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Pastoral excellence team in place
Christina Braudaway-Bauman
> Return to main story on pastoral excellence team Rev. Christina Braudaway-Bauman Job description: To encourage, support and provide training to newly ordained pastors to build a solid foundation of ministerial habits and practices. Coordinate Clergy Group Program based on existing Colleague Program. Experience: Education: Related Activities: |
April, 2003
Five years ago, as a member
of the Massachusetts
Conference’s strategic planning team and a writer of the Vision for Renewal
and Growth, Christina Braudaway-Bauman helped the Massachusetts Conference
to see that one of its most important roles is to support and train clergy.
Last year, she assisted in writing the proposal that prompted the Lilly Endowment to award the Conference the $1.5 million grant to make that happen through a Pastoral Excellence Program.
Now, she has joined the Conference staff as the Associate for New Clergy Development, a part-time position that is yoked with a similar position at the Wellesley (Village) Congregational Church.
Doing the joint work will give her an opportunity to be an active participant in making those long-term plans a reality.
“Chris brought the vision,” said Susan Dickerman, Associate Conference Minister and program coordinator. “It was her creative spirit that brought the Conference and local settings together. And she has experience working with clergy – she can see things in them they can’t see in themselves.”
Braudaway-Bauman, a member of the Church of the Covenant in Boston, said she is thrilled by the opportunity to work on such an important ministry.
“I feel like this is a way to make a lasting contribution to the churches. If our pastors are nourished and supported, they will stay in pastoral ministry. And that kind of vibrancy makes for more vibrant congregations,” she said.
Braudaway-Bauman said her experience in the local church and at Andover Newton Theological School showed her how challenging it is for pastors to take what they have learned in seminary and transfer it into pastoral ministry.
“So many people feel like they’ve been thrown into the deep end,” she said.
The first three years in the church is when clergy form the habits and practices that will last throughout their careers, she said, so it is an especially crucial time.
But she said this program will be aimed at more than building skills.
“While that is important, on a much deeper level what this whole thing is about is to explore what pastoral identity means,” she said. “To see how pastoral life can be lived in ways that are faithful, personally satisfying, fulfilling and effective.
“Being a good pastor is not something you just ‘get’,” she said. “I know an excellent pastor who said it took him 12 years to realize what ministry is about.”
Braudaway-Bauman will work 15 hours a week for the Conference, and 15 hours a week for the Wellesley church, which also won a Lilly grant for a pastoral residency program. She will coordinate that program, under which five pastoral residents will be called to the church, each for two years, to learn ministry hands on.
“I see the clergy at the Village church as being in the greenhouse,
while those in the Conference are out in the field. We can learn
things by
both experiences,”
she said.