Leading with confidence and compassion

As an incumbent I oversaw volunteers and supervised ordinands and curates. That felt like familiar territory: it was work I had been formed for, and the rhythms of pastoral oversight and ministerial supervision were ones I understood and had experienced myself. Then my responsibilities shifted. I found myself line managing a Debt Coach and a Children and Youth Worker, and I had to think carefully about what was the same, and what was different, in the way I enabled each of them to flourish in the very different roles they were giving themselves over to.

Some of it carried straight across. The heart of the task didn’t change: line management is the interplay of direction and support, with appropriate adjustment, creating an environment that enables someone to give of their best in alignment with the bigger purpose. Direction without support becomes pressure; support without direction becomes drift. The skill is in the adjustment, reading the person in front of you and offering the right balance at the right moment.

But much was different. Supervising a curate is not the same as overseeing a volunteer, and neither is quite the same as line managing a paid member of staff. The emphasis shifts, a degree shift rather than a hard binary turn, across motivation, contract, objective, the flexibility of scope and timescales, and the culture we’re trying to cultivate. Add to that the distinctive convictions we bring as Christians, about generosity, about calling, about the fruit we long to see grow in people, and the everyday craft of adjusting how we communicate for different colleagues, including those who are neurodivergent, and you start to see how much good line management actually asks of us.

Here is my honest confession. When it came to line management, I felt it was yet another role I hadn’t been trained for. With little time and even less resource, I found it hard to know where to turn for that training. In the end, it was being line managed well by someone else that finally taught me what good line management looks like.

I wouldn’t claim to be great at it even now. But my aspiration is simple, and serious: to see people grow and flourish in their roles, and become who God has called them to be in their ministry and leadership gifting. That aspiration is exactly why we’ve shaped this training day.

Delivered by Head of Leadership Development Jo McKee and Leadership Champion James Lawrence, this day is designed for those leading staff, supporting curates, or guiding volunteers. It will equip you to lead with confidence and compassion in a church context. It offers practical insight on how to line manage or supervise well, including: