This essay first appeared in The Journal of Supervision and Training in Ministry in Volume 18, 1997  pages 55-68

INTRODUCTION
Supervision is not a singular, isolated discipline but is integrally related to other professional disciplines. It is well-documented that pastoral supervision has been influenced by the fields of business and industry, education, psychotherapy, social work, and clinical pastoral education.  What has not been adequately addressed is the connection between pastoral supervision and its companion professions: pastoral counseling and spiritual direction.
            Frequently participants in our course “Principles and Practice of Supervision” describe their experience in supervision as “sounding a lot like what counselors do” or “feeling like what happens in spiritual direction.” It is accurate to observe similarities in all three processes, because all of them have theological orientation and intention. However, there are distinctive differences. It is important that pastoral supervisors be clear about the comparisons and contrasts among them so that the boundaries of each may be kept clear while, at the same time, pressing the edges of supervision to assure a total supervisory experience.
            This was impressed upon us as we worked for a fifteen year period with a
Roman Catholic retreat center in the supervisory education of its staff.2  Participants were priests, religious, and laity involved in a wide range of supervisory work, including administrative personnel, pastoral counselors, and spiritual directors responsible for the supervision of spiritual director interns.  Despite these differences, there was a common ground in their responsibilities.  They were motivated to pursue the relationship of supervision to the therapeutic and formational aspects of their work. During the same period of time that we worked together, these ideas were also tested out with the people engaged in other programs of the Center for Supervisory Studies 3  (pastors, theological field educators, public and religious educators, social service personnel). The theoretical framework of this article arose out of that fertile interchange of thought and experience.
SOME ASSUMPTIONS
Three assumptions undergird the discussion that follows. The first is that supervision can be a pastoral act. It can be pastoral but it is not necessarily so. Supervision means “oversight,” “superintending,” exercising “charge” over someone or something. It has to do with guidance, management, and leadership. Pastoral refers to an attitude of caregiving, mutual support, and empowerment. The word, pastoral, means “spiritual care or guidance.”4 It grows out of the spirituality of its practitioners. It is something that Christians, laity and clergy, are expected to do as a part of their work. It is not limited, however, to Christians; people of other religious persuasions are also capable of pastoral acts. The pastoral nature of supervision is determined not by who does it, but when it is characterized by spiritual care and guidance.
                The second assumption is that supervision must exercise concern for the whole person in order to be fully effective. The interdependence of body, mind, and spirit is an accepted fact, though supervisory practice is notorious for neglecting that truth. Even with all of our insight into the nature of human life we often treat supervision only as a function of job management. The primary task of pastoral supervision is not skill development (to help people become more capable in their ministry), nor problem solving (to help them adjust to some ministry situation), nor even the enablement of ministry (to help them get their ministry done). These are important results of supervision. Rather, its task is to help its participants be clear about who they are so they can become more competent, confront crises more constructively, and do ministry more effectively. The central task of pastoral supervision is to help persons find a sense of wholeness that enables them to live and work in meaningful ways. This is made possible by a clear sense of personal, professional and spiritual identity, and it is the result of a kind of supervision that attends to the whole person.
            The third assumption on which this article is based follows naturally. It is the understanding that the purpose of pastoral supervision is formational. Until recent years the word “formation” had been largely avoided in the description of supervision.5 The assumption was that it referred to a specialized religious experience belonging to or practiced exclusively within a particular religious tradition. The ministry of spiritual direction was done by spiritual directors who were uniquely qualified to guide persons in their spiritual formation. This is still true; spiritual direction is a specialized ministry. However, as one writer has recently pointed out, “Spiritual formation has become one of the major movements of the late twentieth century. “6 It has been adopted by the larger Christian community and has found its way into a wide variety of cultural and religious expressions. Actually, it is an established practice with which pastoral supervision is just catching up. Our challenge is to find legitimate and helpful ways to integrate it into our supervisory practice.
SUPERVISION AS A PASTORAL ACT
The assertion that supervision becomes pastoral when it is characterized by spiritual care and guidance begs the question about what constitutes spiritual care and guidance and how pastoral supervision can facilitate that experience. Edward Seilner, drawing upon his background as a counselor and his interest in spiritual mentoring, writes:
Spirituality in its broadest sense is, quite simply, a way of life that reveals an awareness of the sacred and a relationship with the Holy One in the midst of our human fragility, brokenness, and limitations... .Mentoring in the form of spiritual guidance is not limited to only ‘spiritual’ affairs, God, and prayer—it includes all of life.7
            We do not agree with the increasing substitution of the word mentoring for supervision, but we believe that pastoral supervision includes a function akin to spiritual mentoring.8 Pastoral supervision is a way of doing ministry. Pastors are simultaneously spiritual and temporal supervisors. Leading congregations in worship, preaching, teaching, counseling, visiting, and institutional administration are all supervisory acts. Pastors meet people in every dimension of life: personal, family, occupational, recreational, social, and spiritual. In every aspect they have the opportunity to help people make the connection between the sacred and their daily lives, between God’s intention for life and the way the divine purpose is lived out in daily existence.
WHAT MAKES SUPERVISION PASTORAL
Supervision is pastoral when it meets at least three criteria. The first is the formation of spiritual identity. Components of the pastoral supervisory relationship are: administrative, educational, emotional, professional, social, and theological. The fourth, the professional task, is described as “assisting in identity formation as persons [and as] ministers.”9 Identity formation is appropriate not only to pastoral supervision; every profession has this as a goal of supervision. Social Work wants its workers to be, in attitude and commitment, social workers and not medical attendants. Likewise, medicine expects physicians to act and think like doctors of medicine, not as social workers. Pastoral ministry has often faced the challenge of having its practitioners identify themselves more as psychologists than as theologians. This is why Clinical Pastoral Education stresses pastoral formation as it immerses students in work among other professionals.
Identity formation has special dimensions for persons in the church. On the one hand, we must be clear personally about our identity as persons of faith. On the other hand, we must attend professionally to our pastoral identity. What this calls for is the formation of identity on three levels: personal, professional, and spiritual. Spiritual identity and pastoral identity are not the same but are related. In supervision we are quite clear about our role in forming professional identity. We have not been as clear about the reason or process for the formation of personal and spiritual identity. Supervision becomes pastoral when it includes
attention to the latter. -
            The second criterion that makes supervision pastoral is encouragement of participants to think theologically about their lives and their ministries. James and Evelyn Whitehead suggest that “faithful and effective pastoral activity depends on the ability of Christians—and in a special way, Christian ministers—to recognize and use the religiously significant insights” in a way that clarifies, coordinates, and shapes pastoral action.’° It seems obvious that pastors should utilize theological reflection in their decision-making. It is also important that lay people engage in theological reflection. Douglas Wingeier contends that lay people have surrendered to the church their own abilities to reflect theologically. They have let the professional clergy tell them what to believe and do. He appeals for bringing theology back into the pews by helping lay persons do their own theological reflection so they can make responsible decisions about faith and life.”
            Theological reflection is therefore a responsibility for both clergy and laity. Robert Kinast claims that for both “the prime objective is to help each [person] construct a living or operational theology, this being ‘the actual set of theological positions’ that the person affirms and upon which his or her Christian practice is based.” Theological reflection does not merely apply theology to ministerial situations but examines it “to determine its applicability and influence on the situation. “12            

            One of the most fruitful arenas to foster theological reflection is pastoral supervision. Edwin Hoover is convinced that this is what distinguishes adequate from excellent supervision, particularly in the way it helps its participants identify the differences in their belief systems.’3 By helping supervisees explore these differences they can be helped to clarify the relation between their professed theology and their operational theology. In this way supervision can become a process leading to wholeness.
            The third criterion that gives supervision its pastoral character is its commitment to seeking the empowerment of persons. To empower is “to make one able to do something”; it implies the “granting of power or delegation of authority.” Theologically, empowerment means the fulfillment of God’s intentions for oneself and for the world. Supervision for empowerment implies helping supervisees fulfill God’s intentions in the workplace.
            People become empowered when they are enabled to live out of their wholeness. To be whole is to possess psychological and spiritual health that grows out of having a clear sense of oneself as a person, as a professional, and as a spiritual being. Wholeness involves an integration of thought, belief, and action which empowers persons to order their lives as truthful, authentic persons. It is the pastoral character of supervision that consistently helps people remember who they are and assists them in living out this identity as whole persons in their ministry.

THE MULTIDIMENSIONAL NATURE OF PASTORAL SUPERVISION

Persons seeking supervision may not be aware of the multidimensional nature of their pursuit. Henri Nouwen wrote:

            During the last few years I have become overwhelmingly impressed by the fact

            that priests, ministers, and theological students who asked for supervision in their

            pastoral work were asking questions that went far beyond their professional

            concerns. In the beginning the emphasis quite often was on the best technique,

            the most appropriate method, the most effective approach.. .But these questions

            are not the last ones and not the most decisive. Sometimes it even seems that

            underneath all these concerns is the question about spirituality of the man or

            woman who raises them. Many students and trainees are struggling with their

            own sense of being.’4
The pastoral supervisor has the obligation to help supervisees reflect on their ministry in light of these questions. This takes place by the examination and discernment of the connections between ministry, persons, and the divine. Supervision always occurs in a work milieu. It may be, and often is, performed for strictly utilitarian purposes to get the work done as efficiently and economically as possible. As pastoral supervisors our concern must stretch beyond utilitarianism. We have an investment in the persons who do the work, the way they understand and express their faith commitment in their work, and the way their work impacts other people.
            This will not happen, however, by concentrating only on the act of ministry brought for supervision. If we are to find the connections between work, persons, and the divine, we must focus on the way God is operative in the broad range of human life. Most models of supervision concentrate on human activity. A pastoral model focuses on God’s activity. Pastoral supervision is done with the understanding that the supervisor functions as priest and helps the supervisee make connections between the human and the divine. All this is done within a covenant community where supervision creates space to reflect on the dynamics of work and life and uses the sacred tradition as a lens.
SUPERVISION AS A FORMATIVE PROCESS
Supervision occurs as a means to achieve and ensure a high quality of work through the development, growth, and improvement of the supervisee’s knowledge, skills, and attitudes. In this regard, supervision is a formative process. The arena of ministry or workplace will be shaped and reshaped, structured and restructured in order to improve what is offered as goods and services, ministry and education. Likewise, attention is given to persons being supervised so that they also may be formed and transformed. While supervision in a secular arena may focus on quality control, pastoral supervision is also concerned with the quality of life and wholeness for those who supervise and are supervised.
            Concern for persons preparing for ministry and the beginning years of professional life implies that supervision will focus on the formation of their professional, personal, and spiritual identities. Professional identity is sometimes concerned only with the tasks and skills one performs and the value given to it by other professionals and the larger community. Supervisors, mentors, and colleagues take various roles in this process. In some quarters, supervision has been limited to performance on the job, the doing.
            Personal and spiritual identity formation, however, is also the consideration of pastoral supervision. Supervisees are living, feeling, spiritual beings who bring psychological and spiritual dimensions to the learning community and the workplace. Our view is that helping persons develop in ministry requires recognition that personal and spiritual development will impact and inform one’s professional identity and ministry. A supervisor, then, will invite supervisees to bring the threads of their lives into dialogue with `each other, in order that the work and the worker will become meaningful expressions of the Christian faith. In order to supervise the formation of spiritual and personal identities, pastoral supervisors may turn to the fields of spiritual direction and counseling for insight.
THE SPIRITUAL DIMENSION OF SUPERVISION
Spirituality is the term we use to describe the connection, relationship, and interaction between God and ourselves. This connection, given in the act of Creation, involves our intelligence, our will and our emotions. As a gift of the Creator, it is an energizing life force to be employed in the work of ministry and the work of supervision.
            For centuries faithful people have sought to deepen their spirituality and to dedicate time and attention to their spiritual lives. They have turned to spiritual directors to assist them in seeking God and discerning God’s movement in their lives. Spiritual direction has been described as “an interpersonal relationship in which one person assists others to reflect on their own experience in the light of who they are called to become in fidelity to the Gospel.”15 Through conversations with the spiritual director or companion, the directees pay attention to the state of their spiritual life and their relationship with God: who they are to God; who God is in their life.
            The practice of spiritual direction has been identified as a form of pastoral care where the basic purpose is to help people find their center in God.’6 This same kind of awareness is crucial for supervision. For ministry to be spiritually grounded, supervisors will need to assist supervisees in identifying how their spirituality informs their work and approach to that work. Through theological reflection in supervision the supervisee’s spiritual identity can emerge, be formed, and shape his or her ministry.
THE THERAPEUTIC DIMENSION OF SUPERVISION
Counseling, an outgrowth of love and care. exemplifies the desire to help others understand the complexities of their thoughts and emotions. Counseling provides the arena for persons to examine how thoughts, feelings, and motives impact their lives and their relationships with others. One author writes, “Through the process of pastoral counseling a person is enabled to become free of those obstacles preventing growth and differentiation. Accordingly, this is a process of humanization: a person [who) becomes fully functioning, free, consciously aware, responsible, and loving is the product of the process.”’7
            Components of the psychological domain (emotions, motivations, and personal identity) are present in a supervisory relationship. If supervisor and supervisee are to enjoy an effective and productive relationship as they work together to improve the quality of their work, the supervisor must be attentive to therapeutic dynamics that arise. Supervisees may fear failure, strive to compete, fail to seek help, ask for too much help, or reject a learning opportunity. In supervisory conversations about the supervisee’s activities and behaviors, supervisors may use knowledge and skills from the field of counseling to enable supervisees to clarify their growth in personal identity as it relates to their ministry.
PARAMETERS OF SUPERVISION
Noting the similarities between spiritual direction and psychotherapy, Gerald May has identified the differences between these practices into two categories: content and intent.’8 We have discussed the content orientation of these two fields above. May suggests that the intent for each practice is differentiated by the goal for the client. Psychotherapy hopes clients will be encouraged to live more efficiently, have more needs and desires gratified, and achieve more control and freedom over themselves and their circumstances. Spiritual direction, on the other hand, encourages directees toward a surrender of self and self-will to the discerned will of God.
            In his book, Spiritual Friend, Tilden Edwards further documents Gerald May’s distinctions between psychotherapy, pastoral counseling, and spiritual direction.’9 His chart spells out the relationship of these three disciplines to the subject, goal, method, and attitude of the helper. It indicates that in psychotherapy a disordered patient will be treated in a medical model by a psychiatrist whose goal is to cure the patient by the resolution of the psychic conflict and to help the patient adjust to society. The helper feels responsible for the care of the patient and carries the attitude “my will be done.” Pastoral counseling will involve a disordered or troubled client and a pastoral counselor who will use a holistic model for healing, sustaining, reconciling, and guiding the client. The counselor views the client or the relationship as the center of responsibility; the helper’s attitude is “our will be done.” Spiritual direction begins with a soul searching for God in the company of a spiritual director who will guide the searching of one’s being and becoming in relationship with God. The spiritual director views God as responsible for whatever healing and growth occurs. The attitude of this helper is “Thy will be done.” The chart suggests that goals, methods, and attitudes of the helper are ways that distinguish the differences in these three practices. While Edwards points out the distinctions in these three fields, he also warns that there are likely to be overlaps since they all deal with the same basic human reality.
            The overlaps are also what makes it difficult to distinguish between supervision, counseling, and spiritual direction. Utilizing Edwards’ format, we make these distinctions. Supervision begins with a focus on the subject as one whose work and formation we oversee. Our goal is twofold: the improvement of ministry (work) and the growth of the supervisee in professional, personal, and spiritual identities. The method is an inquiry-based reflective conversation utilizing multidisciplinary insights. These insights come from the fields of supervision, pastoral care, counseling, theology, and spiritual direction. The attitude of the supervisor is one of empowerment for responsible ministry in the community of faith.
A MULTIDISCIPLINARY APPROACH TO PASTORAL SUPERVISION
If our task in pastoral supervision is to examine the connections between work (ministry), person, and God we must focus not only on the human activity that is brought to the supervisory conversation but also on the psychological and spiritual dimensions of that activity. If we pay close attention to most supervisory conversations we notice that the emphasis is on human initiative. Problem solving efforts involve figuring out how we can respond to rectify the situation. Case analysis concentrates on understanding the psychological dynamics that are operative in the supervisee, or worse, in the participants in the case. Theological reflection often revolves around academic discussions of theological principles or doctrinal schools of thought. Far less frequently do we ask how God is involved, what God is already doing, how God’s past action sheds light on how the divine can be expected to act again, or where God’s spirit is moving us.
            It is our conviction as Christians that God is at work in personal, social, and institutional life. We assert that the divine Spirit broods over human affairs, seeking entrance into our planning and decision-making processes. We believe, even when it appears otherwise, that God is continuing to influence and shape the world according to the original creative purpose. We cannot escape, therefore, reflecting in supervision on the evidence for our faith. How are we to do this?

Following the direction of the bold, curved line, supervision begins with an act of ministry (work). If we are content to take strictly a management approach we will focus on the mechanics of what was done or what needs to be done. The concern, in this choice, would be on the supervisee’s behavioral patterns, on the doing of the ministry. A great deal of supervision stays on that level: getting the job done as quickly or efficiently as possible, as indicated by dotted line x.
            We have already established, however, that the person who performs the ministry is multidimensional. This requires that we also give attention to the motivational sources behind the supervisee’s action: emotions, reasons, thought processes, and intentions connected with the ministry presented for supervision. This could uncover personal needs that might be resolved in supervision, but may demand psychotherapeutic help that requires referral for counseling in tandem with or instead of supervision. There is a danger that supervisors may “get hooked” by the psychological dynamics and turn the supervisory conversation into a therapy session, indicated by dotted line y. Good supervision avoids that temptation even as it recognizes the responsibility to care for the supervisee’s being as well as doing.
            To be pastoral we must press even beyond concern about the psychodynamics and inquire about values and faith, the ultimate concerns the supervisee holds in regard to living out the gospel in ministry. How does his or her faith impact the being and the doing? At this level we are talking about matters of the spirit, how the God/human relationship affects who the minister is and how the ministry gets done. Professionally, this is the domain of spiritual direction, to which a supervisee might also be referred, but it is also a necessary facet of pastoral supervision. It is also possible for a supervisor to become sidetracked here and do something more akin to spiritual direction than supervision, as indicated by dotted line z. The unique difference between spiritual direction and pastoral supervision is that they begin and end at different points, as indicated by the dotted curved line. Both deal with doing and being, but with a different emphasis and accountability structure.
            To illustrate, let us suppose that our supervisee comes to us with a ministry reflection report (a critical incident or case) about a meeting with the governing council of the parish. The report might go something like this:
            Our parish council met last night to evaluate my ministry. A serious disagreement

             arose, and I was caught in the middle of it. Harsh words were spoken. The

             meeting ended with some of the members leaving in anger. We are meeting

             again tomorrow to complete the work and I’m not sure I want to be there; I feel

             completely discouraged. I’m not even sure what I believe about God and the

             church anymore when I see Christians act like that.
With this report the supervisee has shared a critical event, a cry for help in preparing for another round. The case obviously calls for some management. because there is a follow-up session. Appropriate supervisory strategies include getting more information about what happened, finding out how the supervisee responded, and discussing alternative approaches in the follow-up session. The objective at this stage is to help the supervisee deal with the conflict so as to help the council members evaluate responsibly not only the supervisee’s ministry but their own as well.
That supervisory conversation will be seriously lacking, however, if it does not also deal with the supervisee’s discouragement. There has been a damaging blow to this person’s sense of well-being. There is no way that viable alternatives for dealing with the conflict can be considered in that frame of mind. That mental condition may or may not get resolved in supervisory conversation, at least in one session, but there cannot be a responsible decision made about the follow-up session as long as the supervisee’s spirit is so impoverished. The situation requires that the supervisor exercise the best counseling skills to help the supervisee unpack the emotions involved. It is not to become a therapy session; that is not the covenant. It needs, though, to be therapeutic conversation.
            This suggests that the supervisee needs more than good counsel. A spiritual issue is at stake. The supervisee’s faith has been challenged. The God/human relationship has become scarred and needs healing before the minister and the ministry can proceed. So questions like the following become important: How is God involved in your life and ministry? How does the record of God’s activity relate to this event? What does your understanding about the nature of God inform you about how God works in such situations? What are the spiritual dimensions of this situation? How do they enlighten what happened? These are matters related to spiritual direction, but they also rightfully belong to theological reflection in pastoral supervision.
            As in every supervisory conversation, the act of ministry is the primary concern. The conversation must finally move back to the doing of the work, specifically to the follow-up session that the supervisee would like to avoid, as well as future sessions and/or similar situations in the future. But we cannot understand what happened or what should happen without reflecting on how it has impacted the supervisee’s personhood and how God is operative in it. In supervision that has empowerment as its purpose, all three disciplines—supervision, counseling, and spiritual direction—become sources for investigating and describing God’s involvement and movement in every arena of life.
IMPLICATIONS
In light of this discussion, there are some implications for the practice of pastoral supervision. Pastoral supervisors need to:
            • Be familiar with the goals and methods of the disciplines discussed here
            • Have a working knowledge of these disciplines but be intentional about maintaining the boundaries of pastoral supervision, in order to avoid the temptation of violating the supervisory covenant by moving into a non- supervisory role
            • Be thoroughly trained in methods of theological reflection that can help supervisees make the connections between their ministry, their personhood, and God’s involvement in both
            • Be alert to the possibility that supervisees may need referral to one of the other disciplines in order to address dimensions of their lives that impact their ministry; to understand when a referral would be appropriate; be willing to make the referral.
In addition, our judgment is that supervisory education must be diligent in helping pastoral supervisors gain competence in the theory and practice of the three disciplines for a wholistic approach to supervision. Pastoral supervisors need to be prepared to pursue the multidimensional aspects of the cases that come to them. Education that stops short of that will fail to recognize the boundaries and the potential for an integrated experience.
NOTES
1 Kenneth H. Pohly, Transforming the Rough Places: The Ministry of Supervision (Dayton, OH: Whaleprints, 1993), 19-72.
2. Jesuit Renewal Center, now called Milford Retreat Center, Milford, Ohio. The years of association were 1980-1994.
3. Center for Supervisory Studies, located on the campus of United Theological Seminary,
1810 Harvard Boulevard, Dayton, Ohio 45406.
4. Definitions are taken from Webster’s Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary (Springfield, MA: G. and C. Merriam Company, 1976).
5. See “Supervision and Formation in Christian Ministry” a symposium that addresses this issue in the Journal of Supervision and Training in Ministry, Volume 15, Herbert Anderson and Joan Scanlon, editors.
6. N. Robert Muiholland, Jr., Invitation to a Journey.’ A Road Map for Spiritual Formation (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1993), 11.
7. Edward C. Seilner, Mentoring: The Ministry of Spiritual Kinship (Notre Dame, IN:
Ave Maria Press, 1990), 18, 34.
8. It is our view that supervision provides an accountability structure that is not found in mentoring, particularly as it relates to quality control. Supervisors may include mentoring in their work and be viewed by their supervisees as mentors, but mentors are not expected to be supervisors.
9. Pohly, Transforming, 77.
10. James and Evelyn Whitehead, Method in Ministry (New York, NY: Seabury Press,
1980), 1.
11. Douglas Wingeier, Working Out Your Own Beliefs (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press,
1980), 6-8.
12. Robert Kinast, “Theological Reflection in Ministry Preparation,” Spirituality, Ministry, and Field Education: Key Resources V (1986): 119.
13. Edwin A. Hoover, “The Distinction Between Adequate and Excellent Supervision: A Wholistic Perspective,” The Journal of Pastoral Care (September 1980): 190-192.
14. Henri J. M. Nouwen, Creative Ministry (Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company,
1971), xix.
15. Katherine Dyckman and L. Patrick Carroll, inviting the Mystic, Supporting the Prophet (New York, NY/Ramsey, NJ: Paulist Press, 1981), 20.
16. William A. Barry and William J. Connolly, The Practice of Spiritual Direction (San Francisco, CA: Harper and Row, 1982), 192.
17. Barry Estadt, Pastoral Counseling (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1983), 21.
18. Gerald May, Care of Mind, Care of Spirit: Psychiatric Dimensions of Spiritual Direction (New York, NY: Harper and Row Publishers, Inc., 1982), 12.
19. Tilden Edwards, Spiritual Friend: Reclaiming the G(/1 of Spiritual Direction (New York, NY/Ramsey, NJ: Paulist Press, 1980), 130.