1. Pastoral Supervision
2. Spiritual Directors
3. The Contemplative
4. Covenant Considerations


​Pastoral Supervision

is the support given to those in helping professions. It is a professional "best practice" originating from counseling and now applied across disciplines. Supervision occurs in peer groups, faculty led groups, and/or individually. Pastoral supervision assists those who minister in and for the LORD. While this does not replace necessary training, professional requirements, or other supports, pastoral supervision aims, through a prayerful and reflective process, to ensure that souls are well-served and the supervisee has interior freedom and is growing. 

The main purpose of supervision...is to help the supervisee to learn how to be a more effective director (Frs. Barry & Connolly).

Spiritual Directors

need supervision because they are called and gifted, yet human and broken. During spiritual direction, directors experience many things that need to be unpacked, such as inner movements of desolation and consolation, resistances, triggers, and timely graces, to name a few. Supervision, then, is a place of rest, exploration, strengthening, challenge, and mentoring; it is a process that helps the director grow in awareness, seek understanding, and then keep what is of God in the ministry of spiritual direction. We simply cannot give what we do not have, and only healed people heal others.


​In every situation ask yourself: What would our Lord have done? Then do that. That is your only rule (St. Charles de Foucauld).


The Contemplative

stance is the only appropriate posture for pastoral supervision. Under the merciful and mighty gaze of the Lord, the director comes to reground him or herself in the presence, purpose, and power of the Lord, to approach each soul as if on holy ground, and to rest in the Sacred Wisdom given only to the childlike. "Other tasks and benefits may occur through supervision, such as guiding, consulting, teaching, and personal healing; however, these are secondary tasks and occur only after the primary purpose is served," writes Maureen Conroy in Looking Into The Well. 


​​The water I shall give will become in him
a spring of water welling up to eternal life (Jn 4: 14).

​
​Some Considerations

  1. Compatibility between the supervisor and the supervisee is important as it is God who pairs for individual supervision. We discern mutual "fit." Supervisees may be adult lay or religious, men or women. In-person or by zoom.
  2. Confidentiality is held strictly, as with spiritual direction (please see terms). Additionally, due to the nature of supervision, the supervisee must appropriately deidentify verbatims.  
  3. Contributing with a stipend allows the supervisor to continue in ministry and may be made on a sliding scale of $40-$80 per session (credit/debit only).  
  4. ​Courtesy​ includes punctuality, meeting monthly, notifying the supervisor in advance if there is need to reschedule. The supervisee brings a verbatim (various templates available) to supervision. 

My faith teaches me that Christ lives in my heart and that I can find him there. It requires a greater amount of faith, however, to recognize God in everything that happens (Wilfid Stinissen, OCD).