Training sessions are going on around Iowa for Methodist ministers. Kristen Knudsen Harris is spokeswoman for the Iowa Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church. She explains the grouping is geographical, like a sports “conference,” and it’s one of 68 in the US. All clergy and lay people who work in the church are taking the daylong workshops on building healthy ministerial relationships.In 1994 the first clergy-misconduct workshop led to a task force that’s met since then to help ministers learn boundaries in relating to local congregations. Harris says Methodist Ministers are well aware of the painful revelations about clerical abuse in the Catholic Church.Increased awareness of clergy misconduct and sexual harassment in business cases had the church planning already to make this year’s conference about ministerial relationships. Harris knows the kind of demands a congregation can make upon a minister.She says people tend to think the pastor works only Sunday morning but her father was a clergyperson, and she knows they work 24/7, with calls that take you to the hospital at three A-M. Pastors have friends, and Harris says the workshops teach them how to have healthy, human relationships and still maintain the right balance in a stressful occupation. The workshops began in April and continue through the middle of next month. (still to come: workshops in the districts of Council Bluffs, Osceola, Ottumwa, Fort Dodge, Mason City, Muscatine, and Des Moines) For the church website surf to www.iaumc.org
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