Relating to Conference Administration > Confidentiality Issues

Confidentiality is the currency of your work. If pastors and their families cannot trust you to hold their private information as sacrosanct, you may have the nameplate on your desk but you will not be able to truly serve as your conference's Ministerial Director.

While it is true that many Ministerial Directors have some direct contact with pastoral placement, still you are seen as the pastor's pastor. Your people will not share openly with you if they cannot be sure that you will hold what they share in confidence. All it takes is for word of one breach of confidentiality to get around, and your work will be crippled. And you may never regain the confidence of your pastors.

Of course, there are times when you must report, but these will not be unfamiliar to your pastors: cases where someone is in imminent danger of harming themselves or someone else, when a person has been physically or sexually abused, or when a major breach of fiduciary responsibility has discovered.

If you feel you must reveal any other sort of information, do so only with the consent of the person in question. Depending on the situation involved, sometimes it's better to have the president hear of the issue directly from the pastor rather than as a rumor that happens to be floating around. Either you can counsel the pastor to go see the president, you can accompany him/her, or you can represent the pastor to the president.

Finally, if you are the recipient of some sensitive, confidential information shared by a pastor or pastor's family member, take it as a personal responsibility to stay connected to that person. If they bear a heavy burden, walk beside them to help them bear it. If you are in at least occasional contact with them about it and you can assure them of your thoughts and prayers, it will go a long way towards a recovery.