Pastoral Supervision [antikvár]

ForewordDAVID LYALLThis is a book that was waiting to be written. In recent years there has been within faith communities an increasing awareness of the need to develop structures of support and accountability and to build frameworks for life-long learning. All of these desirable aims are the focus of the enterprise described in this book as pastoral supervision.This is also a timely book. In June 2009 the (British) Association of Pastoral Supervisors & Educators was launched. Both authors have played a major role in the formation of this new organization, and both have been elected to key positions of leadership for its formative years. The book describes itself as a handbook and that is precisely what it is. It is essentially a practical book describing the process of supervision. Those who take time to read it, whether as potential supervisors or supervisees, will find not only an understanding of that process but ways of getting started.This is a practical book not simply because each chapter ends with a number of helpful exercises which readers can profitably attempt for themselves. It goes deeper than that. The authors set out examples of their own extensive practice and in so doing they also model the kind of vulnerability that is an integral part of pastoral work. Neither pastoral ministry nor pastoral supervision involves the simple application of a body of knowledge. Both activities are essentially relational in character: supervisors and supervisees alike offer and therefore expose something of themselves. Thus what is brought to light in the supervision process is not only pastoral activity itself but also the very identities of