trained as an RPS supervisor? Attend a free 30-min Panel of Current Trainees on Wednesday, June 12 at 12 pm OR Thursday, June 27 at 1 pm Central Time Zone. Register here.
Whatever challenges our daughter meets on the road of life, I hope she remembers our time together this summer driving in the parking lot. I hope she remembers how it felt for the car to sputter and lurch, that these small stalled moments are a part of the work, and that it isn’t a sign of ultimate failure. I hope too that all along the way, she has great driving instructors. I hope we all do.
