Photo by Luis Villasmil on Unsplash

A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of preaching at the installation service of our new pastor. As I prepared for the service, I was reflecting on the tasks any local church pastor might do on a typical week…

…respond to emails, make pastoral calls, address church leadership matters, service planning, sermon prep, connecting with the community, supporting volunteers, keep abreast of what’s happening in the world, train leaders, facilitate discipleship, review ministry programs, meet with a few ministry leaders, Safe Church training, engage new members, connect with visitors, preach a cracker of a sermon, keep learning, keep growing, make sure you take your day off, be a model parent, have a great family, find regular time for prayer and Bible reading…

No doubt, there are a few things I’ve missed, and maybe it’s just me, but ministry seems to be getting more and more demanding. When I was in local church ministry, I found the best way to prepare for Sunday was to have a day and a half of largely uninterrupted time to complete the background exegetical work and to formulate my Sunday message. The problem was getting (and retaining!) that uninterrupted space! The phone keeps ringing. Emails keep arriving. Text messages keep lighting up the phone. And there’s the gloriously noisy Kid’s Ministry just a room or two away…

I’ve started to calling the ever expanding list of pastoral responsibilities ‘ministry creep’. No matter how well planned your schedule is, there are interruptions. No matter how clear your job description is, there are always other things that find their way into your task list. Murphy’s Law: the list of things you have to do always exceeds the time you have allocated to do them. We all know this.

Needless to say, fragmentation and challenges of time management are par for the ministry course. The pressure may not always be intense, but it is constant. It’s hardly surprising, then, that pastors often struggle to stay grounded and keep their head above the waters of schedule and interruption.

Today’s Australian pastor is a hemisphere and two millennia away from the NT Church. Even so, Paul encouraged his younger pastor friend, Timothy, “keep your head in all situations”, “watch your life and doctrine closely”, “train yourself to be godly” (2 Tim 4:5; 1 Tim 4:7, 15-16).

My question is:

How do I do this?

What regular process do I have to keep watch over myself?

How do I train myself to be godly?

And can I even do any of this effectively on my own?

This is where regular pastoral supervision is really important. No doubt, there’s great value in reflecting on your own – we all should do this (and here are some tips to get you started) – but I am never going to have the sort of objectivity I need to really keep myself honest, or to ask myself the hard questions, or even just to probe a bit and notice something that might stand out clearly to another person.

Supervision allows me to step outside of my schedule, to step back from pastoral busyness and ministry creep, and in the caring presence of another, keep watch over myself better. Supervision helps me consider how ministry is impacting my soul, to consider how I can do better in my role, and how I can better engage in my wider ministry context.

Supervision will not make ministry creep go away, but it will more than likely help you approach the demands of your ministry with greater clarity. It will help to take you deeper into your calling, and to be more intentional about the care you bring to the people God has given you.

Ultimately, supervision will bring you back to what matters most: doing ministry better, centring our ministry on honouring Jesus, nurturing his people to maturity, and stimulating his church to embody the Kingdom of God to his world.

When Supervision helps me sort through the clutter and approach my work with greater clarity, it makes sense to make it a priority.

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Action steps:

1. Email me here to discuss how regular supervision can help your ministry.
2. Speak to your church leadership about making this a regular priority. If you’d like me to connect with your leadership I’d be open to exploring this.
3. Check out the list of other Supervisors accredited with the Australian Association of Supervisors