The Ministerial Director > General Job Description

Every conference will have some variations in their Ministerial Director's job description, so it's impossible to nail down a one-size-fits-all comprehensive list here. Instead, here is a list of typical tasks/responsibilities that may or may not be a part of your specific job description for your conference. It would be a good idea to look this list of items over and compare it with one that your conference administration has already developed for you:

•You are the pastor's pastor. You will need to think of your pastors as your parishioners. You must learn to see them not just as professionals, but as persons with the same needs, fears, hopes, challenges, and needs as the members you use to pastor when you were in a parish. That means you have to take time to seek them out, offering your hand in friendship, support, and caring

•Advocate for the pastor before conference administration and committees. Your administrators will likely, over time, bring you into their inner circle when it comes to your pastors. Building a good relationship with your administration is vital for those moments. If you are trusted and have proven yourself wise and discreet, you will likely hear about personnel moves, and potentially problems a pastor might be experiencing before such things are discussed in committees. While it's important to keep confidences with your pastors, you could well advocate for them with your administration in such a way that could be helpful not only the pastor, but to your administration as well

•Encourager and mentor/trainer for pastors. In most conferences, this responsibility will fall to you. You may well be asked to plan your pastors meetings & retreats. But you will need to help foster learning opportunities one-on-one and not just in pastoral meetings. You will need to make yourself aware of a wide range of continuing education opportunities, including those found on the Adventist Learning Community. When you get to know your pastors personally, you could well help guide them towards learning resources that will be of specific help to them

•A safe person for a pastor to share his/her experience in ministry. We all need a safe place. You are the ideal candidate for this in your conference. As long as you keep their confidences, stay connected with them, and truly invest in prayer for them, you will be to be a huge blessing to them

•Coordinator for your conference's evangelism program (often, but not always). Many conferences ask other people to coordinate evangelism, but many ask the Ministerial Director to provide leadership and oversight for it. If you are vested with this responsibility, it is important not to allow this to overshadow your work as a pastor's pastor and mentor/trainer. If what a pastor thinks of first about you when they know you are coming to visit is, "I wonder what he wants to ask me to do for evangelism this time?" then you might consider trying to bring some balance back into your work. When you become the agent of asking a pastor to implement the conference program, they will not easily see you as their pastor

•Involved in pastoral placement/moves (often, but not always). Be careful here! There are appropriate times and circumstances where a ministerial director can be of great help to a pastor during a transition. The potential negative with too much involvement is that your pastors may come to see you more as an administrator than as their pastor/advocate. For more thoughts and resources on this, click here

•The voice on committees that speaks on behalf of pastoral ministry in general. Often pastors' lives and ministries are discussed in private committee settings where the pastor is not there to participate. Especially in those cases, you must be ready to speak on their behalf, doing your best to represent what you think they might be saying if they were present. The better you know your pastors, the more you are able to do this. If you do find yourself in a committee where someone's life or ministry is being discussed, you may need to be the voice of caution in terms of what's being said. It may even be appropriate for you to ask administration to table such a discussion to give you time to interact with that pastor and gain some more insight before proceeding

•Provide intern training and oversight as they move toward ordination/commissioning. Your conference might have a plan already in place when you arrive, or you might be asked to create one from scratch. But your intentional effort on behalf of your interns can have a lasting impact over the course of their ministry

•Plan (or help plan) major and smaller pastors meetings (local area or conference-wide). Some administrations keep this function within their circle, others will want you to do the planning. This is one question to ask about early on as you get started with your duties

•Develop and have available a list of resources to help pastors through difficult times, i.e. family counseling, financial counseling, career counseling. It will serve you better if you develop this list of resources before they are needed. Scrambling to find them when a crisis occurs with a pastor means a delay in getting adequate and appropriate help at the moment its most needed

•Participate in interviewing prospective new pastoral hires at Andrews University's Career Days or at similar events (if directed to by your conference administration)

•Help facilitate pastoral interviews at a local church when they are considering a new pastor (if directed to by your conference administration)

•Be your conference's overseer of pastoral growth and education, including interfacing with the Adventist Learning Community

•Be available to help local pastors in lay training events such as elders training, preaching seminars, leadership and conflict resolution seminars

•Be available to preach at churches around the conference

•Oversee volunteer lay pastors if your conference uses them. Here are the NAD Guidelines for Volunteer Lay Pastors.