Clergy Roles and Responsibilities

Hiya,

Soon we will begin talking about how the clergy will function as a body, and this weekend I came up with something I would like your opinions on.

Please see the attached document and tell me what you think. What is missing? What could be improved? Is this idea even feasible?

Great outline, Ros! This is definitely a good foundation.

My favorite thing I've read all day. Great work.

Some things.
Does the Pastor no longer have much direct engagement in the day to day spiritual care of the temple members? Not sure if it did before, actually.

Could or should there be terms and term limits? Just something I thought of. I'm not sure it's a good idea. Just spit-ballin'.

Under the AP for Outreach, where it says that the AP will provide contact to members without Training Masters. I'm wondering what the rationale is there. I like the idea. But, why is that spiritual care? Why shouldn't a Knight or a Master (specifically) do that?

Same with the spiritual care team.

I'm just not sure what "outreach" would look like in this situation.

My engagement as Pastor is pretty direct and "in the day to day", but in that sense its no different to what I was doing when I was not Pastor. I'm still going to write sermons. I am still going to assist the AP's, but I am sort of going to let them take the lead on their teams and provide support where needed.

Personally, I have no problem with term limits. I think its a good discussion to have. How do we define when it is time to end a term? I already have in my mind the time when I would like to move on, but I think this will be different for each office and officer.

Concerning members without TM's, I don't really have control over what the Knights or Masters do (though the same might be said here as well), but providing some sort of connection to members is certainly something that could be beneficial. Spiritual care is more effective when the person has a rapport with the provider. In the ideal world the providers would be Knights themselves as well as clergy. Why clergy would be particularly beneficial is that we have received both the training which leads to Knighthood and that which leads to ordination, so there is less likely to need to be a handoff. At least that is my thinking.

Outreach will more than likely be PM's at first and then as the person gets more comfortable with the clergy it may be skype or messenger. It would really depend on the two parties involved.

I hope that answers your questions

You bring up something really interesting... you have a vague idea of what your position will look like, and how long you will serve. Instead of specific limits, perhaps it could just be discussed periodically. "Am I still doing what I wanted to do? Should I continue to serve? Does my plan still look the same?" Perhaps with a superior?

Yeah, that helps. Thanks for the response.

Connor L. wrote: You bring up something really interesting... you have a vague idea of what your position will look like, and how long you will serve. Instead of specific limits, perhaps it could just be discussed periodically. "Am I still doing what I wanted to do? Should I continue to serve? Does my plan still look the same?" Perhaps with a superior?

I wouldn't say no to that idea with some logistics behind it

I like this team thingy. Teams will most likely remove pressure from the offices so that officers can execute their office longer? Somehow I feel that the intakes of the Seminary are not written out in the list of the Secretary, same is with contacting the Synod as a whole (similar task as seen with the secretary of the Council), is also missing in the list of the Secretary. Guess this will work quite well! I like the touch towards the seminary, to have more people looking at things.

Secretary to the Clergy handles all correspondence. Incoming and outgoing. So they would be the point of contact for that sort of thing.

Slight change. If you will look at the schematic, you will see there is only one secretary. Down at the bottom. Personally I never saw the point of more than one. In my mind, the Synod does not have to be a voting body, it has to be an administrative body that carries out the logistical plans of the clergy. I want to make this happen in the most efficient way possible. The original schematic had two arms with a secretary for each, but in giving the Assistant Pastor to the Seminary a secretary, I basically left that person with nothing to do. So I have updated the scheme in a way that I think will work best and I am putting it forward here for feedback. As it is, Secretary to the Clergy is a big responsibility, but it can be handled by one person with sufficient time and prioritization skills.

I have removed Secretary to the Synod. Please have a look. If you are totally against it, please tell me why, ok?

I need your help to tell me if I have gone off the deep end

The Synod, whether a voting body or an administratvie body (and, honestly, they're similar enough that it can be both), still has a need of both a point-of-contact and a collector-of-information. The Secretary to the Synod still serves a purpose.