A Kingdom Project: Developing Formational Supervision
A critical assessment of training offered to supervisors of candidates for ministry within the Church of Scotland.

Doctoral thesis by Jane M Denniston

Context: The supervision of students for ministry is of primary importance for the Church today. In a context where religion is becoming increasingly privatised and the Church increasingly marginalised, not only are there fewer candidates presenting for ministry, and fewer ministers, the challenges facing these ministers become ever more complex. Although the study of theology is basic to the exercise of ministry, the skills for ministry are learned on placement, where a student engages in the practice of ministry supervised by an experienced and trained minister. It is from this supervisor that the trainee minister learns how to deal with the complexities of ministry today. It follows, therefore, that the training given to such supervisors must be developed to take account of the changing role of ministry. The Church of Scotland has an intensive training course for these supervisors whom I will refer to as ‘formational supervisors’. 

My thesis evaluated this training to ascertain the extent to which it equips formational supervisors for the task.

Methodology: The methodology for my research was qualitative and autoethnographic. My basic tool for the research was the semi-structured interview. I interviewed six formational supervisors and the six probationer (trainee) ministers on placement in their congregations both before and after the supervisors had attended a training conference. This was to determine the extent to which the supervisors’ supervisory practice was sharpened and enhanced by the Church of Scotland’s current training programme, where any weaknesses in the training lay, and, therefore, how the training might be improved.

Dataset: The dataset, therefore, comprises 24 transcripts of the audio files of the interviews. These are not avaliable due to the possibility of compromising anonymity. This data contains the supervisors’ responses to the training including their assessment of training in tools for supervision such as MBTI, approaches to learning, approaches to conflict management, and reflective practice. 

All the names are pseudonymous; supervisors’ pseudonyms begin with letters A to F (Anna, Beth, Charlie, David, Eric, and Frank) and probationers’ pseudonyms with letters K to P (Katie, Laura, Margaret, Neil, Owen, and Patricia). Anna is Katie’s supervisor, Beth is Laura’s and so on. Transcript files are labelled with the designation SUP for Supervisor or PROB for probationer followed by the name of the interviewee, followed by the number 1 or 2 to indicate whether it was the first or second interview. E.g. Transcript: SUP-ANNA-1 is the transcript of the first interview with supervisor “Anna” while Transcript: PROB-KATIE-1 is the transcript of the first interview with Anna’s probationer “Katie”.