Throughout our careers as ministers, both Susan and I have been active proponents of recurrent boundary training for all authorized ministers. We have also promoted boundary training for church volunteers. In the early years of our ministry, there were very few opportunities for boundary training. Other than a few conversations about professional ethics in a seminary polity course, the abuse of power by clergy wasn’t a topic of our education. We had been pastors serving in the church for more than a decade before we had our first opportunity to take a serious continuing education course in clergy abuse and boundaries. The result was that there were predators who operated within the church and innocent people, commonly children, were abused. Some of the abuse came to light in various scandals that erupted within the church, but much of it went unchecked for decades. Both of us have been involved in the work of Committees on the Ministry and other groups within the church to which has fallen the grim task of investigating allegations of abuse and recommending appropriate responses when abuse has occurred. For a couple of decades I chaired the west river sexual abuse investigation task force of the United Church of Christ in South Dakota and participated in multiple investigations.

Early in our experience it became clear that our goal had to turn from investigation and response to prevention. Our mantra became: “No new victims.” What started as occasional offerings of boundary training became mandatory training every five years and recently the standard has been raised to mandatory training every three years. The training has been mixed in quality and effectiveness as leaders within the church learned the best ways to conduct the training. In the Tri-Conference of Iowa, South Dakota and Nebraska, the standard was raised before the training programs were in place and some clergy found ways to avoid participating in training at the intervals prescribed. The covid pandemic forced the church to develop effective on-line learning strategies and the Tri-Conference now offers regular recurrent boundary training in an online format.

Today is our day to participate in that training. Our standing as clergy is still in South Dakota. As retired pastors, we have not been participating in any ministerial activities since our retirement, but we want to maintain our standing and continue to find was to serve. It is our intention to transfer our church membership and ministerial standing to the Pacific Northwest Conference this spring, so we want to have all of our professional continuing education in place in preparation for the process of transfer of standing.

The commitment is reasonable. Because the course is taught from the Central Time Zone, it starts early out here in Washington, but that means that the six hour training will be completed early in the day for us. We have done a couple of tests to make sure that our home Internet service will support the bandwidth of two computers for our participation and are confident that we can fully participate in the training.

Clergy boundary training is not just about sexual ethics, although the suffering of the victims of clergy sexual abuse must never be forgotten and the dedication to prevention of further abuse is a definite goal of the continuing education of all clergy in our church. Clergy abuse power in other ways including financial improprieties, abuse of power in church decision-making, workplace harassment and other infractions of professional ethics. As retired clergy, we are aware of our ethical responsibilities to maintain barriers in our relationship with the congregations we served during our active ministry years to allow new leadership to emerge and the congregations to make their own independent decisions. While we deeply care about the people we have served, it is essential that we not abuse the trust that has been placed in us over the years of our service. Our decision to move away from South Dakota was based in part on our commitment to observing these boundaries. The physical distance removes us from the picture as the congregation goes through its own process of interim ministry and selection of new leaders.

So today is a day for rolling up our sleeves and going to work to listen carefully and learn as much as we are able about maintaining healthy boundaries for effective ministry. Much of the content of the class will be things that we have encountered before. This isn’t our fist opportunity to address the topics of the course. Repetition, however, is an effective teaching and learning strategy. I know that when I think I am fully informed and know everything that is being taught it is a time for me to buckle down and listen more carefully to nuances and details that I might have missed in previous discussions. I don’t know how interactive the online format will be and I understand that it will be exhausting to be in front of the computer for such a long span. My usual tolerance for a zoom meeting or Skype conversation is generally less than an hour at a time. I haven’t spend multiple hours online for any topic since I retired. I’ll have my cup of tea ready as we begin and supplies handy for breaks so that I can focus during the learning time. We rescheduled other plans so that there will be no interruptions during our class.

I suspect that one of the lasting effects of the pandemic will be that much of clergy professional continuing education will continue to be offered in online formats. As retired clergy, we will need to be willing to learn new strategies and techniques for participation. The tools of effective ministry didn’t require any knowledge of computers and their use when we began our careers. That has changed. Whether or not we like it, we need to make the use of current technology in order to maintain professional competency and protect the people we serve.

It should be an interesting adventure and I expect that by the middle of the afternoon, I’ll be ready for a nap. Retirement doesn’t mean that I stop working, only that I change some of my strategies.