Pastoral Supervision for Safe Churches

This essay will examine the contribution of pastoral (professional) supervision in enabling and ensuring a safe church. Pastoral supervision is the brave, safe space where clergy (and ministry workers) reflect on their ministry practice in a regular, planned supervision session. The present article emerges from a decade of training pastoral supervisors and consultation across the national Anglican Church during 2019 based on recommendations made by the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. It concludes that the properly Christian way for pastoral supervision to change the culture of the Church is christological: a rigorous grounding of its theory and practice in the story of Jesus Christ.

Childhood Significant Experiences that Contribute to Christian Commitment in Young Adulthood

Childhood experiences are significant to adult spirituality. Understanding these influential experiences can assist professors of Christian education as they seek to empower future children’s ministry workers. This article seeks to understand how childhood experiences influence adult spirituality. In-depth interviews and grounded theory were utilized on 21 participants between 22 and 30 years old. Results from this study created seven themes revealing the childhood experiences that contribute to Christian commitment in young adulthood.

Entering A Place of Fire

Terms like “frightening” and “spiritually dark” fall short in describing many visitors’ impressions of Paraguay’s Tacumbú Penitentiary. Inmates simply refer to it as “hell.” The human rights abuses there are not merely statistics on a United Nations report – they are daily life for thousands of men: overcrowding, malnourishment, unsanitary conditions, over-extended sentences, and the constant threat of assault. According to a former warden, the main efforts in preventing a violent reaction to such circumstances as well as thwarting the consequences of the façade of correction occur inside the penitentiary’s Christian rehabilitation cell blocks, which are managed by chaplains and volunteers. This paper proposes that the primary motivations driving these ministry workers to endure the inhospitable prison environment fall under three categories used by Tewksbury and Dabney: helping inmates, visiting known inmates, and sharing religious beliefs. The paper also evaluates the effectiveness of these motivations for ministry in one of South America’s most dangerous prisons.

Social Networks among Ministry Relationships: Relational Capacity, Burnout, & Ministry Effectiveness

Humans, on average, are believed to have the capacity to sustain approximately 150 personal relationships due to social-cognitive limits and time available for relationship investment (Dunbar, 1993). The consequences of attempting to exceed this relational limit have not been investigated. Yet relational-style ministry workers face pressure to increase their number of personal relationships. It is likely that attempting to exceed this relational limit leads to distress. Therefore, relational ministers exceeding typical social network sizes were predicted to experience higher levels of burnout and lower levels of ministry effectiveness. For this study, two hundred thirty-seven relational ministers completed self-report measures. Multiple hierarchical regressions indicated that while total network size was not a significant predictor of outcome variables, nuanced differences among networks predicted burnout and ministry effectiveness. Above average numbers of intimate, high-investment relationships predicted smaller overall network sizes, and subgroups of more intimate relationships may have optimal size ranges that contribute to personal well-being.

Posture in Relation to God and Ethnic Background: A Qualitative Analysis of Urban Youth Ministry Workers' Responses to Crisis

The relationship between humans and God has been one of great interest to scholars throughout the ages (Snow, McMinn, Bufford, & Brenlinger, 2011). This study analyzed urban youth ministry workers' experiences of crisis and the impact of these experiences on their relationships with God. Participants were interviewed, and interview transcriptions were coded using the Consensual Qualitative Research (CQR) method. Two major categories emerged to describe participants' posture in relation to God: “posture toward God” and “posture away from God.” Additionally, ten subcategories emerged. Issues related to theodicy and feelings of distance from God were explored, along with experiences of trust and intimacy with God. Sub-categories were further analyzed for distinctions correlated with participants' ethnic background. Results suggested that the postures of anger, confusion and tension were noteworthy, as ethnic group differences in report of these experiences were apparent. Recommendations for further research and implications for clinical practice were offered.

A Sense of Call: How Parents Support the Vocational Quests of Adolescent Girls

Interview research with adolescent girls in the U.S. demonstrates that parents have a significant impact on their religious lives. This essay explores girls' experiences of how parents support their searches for vocation and meaning in a variety of ways. Viewing adolescence as a time when girls renegotiate their relationships with parents rather than separate from them, the author calls for youth ministry workers to reconsider the dominant pattern of youth ministry in the U.S. which positions youth apart from adults in the church.