1

GUIDELINES ON BEST PRACTICE

FOR LICENSED MINISTERS

* This Document should be read in conjunction with The Diocesan “Code of Pastoral Practice”

Introduction

The practice of licensed ministry, lay and ordained, has grown hugely in its variety of forms, tasks, standards and training. Lying beyond and behind that variety is a common core of expectation that is often assumed but rarely expressed. In earlier times, these expectations were passed on through standard forms of residential training, curate apprenticeships, archdeaconry and episcopal oversight and a more homogenous Anglican culture that set (often unspoken) benchmarks of behaviour and performance.

We can no longer take any of this for granted. Public expectations of ministry performance are shaped increasingly by a secular culture preoccupied with compliance, complaint and litigation. The church’s record in dealing with abuse of power has lagged behind other institutions. And even while the church’s media profile is lower, the scrutiny under which it works is closer and more critical than ever. Guidelines for best practice that would precede any more formal and legal process such as Title D of the canons which remains the standard for this Church.

Aim

To create a church culture that allows the practice of ministry and its governance, decision making and power sharing to proceed openly, fairly and freely. That culture embraces ministry practiced in parishes, chaplaincies, regional, diocesan and ecumenical staff positions.

Purpose

These guidelines will be owned and adopted by the community of licensed ministers as a self-imposed and commonly held standard of conduct upheld and affirmed among peers.

Review

This document will be reviewed by Pentecost 2009 and from then on, on a three yearly cycle.

Focal issues

The issues that follow are in no order of priority and reflect some of the areas where best practice is most urgently needed. Most of those engaged in licensed ministry are performing multiple and overlapping roles. The intention of this study is not to limit those overlaps but simply to provide clarity where there is confusion, and to suggest boundaries where they are hard to identify. The intention is always to make our practice of ministry more transparent to Gospel values and protect both ministers and those who are ministered to alike.

  1. Professional Relationships

Professional relationships in the church are crucial to the credibility of the ministry we offer, openly and consistently. That ministry is compromised when undeclared conflicts of interest occur. Such conflicts are routinely declared and dealt with openly in boards that manage money and by lawyers who manage the interests of clients. In ministry relationships it is important to be able to acknowledge conflicts of interest. Difficulties often arise when professional roles in church communities are shared between family members, friends or embedded in long established patterns.

Such sharing is common in small communities and rural areas, and can work well, provided some safeguards are in place from the start, before difficulties arise. Particular difficulties arise when a paid staff member or their partner, or partner of stipended clergy person are elected to a governance role. If loyalty to a partner, friend or family member, business or other vested interest, constantly has to take precedence, and disinterested judgement is seen to be a struggle, then ministers so conflicted need to step aside from holding membership of a decision-making or power-sharing group. When conflicts of loyalty and personal interest do surface, as they will, then space should be made and opportunity formally given on agendas. Such declarations of interest should be made publicly at the start to ensure a transparent process. Care in setting an agenda and planning the order of business at a vestry meeting is one helpful way to do this.

Spouses and close friends who share ministries in a parish, school or workplace have built up a valuable record of experience on how far leadership roles can be shared in the church. That experience suggests that difficulties which do arise, are as much to do with public perceptions often held by people somewhat removed from a given process, as they are with reality. Such perceptions still need to be addressed, and that is best done by the development of transparent processes of decision making and open communication.

Conflicts of interest occur widely, and across many networks and relationships and therefore need to be understood and defined as widely as possible. For instance; they can be parental as well as personal, ideological as well as financial, theological as well as functional.

*supposed secrecy

*fear of disclosure

*unwillingness to consult

*rushed decision-making

*confusion between governance and management, especially by expecting staff

paid to manage to also govern

Any one of these may give the suggestion of inequity, inappropriate procedures, unprofessionalism.

Where such conflicts do surface and can’t be resolved by representatives of the parties involved, an independent person who enjoys the trust of all those involved should be sought in a mediating and facilitating role.

  1. Retired Ministers

The contribution of retired priests and vicars in this diocese is immense and greatly valued. What follows is designed to protect and honour that contribution rather than end it. For it does need protection. The relatively few difficulties that arise at the end of licensed ministry can cloud the good relationships that usually prevail. The absence of guidelines for licenced ministry that ends, while the minister remains in his or her place of ministry, has often caused ambiguities, tensions and similar difficulties in churches. At least one English diocese canonically requires clergy to move out of the diocese for ten years after retirement date. Other places prohibit clergy from attaching themselves to the parish they last served in for a set period of time.

Difficulties that arise are bound up in unspoken but hugely influential shifts in

  • professional boundaries
  • inherited authority
  • specialised ministries or chaplaincies independent of a vicar or ministry team’s role
  • cultural expectations
  • family loyalties and
  • personal investments that happen when mandates for ministry are passed on. For ordained people, this mandate involves sacramental and symbolic roles (baptism for example). Such roles crisscross thresholds of conscious-ness we are only dimly aware of, let alone able to find words to describe.

Neat prescriptions for who can live where when ministries end are impractical in a small diocese. It would be more appropriate to set guidelines. Such guidelines could include:

  • Give adequate time to liturgies of ending, letting go and moving on. Proper farewells are as important as proper welcomes. It is important that ministries are fully acknowledged and honoured when they end and the moving on be named and blessed. Plan well in advance for redeploying retired ministers into settings where they can contribute without tension and competition.
  • Be clear about roles and profiles. Don’t accept sacramental or liturgical leadership roles in a parish once a license ends, except at the express invitation of the successor. Ensure independent chaplaincies are appropriately renegotiated to respect new ministries. Avoid representative roles or leadership tasks with a public profile unless specifically invited to by the new ministers. Exceptions such as ministry with immediate family will always often need to be made but even then, care should be taken in seeking permission and invitations from those licensed to do the work and ensuring such requests are made in a way that allows the appropriateness of such services to be explored and negotiated in good faith and without pressure. Transparency of these processes for the parish/faith community involved will help a healthy climate of collegiality to develop.
  • During the period a new ministry is beginning and responsibility and loyalties and networks are being transferred from one minister to others, distance is recommended. The period of this distance needs to be extended by mutual agreement for as long as it takes to ensure that long term or significant attachments are refocused, and competing loyalties are resolved.
  1. Unresolved conflict

Disputes and conflicts that are not addressed or resolved in an earlier ministry linger on, and set up new ministries for difficulties and even failure. Any disputes or unresolved conflicts need to be named and dealt with during an interim period. An interim ministry offers a process and allows for persons free of any vested interest to contribute. It is important for the diocese to provide guidelines, preparation and supervision for such transitional ministry.Do we have any such guidelines?

Those who carry oversight of a ministry, carry the responsibility for seeing such disputes are addressed, rather than simply handing them on for the new people to inherit and deal with. The parish consultation is one forum for ensuring the issues are openly identified and processes for resolution are understood to be put in place, as part of the transition process. Where there are significant issues that are inherent in the history and community of a parish, they need to be made visible at each stage of the transition process. And even after new ministries are established, a pattern of early and regular review initiated and resourced by the diocese will help to address long standing issues that can still resurface.

Regular open and informal parish meetings, chaired by competent lay leaders, are another way of preventing or ameliorating conflict.

Transparency is the minimum expectation. Resolution through Title D or less formal mediation may be necessary and where that is achieved, the outcomes need to be communicated back to the relevant community or other relevant communities of faith.

  1. Isolation

Isolation in ministry is an issue that can present in a variety of symptoms; from clergy burnout to loss of vision and energy in local mission. Isolation occurs not only geographically, but also where there is a lack of attention to the provision of the following:

  • collegial professional relationships
  • opportunities for furthering personal reading and theological growth
  • opportunities for retreat making and
  • diocesan commitment to professional development supports

To be cut off from support, supervision, peer engagement and challenge, ongoing training and accountability is not just a matter of regret but an issue of liability. When these professional systems are not present, the church puts at risk those whom it seeks to serve and those whom it is asked to serve. Ministry that is practiced alone and separate from others who share the responsibility, both lay and ordained, is unacceptable practice.

A commitment to development of collegiality, opportunities for personal, spiritual and professional growth, the provision of networks of mutual support, and linkages across urban areas or rural regions all nurture best practice. Attendance at training events / quiet days / collegial and professional gatherings helps this happen.

  1. Competency

Being aware of and working within one’s level of competency is a professional skill and requires ongoing attention. The development of competency skills is usually assumed and growth in competency most often left up to the individual minister. In reality it requires a commitment to ongoing training and assessment, a disciplined pattern of reflection on ministry experience, developing professional skills and personal strengths. Without ongoing resourcing, ministers in one decade may not be resourced sufficiently to sustain their ministry in another.

6. Boundaries

Respect for and a constantly renewed understanding of the range and complexity of social, personal and professional boundaries is a fundamental element of best practice. Boundaries are to do with behaviours that demonstrate proper respect and the ability to appreciate and honour difference, and understandings of issues of power in role and relationships. Categories of professional boundaries include:

  • Spiritual (as in respect for different religious experiences, pieties and theologies)
  • Physical (including sexual boundaries, appropriate touch, respect for personal space)
  • Intellectual (including use of ideas, writings and published material without permission)
  • Emotional (including manipulation of emotions, and using feelings to gain confidences)
  • Social (gender, racial, sexual orientation, cultural differences and other forms of social identity).

These boundaries of respect and understanding are especially important among colleagues in ministry, who are required to model a generosity of acceptance, community and mutual trust, and life-giving relationships. Such modeling in ministry reflects both within and outside the church, the Anglican principle of unity in diversity.

Ministers who have difficulty accepting the diversity that the diocese embraces in its mission goal of "including all" have a professional obligation under their licence to address that difficulty with their supervisor, ministry convener or bishop. Refusal to offer collegiality and mutual respect to other ministers on the grounds of differences in training, background, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, theology etc is a breach of good practice. Where there is a breach of good practice as outlined above, resolution will be required for a licence to be sustained.

7. Ministry Evaluation

Functional analysis and appraisal approaches are positioned quite differently to the ethos and needs of assessing best practice for Christian ministry where the Gospel imperative calls us to a different ordering of values: respect for the size of mustard seeds, the speed of yeast at work in dough and the subtlety of the taste of salt in a meal. The diocesan ‘Parish Check Up’ guide on questions to ask, signs to look for is a useful resource for assessing best practice.

Success, ironically, can make us vulnerable to complacency. Complacency about best practice and its demonstrable standards is high when ministry seems to be going well. Special vigilance in terms of self examination, standards of training and performance is most needed when success is building and begins to mark a ministry and congregation. Henri Nouwen’s concept of the “wounded healer” is relevant here. Our ability to offer credible ministry where it is most needed depends on staying in touch with our vulnerability, our dependence on grace and our own experience of suffering, loss and failure. These are precious spiritual resources that we need most at precisely those times of success when we are seen to need them least. To value success as a gift out of what has gone before and humility for what may develop and provide an environment where successful ministry can become well grounded.

8. Communication

Ministry leadership carries with it high expectations of good, respectful communication. Common failures in communications in ministry contexts include

  • Talking about colleagues in ministry, especially about predecessors and successors, or setting up lay versus clergy, in demeaning and careless ways
  • Judging the motivation of other ministers and thereby breaking the rule of always assuming the best intentions of colleagues.
  • Talking about what others do is usually healthy. Second guessing why they do it is almost always dangerous and damaging
  • Passing on unsubstantiated allegations. While the church seems to act as though it enjoys immunity from libel and slander, libel and slander remain exactly what they are – damaging of others and criminally liable acts.
  • Showing a lack of respect for confidentiality. Whether indirectly expressed without names or any obvious disclosure (but no less damaging in its implications), or breaching of confidence without permission or negotiation is unacceptable pastoral and professional behaviour and invites disciplinary responses.
  • Demonstrating a lack of respect or awareness of the hierarchy of value inherent in different forms of communication (e.g. the difference between emails and face to face conversation).

Public exchanges between people face to face are the best way to communicate personal concerns, criticisms, opinions and sensitive information. Technology dependent, anonymous electronic data exchange, is the least helpful. Our most to least desirable options range from interpersonal communication before witnesses, conversations public and private, before witnesses, to phone, personal letter, and to email.

Best practice for communication in ministry requires

  • choosing the appropriate form for the occasion,
  • avoiding deception or confusion in who else is included in the exchange,
  • not presuming or seeking intimacy,
  • refraining from demanding responses or manipulating information
  • taking responsibility for ensuring you communicate clearly

Life-enhancing communication in the church is about respecting common courtesies in the way we talk to and about each other. This involves a mutual loyalty and accountability that is personal, pastoral and collegial.

Emails

Email is a medium that is especially open to abuses of good communication, perhaps because of its relative ease and speed. Electronic effectiveness gets ahead of ethical and interpersonal appropriateness. Respect for the following guidelines would help to avoid this danger.

Don’t use email to initiate or continue any personal conflicts. Reserve the technology for information sharing, exploring issues and conducting business that doesn’t involve personal disputes, antagonisms or controversies.

When emails are of a personal nature, involving any information that either party could deem to be sensitive, ensure the message is not copied to others without the express permission of the other party. Be clear about who you are addressing your email to – “reply to all” should be used sparingly.

When you sense that a conversation in person or by phone would be preferable though harder than emailing, and probably take more time, take the time to have the conversation.

If your email is a complaint, ensure it addresses what’s wrong rather than who is at fault, speak for yourself and not on behalf of others, especially if they are unnamed and uncounted, and concentrate on describing the problem rather than ascribing motivation and judgments of the people involved.

Don’t use private emails as public evidence without the permission of those who sent them.

Never use emails to pass on allegations, accusations or unsubstantiated information that you wouldn’t be willing to say out loud in public.

Email is rarely the best medium for conveying messages that are emotionally charged or dependent on personal interpretation and subjectivity.