Pastoral Care Minister at Holy Trinity (Platt) Rusholme

Overview

We are looking for someone to join our staff team as a pastoral care minister.

Closing date: 21st January 2019

Interviews: 8th February 2019

Introduction

The successful applicant will have experience in a similar role, share our core vision, mission and values, and will relish the opportunity to support and develop this large Evangelical church in its mission. 

The successful candidate will have a pastoral heart, with strong interpersonal skills who can discern the needs of others. This individual will have a gift of encouraging others to grow in their faith and to serve. This individual may also be invited to support the Inter Diocesan counselling service to clergy. This is not a central part of the role, but a possible development as time allows.

After reading, if you would like to speak to someone at Holy Trinity Platt to find out more about the job, please contact the church office via email at office@plattchurch.org or call 0161 224 1123 and we’d be happy to arrange a phone call with you.

Main Responsibilities

Purpose of the job:

The Pastoral Care Minister supports the Rector to provide the ‘cure of souls’. At the heart of the ‘cure of souls’ is Christ and the gospel, as given in the Scriptures. This foundation gets to the heart of personal and interpersonal problems, bringing to bear the truth, mercy, and power of Christ’s grace.

The role-holder ensures the effective pastoral care of the church and leads a team of lay pastoral carers within this gospel framework, drawing on skills and understanding in medical and counselling fields. This will be done in line with the overall vision for mission and growth of Holy Trinity Platt.

Specific responsibilities:

The job covers the delivery of the services and activities outlined below.  This does not mean that the job holder will have to do all the items listed, but they are responsible to ensure these are delegated and completed:

• Develop and maintain a good practice pastoral care structure that is informed by HTP vision and meets the “first referral” needs of the congregation.
• Ensure best practice in counselling, pastoral care policy and practice including the design and facilitation of pastoral care programmes and activities within a scriptural framework.
• Develop, equip and support a team of lay pastoral carers practising in accordance with Association of Christian Counsellors’ good practice guidelines, and moving towards appropriate accreditation of team members.
• Provide support for the whole staff team as an informed source for external agencies and offer supervisory support as appropriate. Liaise with external agencies within the wider community for appropriate onward referrals as required.
• Be the staff member of the Pastoral Care Ministry Team, and work with the team to identify continuing development and maintenance activities for an effective Pastoral care structure.
• Develop and support the lay leadership of existing and future “mid-week” pastoral care activities e.g. Holiday At Home, Oasis for our older church members
• Provide individual 1:1 counselling as needed
• Provide oversight for the church Prayer Ministry.
• Co-ordinate appropriate bereavement and follow up support for the congregation and parishioners utilising staff and lay pastoral carers.
• Create and maintain appropriate communications of the pastoral care support that is available.
• Produce supporting materials as required for the effective development and maintenance of the pastoral structure.
• We hope that the job holder will also provide agreed pastoral and counselling services to ordained or licenced ministers, as directed by the Inter Diocesan Counselling Service

The job holder is expected to perform other duties as agreed to meet the ongoing needs of the church, including supporting other staff members at times of high workload.

In taking on this role, licensed by the Diocese of Manchester, you are expected to support the Diocesan Statement of Needs and Expectations (included at the end of this application pack).

We anticipate a formal review of this job description after six months to adjust as required.

The Ideal Candidate

Person Specification

In the table below is a person specification of the individual we’re looking for and a summary of the elements needed in order to successfully carry out the requirements of the job. Where factors are shown as essential, these should be demonstrated before appointment and maintained in post. Where they are shown as desirable, they should be developed and maintained once in post as needed.

Interpersonal skills

Essential

• A team player with the ability to establish professional credibility and build good working relationships with others, being able to persuade and influence when necessary.
• Negotiation and delegation skills.
• Able to consistently demonstrate self-control, gentleness and kindness.

Desirable

• Experience of working with volunteers

Communication

Essential

• An effective communicator, both in writing and orally, having confidence to speak in front of large and small groups.
• Able to develop effective training approaches and materials for use by house group leaders, visiting team and others as required.
• A person with vision about how to encourage one another in committed discipleship and to support one another in times of need.
• Demonstrates discretion and sensitivity when dealing with confidential matters.

Qualifications (proof of qualifications may be requested)

Essential

• Five GCSE/’O’ levels or equivalent at grades A*, A or B, including Maths and English Language.
• Recognised theological training.
• A diploma in counselling, with a minimum of 250 hours of supervised counselling experience since or two years of experience. The diploma will be from the British Association of Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP) or the Association Of Christian Counsellors (ACC).
• Evidence of continuing professional development for your counselling skills.

Desirable

• Educated to ‘A’ level or Degree standard
• Be an Accredited Counsellor with either the British Association of Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP) or the Association Of Christian Counsellors (ACC).

For more information about this application process, please use this link

About us

We are a Bible teaching evangelical, Anglican church based in a unique urban setting. The parish is 2.5 miles south of the centre of Manchester, largely residential though close to the Universities and the famous Rusholme curry mile. Our regular congregation numbers about 500 people, many members from non-Anglican backgrounds, and we are blessed to have a great mix of people, in terms of age, life stage and social and ethnic background. With the average age under 40, and a significant student ministry, it is also a young church. We’re privileged to be aiding ministry to the wider world through our work with Internationals staying in Manchester.

We are firmly committed to bible based, orthodox evangelical teaching, delighting in the good news of the gospel of Christ, and seeing people discipled in order to live out God’s call on their life. Our services are warm and centred around prayer and clear bible teaching. The worship style is modern with songs and some traditional hymns.

This is a particularly exciting time for us as we have recently sent around 40 people from our congregation to revitalise a church in Heaton Norris, Stockport in support of our strategic vision to Build the Base & Reach the City. Before this we completed the third phase of our Building for Growth project to renew our church buildings. You can find further details of our vision and values here and/or in the Vision document attached.

We are a teaching/training church and an outward-looking church. We seek to present people mature in Christ (Colossians 1:28), so that they may go out and bless our parish, city and world (Jeremiah 29:7).

We are called to grow in faith and service – and trust solely in God as He grows the work here in challenging and exciting ways.

You can visit our church website here.