The Ministerial Director > Getting Started > Talk Candidly With Your Conference President

It is vital that you and your conference president are on the same page right from the start. Often in your initial discussions with conference administration, you both speak in very general terms. But conference presidents tend to have very specific ideas about the scope of the work of the ministerial director, even if those ideas go unspoken early on. Many conference presidents are themselves former ministerial directors or they have pastored substantial churches and have had some years in developing ideas about what an effective ministerial director should be and do. It will serve you better to have as much open discussion as you can arrange early on so that you are able to really understand what they want from you.

Even if what you want to do most with your time differs from what your president wants, they will generally be more agreeable to give you the flexibility to do what you want if you give attention to what they want.

Experienced Ministerial Directors will tell you that if you are not clear about what your president expects, conflict is almost certain to come at some point. Here are some possible discussion points and questions you can ask or talk over with your president:

•Do you have a written job description for Ministerial?

•If so, please let me know which items are the highest priority from your perspective. If not, what are your highest expectations of me in this position?

•Share with your president what you most want to do and ask specifically if s(he) is okay with it

•What budgets do I have to work with?

•What other hats, if any, am I expected to wear?

•What is my role in planning pastors meetings?

•What is my role in intern development?

•What is my role in ordinations/commissionings?

•What is my role in the evangelism program in the conference?

•What current pastoral issues are out there right now that I need to know about?

•Am I free to visit and work with my pastors on my own volition, or do you want me to check in with you first?

•Can I be in the loop when you are considering pastoral changes of any sort?

•What are the things you do not want me involved in?

•What is your view of confidentiality regarding the information I hear from pastors?

•What committee assignments do I have?

If you are new to the conference field in which you are going to serve as Ministerial Director, consider asking the president if s(he) would be willing to do a full-conference tour with you to introduce you to each and every pastor in your field. This might take several weeks to accomplish because neither of you can likely do this all at one time. But if you can arrange for this sort of time with your president, you can both really get to know each other as you are traveling around the conference. In the course of your meetings with the pastors, you'll learn a lot in a very short time. This can really jump start your new ministry as a Ministerial Director. Next...