In the Fall of 2012, the Executive Committee appointed a task force to formulate new models for the future structure and governance of CPSP. Recently, after 12 months of work, the Governance Task Force completed its work and submitted its Report to the CPSP Executive Committee.

The Task Force was composed of both pastoral clinicians and diplomates who worked separately and together to produce this Report.

The Report offers three models of governance for the Executive Committee to consider:

Divisional Model: This model emphasizes the different roles, responsibilities and needs of diplomates and pastoral clinicians in CPSP. The Divisional model seeks to support the members in each of these professional groups and provides the structure to design specific programs to improve professional standards, ongoing training, chapter development, institutional accountability and certification process.

Regional Model: This integrated model shifts most of the daily operations of CPSP to regional operational and governance systems with the overall legal, and fiduciary functions of the organization as well as professional standards handled by an International Board of Directors. The Regional Model is designed to expand the capacity of the organization to manage growth while maintaining international standards of practice and our historic covenantal commitment to a relational philosophy.

Existing-Revised: This model keeps our historic CPSP structure while adding components which provide for elected representation, systems of accountability, and delineation of roles and responsibilities for diplomates and clinicians within the organization.

The Report also strongly recommends that the Executive Committee engage in a “Community/ Regional Listening” process to share information about governance and to receive feedback from CPSP members.

All Chapter Conveners have received an email from the CPSP Governance Task Force which contains a link to the full Report. Please ask your Convener for a copy of this link. All comments and feedback on this Report should be sent directly to members of the CPSP Executive Committee.

The members of the Governance Task Force have invested serious thought and an inspiring level of passion into this project. The members are to be commended for their determination, breadth of inquiry, and commitment to CPSP. We hope you will join us in appreciation of their efforts.

John Jeffery, Chair (April 2013 – October 2013)
Dallas Speight, Chair (October 2012 – March 2013)

Task Force Members:

Dee Jacquet

Beverly Jessup

Julien Olivier

Ed Outlaw

Ruth Zollinger

Henry Heffernan (chair of Pastoral Clinician Task Force)

John Jeffery, Chair
john@pacinstitute.org

The Reverend Dr. Trace Haythorn is now The Association for Clinical Pastoral Education's new Executive Director.

The CPSP leadership Team send Dr. Haythorn and the ACPE CPSP's best wishes and congratulations in the letter repainted below:

December 4, 2013

Trace Haythorn
Executive Director
Association for Clinical Pastoral Education
1549 Clairmont Rd
Suite 103
Decatur, GA 30035

Dear Dr. Haythorn:

On behalf of the membership of the College of Pastoral Supervision and Psychotherapy we offer you our congratulations as you fulfill your calling as the Executive Director of the Association for Clinical Pastoral Education. We welcome you and your leadership as you join with us in our common mission of advancing clinical pastoral education and training in a world of travail and spiritual flux but also with joy in fulfilling our mutual vocations.

Warm regards,

CPSP Leadership Team:

Brian H. Childs, President
Raymond Lawrence, General Secretary
Perry Miller
Francine Hernandez
Charles Kirby
Jonathan Freeman

A few months ago the new Certification Process Outline was posted on the CPSP website. It appears some entering into the certification track are just becoming aware of the changes. I encourage those who plan to seek seek certification as well as training supervisors to be mindful of the changes.

Below are highlights of the more important changes:

Outside Reviewer: Previously referenced as the “Outside Consultant”, the Outside Reviewer is now appointed by the Certification Committee Representative, is NOT compensated for professional time, and is reimbursed for transportation costs by the CPSP Treasurer.

Review Fee: The 250.00 review fee was implemented at the 2013 Plenary to offset travel costs for Outside Reviewers. Previously, these costs were reimbursed by the candidate or the chapter and not the CPSP Treasurer. The former process had placed a higher burden on chapters in the west and in isolated areas.

Certification Documents: Certification documents are submitted prior to scheduling the formal review: Previously the Certification Committee received certification documents after the certification review. This had created several problems. First, A chapter representative’s failure to submit the facesheet and other supporting documents would often lead to candidates arriving at the Plenary expecting to receive a certificate having been told by the chapter and Outside Reviewer that they were recommended for ratification. Having no record of the review, an opportunity to review the documents, and prepare the certificates, these candidates would not receive their expected certificate. This change eliminates that problem. It also allows for a preliminary review by the Certification Committee and the Outside Reviewer and will prevent the scheduling of formal reviews in cases where the certification documents are not completed, the Standards for certification are not met, etc. Certification documents are to be submitted 60 days prior to the date of the anticipated certification review

Reciprocity: The new process includes language on the process of those who hold certifications with other cognate groups and who wish to be certified by CPSP via reciprocity.

In order to have sufficient time to prepare certificates, Certification reviews and Outside Reviewer reports must be submitted By March 1, 2014 for candidates who wish to receive a certification certificate at the 2014 Plenary.

It is the Certification's Team hope that these changes will enhance the certification process. Please contact your Chapter’s Certification Team Representative with any questions you may have concerning the Certification Process Outline. 

Jonathan Freeman
Certification Team Convener
jonathanfreeman@gmail.com

Growing a beard last Fall never felt so odd as when in shorts I walked along a beach. After all, one expects Santa at the North Pole, not on a Pacific beach. It then struck me that I was not only growing a beard, but thinking like the old fellow.

Actors report getting into the characters they play, but I'm not an actor, just a retired editor and volunteer hospital chaplain. So I looked back on why had taken on the role.

I started growing my third beard after an off-duty Santa caught me sketching him in an Arizona restaurant. He pointed to my white hair and said that I could look good as Santa if I grew a beard like his. So I quit shaving, as I had done on two earlier occasions -- in my 20s to enter a cowboy beard contest and in my 40s when beards were in style as they again seem to be.

During its growth in Sterling, Colorado, a Santa named Larry asked support from the ministerial association of which I was secretary. Larry raised money for sick kids who wrote Christmas wish letters as well as for others needing help in our rural area. I joined him and other Santas at a summer parade and a sugar beet festival. It was jolly fun tossing candy from the back of an antique fire engine and meeting up with kids, friends, and neighbors on the courthouse square.

When my wife Pat and I moved to the Denver area Larry booked jobs for me at a nearby mall, and I visit patients at two hospitals, beard and all, including two Santas. Other patients, especially this time of year, ask me why the Santa beard? I now reply that finding Chaplain Santa in a hospital is no odder than finding him in walking shorts along a beach.

Domenic A. Fuccillo is a CPSP Clinical Chaplain in Littleton, Colorado.

Domenic A. Fuccillo
mafu1@bresnan.net

Over the Christmas break, several volunteers have flown into the devastated areas to deliver Christmas dinner to some of the survivors of typhoon Haiyan. Volunteers and CPSP trainees traveled with a military escort who provided security. Sleeping in tents as the areas where they are working have been reduced to ground zero. There is no running water, so they bring water to last the amount of days they are staying. As reported by Joyce Gray, CPSP Philippines National Coordinator, they are ‘basically working in jungle conditions’. She tells the volunteers and her trainees to ‘prepare for the worst’ as there is still no power or electricity. 

Their goals have been to provide psychosocial intervention to the troops stationed in Tacloban City Airport, provide gifts for the children, cook, prepare, and serve food in evacuation areas as well as for the troops stationed in Tacloban City Airport. 

Your generous donations, to date $2,235.00, have assisted these volunteers and trainees in their work. Thank you for your generosity, and for those who have not yet donated PLEASE consider sending in a donation today. Any amount you can afford will make a BIG difference.

A special thanks to:

The Springdale Arkansas Chapter, Kansas City Metro Chapter, Karen Gallo, Anthony Testaverde, Donna & Larry Rooney, Robert Ricciardi, Frances Porter, Patti Berlinquette, Joan Shapiro, Harold Knox, Perry Miller, Sandy Baranello, Robert Rose, Peter Triolo, Nancy Marsh, Susan Annable, Maureen McGuire, Anne & Donald Mischke, Anawim Training Center & Trainees, Emeka Nwigwe, Charles Kirby, Susan James, and Middletown Society of Friends.

The New Amsterdam Chapter, New York (Barbara A. McGuire, John Jeffery, Geof Tio, Susan McDougal, Sergio Manna and Cesar Espineda) with the Philippines team stay committed to bringing help and healing to the survivors of typhoon Haiyan.

Please send donations to: 

Barbara A. McGuire C/O – CPSP Relief Fund for The Philippines
3207 William Street
Wantagh, NY 11793

Thank you for your support!

Barbara A. McGuire 
C/O – CPSP Relief Fund for The Philippines
barbara.a.mcguire@gmail.com

A new Accreditation Team has been convened following a request by the CPSP Leadership Team at their recent October 2013 meeting. CPSP past-president Francine Hernandez (New York, NY Chapter) was given the task of recruiting members of the reorganized committee, and Ted Taylor (Princeton, NJ Chapter) has accepted the role of Convener.

The Accreditation Team consists of the following individuals: David C. Baker (Baltimore, MD Chapter), David Berg (Chesapeake, MD Chapter), Cynthia Olson (Sacramento, CA Chapter), and Dwight Sweezy (Princeton, NJ Chapter). 

Participating in the work of this new team is the Accreditation Manual Work Group, who were assigned the task of drafting a new accreditation document by the Leadership team prior to its October meeting in 2013. The work group is comprised of Al Carden (Jackson, MS Chapter), Roy Sanders (Kansas City, KS Chapter), and Dallas Speight (Ft. Belvoir, VA Chapter).

Together, the Accreditation Team and the Accreditation Work Group are organizing a more unified process for holding our Clinical Pastoral Education and Pastoral Psychotherapy training programs accountable to the highest standards of professionalism as we plan for neutral third-party recognition.

In early January 2014 members of the Accreditation Team will be contacting every chapter convener and/or supervisory diplomate to appraise current clinical training and supervisory training programs. The surveyors will be engaging the following issues:

• Verifying each diplomate’s basic contact information on record.
  
• Determining the names of training centers under the diplomate’s direction.
  
• Assessing the date(s) of each center’s last accreditation review.
  
• Documenting the names and training centers of any supervisors in training (SITs)under the care of each diplomate.
  

All supervisory diplomates are encouraged to assist our team by promptly replying to these brief survey questions.

A pre-conference workshop on this topic will precede this year’s CPSP Plenary. The workshop, held on Sunday, March 30, will be led by members of the m and the Accreditation Work Group. In the workshop we will review the results of the survey and engage our community in a discussion of a proposed accreditation process based on the appraised needs.

Thanks to all in the CPSP community for their support in this initiative. If there are any questions about the work of the accreditation team or manual work group please contact Ted Taylor, Accreditation Team Convener. . 

Ted Taylor
ttaylor@rwjuhh.edu

A questioner asked: We want our patients to receive chaplain services and want to ensure that our patients are not proselytized. How can we do this?

Concerning Proselytization:

The College of Pastoral Supervision & Psychotherapy (CPSP) accredits Clinical Pastoral Education Training programs and certifies Board Certified Clinical Chaplains. We trust that the following would address some of the concerns about proselytization:

From the CPSP Code of Professional Ethics:

Respect:

Colleagues, students, clients, parishioners, and patients deserve our respect. Therefore, members will not proselytize nor impose their own theologies on others. CPSP members will refrain from exploiting relationships or using them to their own advantage. Exploitation includes emotional, financial, sexual, and/or social gain. Records, evaluations, personal notes, and informational conversations will be kept confidential.

Competency in Pastoral Care/Counseling:

The basic requirements in CPSP for certification as Board Certified Clinical Chaplain:

1. The characterological make-up for ministry, including an ability to bond with others, an ability to give attention to others, and a tolerance for diverse religious traditions and values.

2. Basic self-understanding, so as to limit unconscious imposition of one’s own agenda on others.

3. Endorsement by a faith-group community to perform ministry.

4. 1600 hours of clinically supervised ministry or a year of Clinical Pastoral Training.

5. Continuing education and annual recertification.

6. A Master of Divinity degree or equivalent, which means three years of post-graduate academic study.

Access to Pastoral Care/Counseling:

CPSP affirms the right of the of patients and their loved ones to have access to pastoral care/counseling that is directed in accordance with the patient's and their family's faith tradition.

CPSP affirms the right of the hospice patient to have that care provided by a religious professional from the patient's own faith tradition.

CPSP advocates that religious professionals employed by hospitals or hospice programs work cooperatively with parish clergy so as to facilitate ongoing pastoral support by community clergy.

CPSP acknowledges the patient's right to refuse the provision of pastoral services.

Pastoral Evaluation in the Clinical Pastoral Tradition:

CPSP affirms that pastoral care/counseling, in the clinical pastoral tradition, must include personal evaluation with the specific purpose of bringing the appropriate pastoral resources to bear. CPSP advocates for a dynamic process of pastoral assessment over against the use of a written instrument that requires nothing more than the recording of a patient’s answer to a predetermined set of questions. CPSP affirms the communication of the pastoral evaluation of the patient’s and family’s pastoral needs to the interdisciplinary team.

CPSP supports the patient’s right to be a partner in their treatment plan so as to determine the goals of the care.

________________________________________________

George Hankins Hull, Dip.Th., Th.M.
CPSP Diplomate in Clinical Pastoral Supervision
JHull@uams.edu

Moral Injury Returning Veterans and What We Can Do for Soul Repair October 15, 2013 Schmieding Center 9AM - 3:30 PM Featuring Brite Divinity School’s Soul Repair Center Co-Directors Rita Brock, Ph.D. & Chaplain (Col) Herman Keizer, Jr. U.S. Army (retired)

This symposium was well attended by over 100 chaplains, CPE student interns, social workers, physicians, clergy and other interested individuals. It was a free symposium made possible by a a grant from the Auxiliary at Northwest Medical Center – Springdale, Arkansas. CPSP Pastoral Care contact hours were provided by the Kansas City Diplomate Chapter. CJ Malone is the Executive Director and CPE Supervisor of the Institute. To review the symposium in its entirety and learn more about Brite’s Soul Repair Center visit www.nwacpe.org and www.britesoulrepair.org

Video Part I: "Moral Injury and Soul Repair" and Video Part II: "Work of Soul Repair" can be viewed by going to: http://nwacpe.org/?q=node/15

_____________________________________

Chaplain CJ Malone
CPSP Diplomate
cjmalone@gmail.com

The College of Pastoral Supervision & Psychotherapy (CPSP) continues to support Survivors of Haiyan.

Relief efforts continue in the Philippines and donations are coming in a bit slower but none the less continue to arrive in the mail! A huge thanks to the Williamsburg Chapter ($400), Kansas City Chapter ($70), Feleti & Folola Ngan-Woo ($50), and Donald & Nancy Harris ($30). Your generosity will assist the survivors in gaining back some normalcy in their lives.

The hundreds of survivors that were moved to Manila are trying to find jobs, homes and simply to survive. Our CPSP colleagues continue to provide support in a multitude of areas especially in providing emotional support for survivors as well as those who are assisting the survivors.

We will continue to ask for your support as several of the CPSP – Philippines members are researching a long term project to assist in starting gardens for the survivors to plant and tend. (Give a man a fish he will eat for a day, teach a man to fish and he will eat for life)

Please consider sending a donation today. Any amount you can afford will make a BIG difference. All donations are greatly appreciated and will go directly to the people via our CPSP Philippines colleagues.

The New Amsterdam Chapter, New York with the Philippines team continues to be committed to bringing help and healing to our typhoon Yolanda (Haiyan) survivors.

All checks need to be made out to: 

CPSP (Philippines Relief Fund)

Mail checks to:

Barbara McGuire
C/O CPSP - Philippines Relief Fund
3207 William Street 
Wantagh, NY 11793

Thank you!

The New Amsterdam Chapter 

______________________________________

Barbara A. McGuire, LCSW, DPPsy
barbara.a.mcguire@gmail.com

Have you made arrangements for the 2014 CPSP Plenary starting March 30 - April 2, 2014? If not, it is not too late.

The gathering of the CPSP Community for its 24th Annual Plenary will occur March 30 through April 2 at the Sheraton Oceanfront Hotel in Virginia Beach, Virginia.

Rooms have been reserved at a special rate of $119, single or double, per night. Reserve your room online by clicking on this link: Sheraton Oceanfront Hotel, or call 800-325-3535 or go to the Sheraton Oceanfront website.

Please contact Krista Argiropolls if you have questions.
krista@cpsp.org

The CPSP Leadership Team believes CPSP has succumbed too much to a linear approach to authority and accountability that characterizes so much of our lives generally in this culture.

Linear accountability is generally "top down" and is directive. Obviously, there are matters that must be dealt with in linear fashion. However, the Leadership Team believes CPSP is currently in need of more circularity in leadership. Assessments, judgements, and feedback need to be passed around for varied assessment and judgment rather than issued from on high. This, after all, is congruent with the philosophy of Chapter life in which no one is boss, but group life in which all voices are asked to contribute. Circularity is also more feminine in contrast to linear accountability, which suggests maleness.

The Leadership Team also notes that certain highly successful corporations, including medical systems, have moved toward a team approach and have considered it a more enlightened and more successful model.

There will be a call for working teams to address areas of concern in our community. Teams will be focused on team process that embraces creativity, imagination and innovation that emerges out of a deep passion and commitment for the particular work of the team and its relationships.

Committees will begin to work as teams. No longer will we use the term “committees”. It will be within nimble and dynamic teams where multiple voices are heard and consensus sought as these teams work to address matters that advances the unique mission of the CPSP Community within the clinical pastoral movement.

It is critical that all teams have a reasonable balance of male and female, which we believe will better reinforce circularity. We anticipate that such working teams will be broadly representative in other ways as well.

In addition, it is expected that an extraordinary amount of consultation and collaboration will occur not only within teams but between the various teams that will be comprised within CPSP. As such, CPSP becomes a living and breathing organism feeding on the creativity, wisdom and imagination of all.

Our CPSP Covenant declares we must “ travel light”. This is a radical assertion of a core value which includes “CPSP will have no paid staff”. This is liberating. No one providing leadership in CPSP has to worry about their job and income for themselves and their family. Unlike the corporate world, which includes all other certification and accreditation organizations' models in the clinical pastoral field, CPSP has no paid staff or workers with the exception of one part-time administrative person.

The CPSP team model promotes unencumbered creativity, critique, even radical and diverse voices without fear of consequence for contrarian views. In CPSP all voices are heard and considered.

Given our “travel light“ model, however, CPSP can not ultimately be successful unless all of its members are engaged in leadership and service. Thus, all CPSP members are to be actively involved in a variety of teams, directly and indirectly providing leadership that forges CPSP’s mission into the wider world with its clinical training programs and services of pastoral care, counseling and psychotherapy to those broken in life, spirit and relationships. This is a noble mission. It is one we will accomplish as we work together in teams to shape our destiny and our clinical pastoral services.

Within this team model is a small Leadership Team. One important duty and responsibility of this team will be to manage, resource and support the the various CPSP teams. The Leadership Team will be a nimble and responsive team actively collaborating with the other teams to insure CPSP’s brand and ample market share for our members will grow and prosper.

Let it be clear, CPSP was never about creating a democratic model but a model that is attuned to the grassroots and to value its wisdom and voice. The team model does just that and is more effective in doing so then other models.

With the team approach, the Leadership Team sees this as CPSP fully embracing itself as a corporation, not just a community of kindred spirits, although this is proudly true of us as well. The team approach further advances CPSP as a corporation who also has its eye on the market place and jobs for our members.This is primary. The team approach combined with a responsive Leadership Team provides CPSP the best shot of realizing a healthy and growing market place for our members.  

How Teams Will Function

CPSP teams will be richly relational and collaborative.

Concerning the relational, it is anticipated for many, the team itself will in spirit become a “second” chapter of kindred spirits. The richness of the team experience will “spill over” to enhance the quality of chapter life and the ability of the grassroots to influence the directions of CPSP and its mission.

Collaboration will be a primary characteristic of how a team will function, yet each team’s mission and work will require, no, actually demand, collaboration with other teams and chapters in order to be effective.

CPSP with its team model will have multiple intersections of dynamic collaboration taking place. Such collaboration will reach to the very core of our life together in chapters and in to our life together as a vital community with a unique and creative mission in the clinical pastoral field.

Teams will report their work and get feedback at each Annual Plenary in The Convener’s Forum, similar to a Town Hall Meeting. In addition, each team will periodically offer virtual forums for CPSP members as a means to further engage the grassroots. At this level of collaboration, it is anticipated that positive and profound impact on the mission of CPSP.

A Final Word

I encourage you to remember, CPSP was forged out of a deep belief that healthy institutions must be forever dynamic and changing as a means to best serve those who people them.

CPSP’s birth was a means to give hope and good spirt to those willing to embrace the ambiguities that come with the courage to do new things, even risky things, in an effort to give heart and soul to those willing to engage their imaginative and creative selves within a community dedicated to the clinical pastoral movement. In short, CPSP has always been an experiment. Thus far a successful one. The development of CPSP teams is another manifestation of CPSP as “Experiment”.

Shortly, all members of the CPSP community will receive a “Survey Monkey” that will be requesting you to start the process of identifying your interest, expertise---hopefully your passion---as a possible active and engaged member of one of CPSP’s teams.

Perry N. Miller

On behalf of the CPSP Leadership Team

___________________

Perry Miller
Editor, Pastoral Repot
perrymiller@gmail.com

Breakthrough, a website supporting ALS Therapy Alliance featured Julien Olivier, a CPSP Board Certified Clinical Chaplain.

Dr. Olivier is quoted:

"Palliative care is a service offered to people who have chronic illnesses and who need to focus on symptom and pain control, perhaps forsaking or delaying further curative attempts," said Julien Olivier, DMin, BCCC, Fellow in Hospice & Palliative Care and Chaplain at Wentworth-Douglass Hospital in Dover, NH. "PALS could seek palliative care at any time, beginning with their diagnosis. An expert team helps patients and their families address coping skills, anxiety, use of assistive devices, necessary support services, end-of-life issues and more.

It is notable that Julien Olivier provided significant leadership enabling CPSP to launch CPSP's Clinical Fellow in Hospice & Palliative Care providing an advanced certification for those working in the Hospice & Palliative Care field.

To read the full article, click here.

For more information, contact Julien Olivier
Julien.Olivier@wdhospital.com

A small working group comprised of representatives of of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (LDS) and the College of Pastoral Supervision and Psychotherapy met at LDS headquarters in Salt Lake City, Utah on December 6, 2013.

The purposes of the meeting were: to foster mutual understanding and trust, to discuss CPSP requirements for board certification of chaplains, and to discuss pathways toward fulfilling the customary MDiv certification requirement that is not part of the LDS tradition.

Recognizing that formation, preparation and training for ministry in the LDS faith is a lifelong process, the group also acknowledged the distinction between such ministry and clinical pastoral care and the profession of clinical chaplaincy.

The members of the group affirmed a desire for members of the LDS faith who feel called to pursue chaplaincy as a career path to do so on par with other professionals in this specialized ministry.

To this end, and in pursuit of professional excellence toward board certification for clinical chaplaincy, the working group affirmed by consensus that:

1) An MDiv degree, while of course always an option, should not be the only preferred option for LDS certification candidates. A good masters degree from an accredited institution in the social/behavioral sciences that includes the study of religion, or one related to religion with coursework in the human sciences, should be required as specified in the Standards. An exception might be made for candidates who can demonstrate equivalent graduate-level coursework equivalent to the approved masters degree.

2) Mentoring of LDS candidates, and indeed all those seeking CPSP certification, should be available and used as a means to assure candidates understand and fulfill the Standards and are properly prepared for the certification process.

3) The LDS Military Relations / Priesthood Department is a credible, centralized source of endorsement of professional chaplains. It will review the question of its providing endorsement for healthcare chaplains as it presently does for those serving in the military and the Veterans Administration.

The members of the CPSP-LDS working group are: Blake Boatright (LDS), Alden Brown (LDS/CPSP), Frank Clawson (LDS), Debra Hampton (LDS/CPSP), Richard Roggia (LDS/CPSP), David Roth (CPSP), Gene Slade (CPSP/LDS), Vance Theodore (LDS) and Ruth Zollinger (CPSP).

___________________________________

For more information contact:
David Roth, Gene Slade and Ruth Zollinger.

The faculty of the Institute for Psychodynamic Pastoral Supervision will be available at its display table during the CPSP Annual Plenary in Virginia Beach. Instead of presenting a workshop this year, the faculty will be available for individual and small group consultations about its Psy.D., D.Min. and Certificate program offerings.

We are currently receiving applications for the incoming class, which begins in August, 2014. Our deadline for applications is June 10. The new academic year will launch with our third annual Summer Intensive Week of Studies to be held August 17-22 at Avila Retreat Center in Durham, NC. As usual, the foci for the Summer Intensive Week of Studies will include group theory and practice, Tavistock theory and intercultural theory.

During the last week of August our fall semester begins with an online course for the new student cohort on the developmental theories of Bowlby, Freud, Mahler and Fonagy. Theory seminars are matched with weekly praxis seminars in which students present cases that demonstrate their current supervisory work.

In other IPPS news, we reluctantly accepted the decision of The Rev. Joel Harvey, Ph.D. to retire from the faculty due to medical issues, although he remains with us as Professor Emeritus. We hope that Plenary attendees will join us in thanking Joel for his many years of scholarly, supervisory and pastoral service.

We wish to announce that Joel’s successor on the faculty is The Rev. Dr. Charles Starr, Director of Pastoral Care at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. He brings a wealth of teaching and supervisory experience to his new faculty position. We are delighted with the energy he contributes to the students’ learning experience, and the wisdom he brings to his work on our faculty.
If you are interested in our doctoral program at IPPS, please explore our website at www.pastoralsupervisionusa.wordpress.com. Then bring your questions to us at our display table in Virginia Beach. We look forward to the dialogue.

The Peace Corps is looking for 3 Disaster Preparedness and Response Program Officers for the Philippines for 6 months disaster response to Typhoon Yolanda starting this May. What they indicate is that they prefer returned Peace Corps volunteers for this short-term job. Sometimes they also take those who have not served in the PC yet, especially for these disaster response manager jobs.

Here are the links to Peace Corps Response: http://www.peacecorps.gov/volunteer/response/

Contact Us

Peace Corps Response
1111 20th St. NW Washington , DC , 20526
Phone

855.855.1961 ext. 2250
202.692.2250
E-mail Us

pcresponse@peacecorps.gov

JOHN STANGLE is a former Peace Corps volunteer. I also have done the SAIR and Red Cross Disaster training (did the first one in 1999).
johnpstangle@yahoo.com

I am currently enrolled in a multi-faith chaplaincy program at Hartford Seminary in Hartford, Ct., having completed my first Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) unit last summer. It was during this time that I came across Rev. Alberts’ book entitled, A Hospital Chaplain at the Crossroads of Humanity.

I found this book to be extremely rich in content and purpose. Each story drew my interest for the encounters were so beautifully described in terms of their simplicity and realism. Dr. Alberts shares his experiences as a chaplain, and what it means to be open and present to the divine encounters in hospital chaplaincy in the most human manner. Each story illustrates invaluable lessons on the many ways a chaplain can respond to patients, with sacred yet simple acts of being totally present and in listening without judgment. It is through these acts that one is able to "empower the patients and their families." This allows the chaplain and patient to recognize the divine at work within the patient’s life.

Dr. Alberts’ stories reveal his experiences of learning to show his humanity, naturalness, and humility with patients and, in so doing, be present with the patients wherever they are in their suffering and spiritual journey. This book goes beyond any religious tradition or social condition, making the lessons applicable to all types of encounters.

The book is truly a gem. I highly recommend it for all those seeking a deeper encounter with others, whether as a chaplain or in other care giving vocations.
(Editor’s note: The book is available on Amazon.com, and on Kindle books.)

BRIEF BIOGRAPHY:

Paul Uccello is a graduate of Hartford Seminary in Hartford, Connecticut, and for many years has had an interest in understanding faith traditions other than his own (Christian). To that goal, he received his MA in Religious Studies from Hartford Seminary in 2007. He is currently completing a graduate certificate program in Multi-faith Chaplaincy at Hartford Seminary. His previous vocation for the past 30 years has been in an executive management position for a major aerospace corporation. He has a MS in Management and a MBA from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

paul.uccello@gmail.com

From the Boisen Book Project:

"The Boisen Books Project will reintroduce Boisen to a new generation in the 21st century. As relevant today as when they were first published, Boisen’s three major books will appear, one-a-year, beginning in Spring 2015, marking the 50th anniversary of his death in 1965."

This is great news for all of us in the clinical pastoral field who have been shaped, guided and inspired by Anton T. Boisen's writings.

No doubt many have been instrumental in launching this enterprise. At this writing we know that CPSP's David Roth, PhD and Robert Charles Powell, MD, PhD were a part of the creation of the Boisen Book Project.

The website for the project pays tribute to Dr. Powell: "The new editions will each include a new Introduction by renowned historian of the pastoral care movement and psychiatrist Robert Charles Powell, MD, PhD, as well as a new foreword and afterword."

Keep checking with boisenbooks.com to learn more and for pre-order information. 

Perry Miller, Editor
Pastoral Report
perrymiller@gmail.com

NCTS-East will address the theme "Disaster Spiritual Care – The Chaplain’s Response". Linda Walsh-Garrison, BCCC will be the principle presenter.

Reaching out to those in need in the face of overwhelming disasters, terrorist attacks and spontaneous mass injuries is both humbling and life-giving. As chaplains, sometimes we are called to be in places where there is great loss and pain and through these individual moments, we help create a safe place for survivors to feel the depth of their pain without embarrassment or alienation; promoting healthy recovery. Very few individuals across our nation are trained with the degree of expertise and training that you bring. Yet, in the face of overwhelming disasters and loss of life, few of us are prepared to handle and coordinate the massive effort and courage, that it takes to manage teams of chaplains through the minute-by-minute challenges that are encountered by volunteers and survivors alike. Many of us will learn for the first time when it affects our neighborhood.

We are glad you are taking the time to attend this seminar; our participants bring a wealth of excellent talent and insights. Your facilitators in this workshop bring a tremendous wealth of knowledge and experience in the field of Disaster Spiritual Care.

Linda Walsh-Garrison, BCCC is serving as CPSP liaison to the American Red Cross (ARC). Her broad responder experience include Children Disaster Services, member of the ARC National Spiritual Care Development Team and lead coordinator of the successful Disaster Spiritual Care Pilot Program launched in San Diego CA. Trained in Post Traumatic Stress Injuries (PTSI) and family resilience, she serves the armed forces as an advisor to the White House Committee on Military Families, Military Chaplain Services, and in “Chaplains Caring for Veterans & Families” - a collaboration of military/vet/civilian chaps educating faith-based leaders to connect with warriors and those serving with PTSI at home. Chaplain Walsh-Garrison has recently relocated to Ogden, Utah, in the venue of hospice-care serving three states. Her personal focus is studying the unique response of veterans and survivors of traumatic events to clinical therapies at end of life, and the resiliency of caretakers after prolonged, slowly progressing deaths.

The venue is the Loyola Retreat House (Jesuit) in Morristown, New Jersey. It is about 20 minutes outside of New York City.

As always, the central focus of the gathering will be the presentation of clinical case material in a small psychodynamic group process.

______________________________________________________
Francine Hernandez, NCTS-East Coordinator 
fangel1012@aol.com

REPORT TO PLENARY
MARCH 31, 2014
Raymond J. Lawrence, General Secretary

Myron Madden has been our wisest pastoral resource. He died last June 4. Brian Childs and I attended his funeral, along with three other CPSP persons. There were also five pastoral clinicians present who were not part of CPSP. The church should have been packed with pastoral clinicians at his funeral. Myron was a giant in our field. We will not see the likes of him again soon. Fortunately we in CPSP had the best of him in his last two decades of life. He functioned as chaplain to every Plenary until his health failed him at age eighty-eight. What he meant to us cannot be measured. And I have letters describing how much we meant to him as well.

It would be a mistake to claim blithely that Myron was widely recognized and honored. He wasn't recognized and honored as widely as he deserved to be. He was recognized and honored by too few. He was too much Freud and too much Shakespeare for typical Christians. And he was too brilliant and insightful for most pastoral clinicians. Tulane University Medical School hired him to teach their young psychiatrists, but the Christian seminaries kept him at arm's length.

In 1999, Myron wrote about his experience attending Wayne Oates' funeral in Louisville, Kentucky. Wayne had been his sometime-mentor, older brother, and finally his dear friend. As you may know, Wayne Oates was rejected much of his life by the clinical training movement as well as the seminaries and the religious community at large. Again, too much Freud. Myron noted that Wayne's mother seminary sent no representative to honor and claim him as one of their own as they laid him in his grave. Myron added that it could be said of Oates, as it was said of another, that "he came unto his own, and his own received him not." So, too, could the same be said of Myron.

In my early years as a clinical supervisor, in the 1970s, I used to contrive ways to be placed on an ACPE Certification Committee assignment. Those certification reviews were never casual. They were intense and dangerous. Most people were not certified on the first committee review. Myron was at his best in those reviews. Invariably Shakespeare, Freud, or the Bible—or all three— typically were woven into the review process as Myron engaged the soul or psyche of a candidate.

Through the years of my friendship with Myron, he constantly hounded me to read the novels of Pat Conroy. I resisted Myron's overtures. I thought Myron was referring me to fun reading that would not have the weight of Freud or Shakespeare or the Bible, Myron's three warhorses. Barely a couple of years ago I finally did read the just-published East of Broad, and it stunned me. I finally understood Myron's fascination with Conroy. Conroy probes with exquisite skill and courage the dark recesses in human relationships. That's what was attractive to Myron, and also made Myron such a good therapist. Then last year, alas too late for Myron, Conroy published his memoirs, The Death of Santini: The Story of a Father and His Son. Conroy had what may have been one of the most narcissistic and abusive fathers ever to have been documented. Though Conroy describes his family life like it was in all its perversity, he never gave up the paternal relationship. He continued to honor his father even while describing in delicious detail his extraordinary perversity and abusiveness. So now I'm going to read pages 117 and 118 from The Death of Santini for Myron. Maybe you will be able to hear him laughing. (Reading not included in this posting.)

According to Myron, our focus as human beings and professionals is always about selfhood and relationship. Ideology and theology exist only in service to selfhood and relationship.

The loss of Myron is huge. We will all have to work harder in the time ahead to carry forward the light and wisdom that he embodied.

II

There is a lot of unrest in CPSP at present. I don't like guns, and certainly don't like violence, verbal or physical. But as Ralph Waldo Emerson said in 1861, "I do love the smell of gunpowder." When people feel strongly enough to fight for something, it means they care, even if it's just themselves they care about. That's at least a start. Too many people don't care about much of anything. That's much worse. We have a lot of people in CPSP who care about something. Some of them may be misguided. I myself may be misguided. But if you care about something, that's a good start. We're going to have some heated exchanges at this meeting, and there is nothing wrong with that. Nobody’s going to get hurt, if I have any say so in the matter. We will keep our hearts and minds on the Covenant. The Covenant trumps every rule and every standard. We will, of course, struggle over matters that we disagree on, but I believe we will, in the end, love and care for each other, and we will do just fine.

What other group do you belong to in which you can put in writing in the most scathing terms your view that the leadership is misguided, perverse, and ought to resign, and live to tell about it? You can't do that at the office; or at church; or in the garden club. We are a tolerant, accepting, and non-reactive community. Let's keep it that way.

III
While some of us claim to be concerned about the future of our community, I am not. But I do want to share with you this morning my perception of the big picture in the clinical pastoral movement. It is a picture that I see with growing alarm. You yourselves will need to decide whether my perceptions are accurate, or perhaps simply the views of an aging male for whom the dreams of earlier years have materialized in only the most fragmentary ways.

Eighty-nine years ago this coming summer Boisen ran his first clinical pastoral training unit. (He did not call it CPE, but rather Clinical Pastoral Training.) He enlisted four trainees, three men and one woman, Helen Flanders Dunbar. These summer interns did not sign on as chaplains, but rather as orderlies, making beds, delivering towels, and sometimes emptying bedpans. As orderlies, they conversed with patients during the day and in the evening participated in clinical seminars on what they had learned from patients. Their assignment was to understand the dynamics of the troubled mind and how they might be of therapeutic help as pastors.

Boisen organized this program because he had been a psychiatric patient a couple of years previously, and no one in the psych hospital would sit down and listen to him. The staff, including the psychiatrists, wanted to give him quick advice and send him on his way. No one had time to listen to him tell his story. He knew in part what was wrong with him. His troubles had begun stemming largely from what his parents had done to him, and he wanted to tell someone of his continuing torment. He wanted to—as we like to say—process his story.

IV
Much of what I observe today in the clinical pastoral movement at large, including CPSP, is a betrayal of Boisen's training approach. Instead of ministers in mufti, disguised as orderlies, we have become purveyors of religion and religious ideology…chaplains as spiritual head-trippers. We in the clinical pastoral movement today have become advocates of spirituality, peddlers of religion, low-paid liberal evangelists, hoping to entice people to become more spiritual, whatever in God's name that might mean. This is Boisen turned upside down or inside out. He sought to understand the human journey in all its interiority and mental suffering, not to patch it over with religious salve.

A part of the eclipsing of Boisen was the shift of clinical training programs from psychiatric hospitals to general hospitals. Today there are very few psychiatric hospital training programs. For Boisen, that was the only place to be. It's easier in a general hospital to be friendly, say a prayer, and move on. Psychiatric patients don't usually put up with that sort of thing. They'll tell you what they really think, and leave you like a puddle on the floor. The general hospital permits a more superficial sort of pastoral care and counseling than the typical psychiatric hospital.

Another force that diminished Boisen to some extent was the assault on Boisen by Richard Cabot who had earlier been his principal supporter. Cabot had no interest in psychiatric issues, considered psychiatry bogus, and sought to train ministers to be helpmates of physicians, whom he considered the authentic healers. The Cabot philosophy eventually gained preeminence in the ACPE, a state of affairs that still prevails. I recently reviewed a case in which the chaplain asked a patient if she had an active spiritual life, and the patient replied, "Do you mean do I talk with spirits?" That's just what the chaplain deserved. Two things are wrong with the question the chaplain asked. One is that people do not know what we are talking about by spiritual. We don't even know what we are talking about with such language. The currency of our language is debased. The second thing wrong with the question addressed to the patient is that it communicates that the chaplain has in mind something that he wants to patient to be doing. It is not our business to be promoting a program of behavior. Perhaps, but only after we have been significantly apprised of the patient's situation, we may—may is determinative here—have some recommendations in the behavioral arena. If we have as our objective in relation to patients to lead them to be more spiritual, we will be lost before we begin. Lost in words without clear meaning, and lost because we are prescribing before we diagnose. This is professionally fatal in a clinical setting.

We are being misled by the pundits in our field. The book, Paging God: Religion in the Halls of Medicine, was published two years ago to some fanfare. The metaphor, paging god, is obscure. Does it mean that the medical staff pages god and they get us? Or, does it mean that they page us and we then page god? Either way, it is a catastrophic metaphor for anyone who aspires to be a serious pastoral clinician. The author does not grasp the significance of the clinical pastoral training movement and certainly doesn't understand Boisen.

Now, if you work in a medical setting and you own this book, Paging God, or are thinking of purchasing it, I have some unasked-for advice. Wrap this book in brown paper or keep it hidden in your desk, out of sight. If a medical clinician sees the title and gets the notion that you are in the business of paging god, or worse, that paging you is tantamount to paging god, you will never be taken seriously in that institution. Whatever, whoever god is, and that is a matter of many differing views, he or she is certainly no cosmic bell-hop. God assuredly doesn't answer pages.

The late and great and wonderful Lutheran pastor Paul Scherer, whom I had the joy of knowing, once said that God answered every prayer, and virtually every answer was a great big 'No.' I always think of that when someone tells me that they will be praying for me.

We know of course that people in desperation often cry out to god. If I were falling from an airplane at twenty-five-thousand feet I would likely be the first and loudest one praying, but I doubt it would avail me anything. People in extremis sometimes cry out to god, and we should sit with them patiently until the hysteria passes. There is no good reason why we should pile on, adding to their panic.

The author of Paging God is quite affirming of American middle-class religion and of chaplaincy, but it's not the chaplaincy we inherited from Boisen. The book notes approvingly a Unitarian chaplain who carried with him a pocket full of rosaries in case he met a Catholic patient. No mention was made of any extra pockets for comparable Hindu, Muslim, Buddhist, Eastern Orthodox, or Protestant religious artifacts. And what about agnostics? They are our largest clientele. The chaplain who carries gifts for persons of only one religious tradition is going to get a very bad reputation very quickly. And if she carries gifts for every tradition in her many pockets, she's going to get a worse reputation.

You don't need clinical training to learn to say prayers, or to learn how to distribute religious artifacts. By handing out religious artifacts one shows one's hand as one who espouses conventional religious beliefs and practices, already tilting the pastoral relationship toward "don't tell me your doubts, disbeliefs, or agnosticism," which everyone has. The patient is not going to disclose religious doubt to a peddler of religious artifacts…or to purveyors of spirituality. The axiom is: We approach patients without memory or desire. If we bring our own agenda to the pastoral counseling relationship, it is contaminated from the start.

On any journey it is often difficult to decipher exactly where one is at a specific time, and whether one is on course, or drifting. But my reading is that the clinical pastoral movement, that is almost a century old, is off course, and drifting. Boisen's monumental discovery—simple though it was—was that troubled persons need to be heard as they try to make sense of complex life experiences and self-defeating life choices. Though Boisen seems never to have found a competent counselor or therapist for himself, he nevertheless went on to train others to be just that. So when he was released from psychiatric lock-up, he signed on as chaplain at a psychiatric hospital and offered patients what he never got for himself, an intelligent, sensitive, and psychiatrically informed listening ear. Then he started training other ministers, and thus began clinical pastoral training.

Boison said that Freud was exactly correct: that Freud's talking cure was the treatment of choice for most human inner conflict; and that the proper role of religious authorities is to listen and to make connections. The talking cure is the nature of our work, if we're competent clinicians. Today the talking cure has mostly been turned on its head. Now, in most of our field, the chaplains talk (either to god or the patient) and the patients listen.

V
A major blow to Boisen's heritage occurred fifteen years ago when the principal leaders of the clinical pastoral movement beseeched the JCAHO, requesting them to delete "pastoral counseling" as the description of the chaplain's role and asked that they replace it with "spiritual care." Two things are wrong with that.

1. Our profession gave away the powerful concept of 'pastoral,' shepherding the sheep, a metaphor rooted in every culture, connoting nurture, vigilance, and protection. We replaced it with 'spiritual,' which fuzzily connotes something up there or out there, certainly out of this world.

2. Second, it gave away 'counseling' and replaced it with 'care,' a much less weighty mandate.

The wholesale abandonment of our roles as pastoral counselors has been a catastrophic blow to our work, and I sometimes wonder if we can recover.
The deceptive argument made in support of erasing 'pastoral' and replacing it with 'spiritual' was that spiritual was more compatible with a variety of faith traditions. It was a phony argument. First of all, the label chaplain was not critiqued at all, and it is the most specifically Christian label of all the common terms, referring to a medieval Christian chapel. Secondly, we fool ourselves when we accredit all forms of religion with the benign label 'spiritual' as if they are all equally truthful. It's a shallow accommodation. All religions are not equally truthful or beneficial. Some are worse than others. I won't get into that. Furthermore, spiritual as a label leaves agnostics and atheists at the station. I happen to know the secret lives of many of you, and I am not afraid to say that we have a significant number of agnostic clinicians among us, and some of our best clinicians are in that group.

VI
The wider clinical pastoral community of which we are a part is no longer serious about the issues that Boisen gave his life for. It has traded in Boisen for the popular saccharine comfort food of spirituality. I fantasize that a suitable inscription to chisel into the tombstone of the clinical pastoral movement might be: "Here lay those who first sat at the feet of Anton Boisen but who later resorted to paging god."

We in CPSP must keep the Boisen flame burning. And we can.
As good pastoral clinicians we can do this. We can listen rather than talk, and we can make connections where we see connections. We can descend into the messiness of human relationships, and leave the gods and their spirituality to take care of themselves, something of which they are quite capable.

Our arena as pastoral clinicians is -to examine how we blindly reenact the abuse we received from our parents and authorities and how hard it is to remember the love they offered us, even in its fragmentariness and brokenness. -to parse how we hurt each other, and hurt ourselves. -to parse how we sometimes love each other, and sometimes hate each other and often don't know the difference -to explore as we listen to ourselves and others the depths of our envy and resentment -to observe how we screw each other in both senses of the word, and what malign or benign motives drive us to do such things -to explore how it is and how it came to be that often the most difficult person to love is ourselves ! -to expand this brief list until we understand in depth the meaning of all our behavior.

This is a large and profound mandate. But this is our arena. This is where Boisen lived and worked. This is what Myron Madden taught us to do.This is our arena. Let us go and do what these great souls who preceded us taught us to do.

Raymond J. Lawrence, CPSP General Secretary

________________________________
Raymond J. Lawrence,  
CPSP General Secretary
raymondlawrence@gmail.com