Clinical Pastoral Education

Presidential Address March 18, 2013 Las Vegas, NV Brian H. Childs, CPSP President I have recently turned 66 years old. Recently I have been thinking quite a bit about my own death. I have come realize that I have lived more than likely the vast majority of my life years. Now this realization is not macabre. I am most grateful for my life. I have lived a good and full life. I have loved and been loved. I have been forgiven as I have forgiven. I have dear children and I have done the best I can in my work and my calling. Te Deum. Yet, I had always thought that I would die without ever having been to Las Vegas. Here I am. Likewise I had never ever thought I would be the President of the College of Pastoral Supervision and Psychotherapy. Here I am. What curves life can throw even at the end of it all. I am honored and pleased to be your President over the next two years. As I have prepared for this post over the year of my term as President elect I have come to focus on what I ho...

Raymond Lawrence, CPSP General Secretary In July the CPSP leadership received a communication from Robin C. Brown-Haithco, President of ACPE and Deryck Durston, Interim Executive Director. They wrote to inform us of an action by the ACPE Board of Representatives taken on July 11, 2012, suggesting that the two organizations return to the negotiating table. The letter further indicated that ACPE is willing to engage in new dialogue with the goal of resolving our current differences. We welcome this overture and consider it a promising development. It has been the CPSP intention at all times to remain in dialogue with ACPE and to deal directly with our most pressing issues. Brian Childs Chair, CPSP Mediation Team  The CPSP Executive Committee has reviewed the ACPE acknowledgement of our impasse and invitation to return to negotiations, and we welcome the opportunity to return to the negotiating table and seek more effective ways to facilitate both organizations’ commitm...

Center for the Study of Groups and Social Systems Annual Residential Group Relations Conference January 16-20, 2012 Whether planned or unplanned, sudden or gradual, peaceful or conflict-laden, organizational change, especially succession in leadership, carries with it opportunities and risks, excitement and anxiety. It mobilizes ambitions, brings new skill sets to the fore, and highlights limitations, not only at the upper levels of the organization but throughout it. Authority must be both claimed and negotiated, and power issues are inevitably mobilized. How do dynamics arising in a context of succession affect the success of an organization? What relationship dilemmas arise? What needs to be worked through and how is this accomplished? More Information can be found on the AKRI website http://www.akriceinstitute.org/ You can also register directly on the CCGSS website www. csgss.org .

The 2012 CPSP Plenary March 25th-March 28th 2012 Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania The 2012 CPSP Plenary gathering will take place at Doubletree Hotel & Suites Pittsburgh City Center. The hotel is situated in a prime location, which is right in the middle of Pittsburgh’s vibrant downtown. A block of rooms have been reserved March 24, 2012-March 28, 2012. The special room rate, $119.00, will be available until March 4th or until the room block is sold out. You can reserve your room by clicking on the following link: Doubletree Hotel & Suites Pittsburgh City Center We look forward to seeing you in Pittsburg March 25th-March 28th 2012. Visit the Pastoral Report for more information about CPSP: Pastoral Report CPSP is committed to making Clinical Pastoral Training affordable George Hankins Hull CPSP Plenary Secretary

Dr. Raymond Lawrence with Rev. Aguirre and the CPE supervisory team at Bukal Life Care & Counseling Center In April and May of 2011 Dr. Raymond Lawrence, General Secretary of the College of Pastoral Supervision and Psychotherapy, and CPSP Diplomate and chair of the Accreditation Committee Dr. Cesar G. Espineda visited the Philippines to provide training and assessment for the clinical pastoral training being done. On April 20, 2011, in a ceremony in Asin, Benguet, Philippines, Dr. Raymond Lawrence formally inaugurated the first CPSP Philippine Chapter, Baguio City. At the same event, Bukal Life Care & Counseling Center and the Philippine Baptist Theological Seminary were designated as training centers of the CPSP in the Philippines. Dr. Ryan Clark, professor of Pastoral Care and Counseling at the Seminary, and Ms. Celia Munson, the training coordinator for Bukal, represented these institutions at the event. This new Chapter, the second Chapter in Asia after Hong Kong, is the cu...

At a Glance one can see that for CPSP diversity is a fact of life. CPSP creates community through relationships of accountability and ongoing professional development. The CPSP covenant is the bond that holds the CPSP community together in a way that promotes clinical pastoral competency through ongoing face to face relationships of accountability. The CPSP Covenant: We, the CPSP members see ourselves as spiritual pilgrims seeking a truly collegial professional community. Our calling and commitments are, therefore, first and last theological. We covenant to address one another and to be addressed by one another in a profound theological sense. We commit to being mutually responsible to one another for our professional work and direction. Matters that are typically dealt with in other certifying bodies by centralized governance will be dealt with primarily in Chapters. Thus, we organize ourselves in such a way that we each participate in a relatively small group called a Chapter consist...

On behalf of the CPSP Plenary organizing committee, we warmly invite you to join us for the 21st gathering of the CPSP community . We meet at the Sheraton Oceanfront Hotel Virginia Beach, Virginia March 27th -30th. We are delighted to have the Rev. Dr. John Patton as our plenary speaker. Dr. Patton served as the Director of the Georgia Association of Pastoral Care & Counselling. He is Professor Emeritus of Pastoral Theology at Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, Georgia and a retired ACPE Supervisor. He is a pastoral counsellor and marriage therapist. Dr. Patton is a prolific writer in the clinical pastoral field. Some of his writings include: Is Human Forgiveness Possible , Pastoral Care in Context , Pastoral Care : An Essential Guide and From Ministry to Theology: Pastoral action & Reflection. He is also an associate Editor of Abington’s Dictionary of Pastoral Care and Counseling and a retired Methodist minister. The CPSP plenary gathering is unique in many ways and on...

Representatives from the ACPE and CPSP met in Philadelphia on November 30, in an attempt to mediate their twenty-one year conflict. They used the services of JAMS, and in particular, retired federal court judge Diane Welsh who served as mediator. The results of this mediation exceeded our expectations, as you can see in the joint statement below. I want to thank the members of our delegation and to praise them for their wisdom and conciliatory posture. Our team consisted of Jim Gebhart and George Hankins-Hull who with me were mediators, as well as Perry Miller and Charles R. Hicks, our attorney, were also present and participated in the decision. (Our original six-person team of mediators and consultants was reduced to five with the death of John Edgerton.) On the ACPE side were Teresa Snorton, Sally Schwab, and Tim Thorstenson. If we succeed in living up to this agreement we will have marked a sea change in the clinical pastoral community. This will mean that ACPE and CPSP will conti...

More than five years ago, the Executive Director of the National Association of Jewish Chaplains, Cecille Asekoff had a dream of starting CPE in Israel. Rabbi Zahara Davidowitz has fulfilled that dream by supervising CPE for the past four summers through the Schechter Seminary in Jerusalem. Zahara is a Diplomate of CPSP in the New York/New Jersey Chapter. Photo- John deVelder with Devorah Corn of Tishkofet (Life's Door) one of 20 organizations at the Conference, Cecille Asekof, Executive Director of NAJC and Teresa Snorton, Executive Director of ACPE Since Zahara began the first CPE programs in 2006 interest in CPE and professional chaplaincy is growing in Israel. This May, the NAJC invited a delegation of about fifteen ACPE and CPSP leaders to attend the Fourth National Conference on spiritual care in Jerusalem. Read the rest of this article on the Pastoral Report the online Journal of the College of Pastoral Supervision & Psychotherapy.

“The central task of ministry is the formation of a community with an alternative liberated imagination that has the courage and freedom to act on a different vision and a different perception of reality”-Walter Brueggeman Twenty years ago, at a place called Phoebe Needles’ Conference Center in Calloway, Virginia a small group of people gathered to define the type of community they wanted in the pastoral care movement. While they were at Phoebe Needles’ Conference Center they began to put together the ingredients of an alternative pastoral care community whereby the members of that community would see themselves as spiritual pilgrims seeking a collegial and professional relationship with each other. They thought this community first and last would be theological. They imagined that this community would deal with such things as accreditation, certification, and ethics complaints through what they were to call “chapters”. The chapters were made up of small groups of people that would sh...

Challenged to Cooperate: I welcome the letter from the Association of Religious Endorsing Bodies that challenges the Association for Clinical Pastoral Education and the College of Pastoral Supervision & Psychotherapy to work collegially together in the best interests of those they train. The Religious Endorsers are quite rightly concerned for their constituents who are caught in the middle of the rift between ACPE and CPSP. Challenging the ACPE & CPSP to put the professional wellbeing of those they train above the politics of self-interest is not only the right thing to do it would also be the best possible pastoral response. George Hankins Hull Read the Pastoral Report the online Journal of the College of Pastoral Supervision & Psychotherapy

A MESSAGE TO THE CPSP COMMUNITY FROM RAYMOND J. LAWRENCE We are heartened by this public expression of concern by the Religious Endorsing Body representatives (REBS) meeting in Nashville last fall. They have the interest in the wider religious and therapeutic community at heart in this call to reconciliation. There is plenty of work to be done in the field of clinical pastoral supervision, chaplaincy, pastoral counseling and psychotherapy. No one organization can respond to the current public needs. The expenditure of time and money in efforts to undermine each other is wasteful and disgraceful. We in CPSP hope that this letter from the REBS signals the end of hostility between the various clinical pastoral organizations, and the end of triumphalism on the part of any one organization or group of organizations. Raymond J. Lawrence, CPSP General Secretary This letter was published on the Pastoral Report the online Journal of the College of Pastoral Supervision & Psychotherapy

"We are also concerned about the face of pastoral care that is presented to our institutions and endorsees" AN OPEN LETTER to CPSP and ACPE Association of Religious Endorsing BodiesP.O. Box 340007, Nashville, TN 37203-007 January 11, 2010 To: CPSP and ACPEFrom: Association of Religious Endorsing Bodies (AREBS) Dear Colleagues in Pastoral Care Ministry, We have been fortunate to be in conversation with all of the cognate groups in Nashville. These meetings have helped us to clarify our identity as endorsers. That search for identity continues to drive us to more clarity and to deepen our relationships with all the cognate groups. We thank you for your patience with us as we have learned about your organizations, your organizational requirements, and also, your help in clarifying our understanding of your identity. What we have discovered is that we share one thing in common and that is our dedication to the goal of providing the best in pastoral care. We all strive for excelle...

Recent changes strengths the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act and are designed to ease the public’s overall comfort with electronic medical recording keeping. One of the most significant changes to the HIPAA regulations is the new rules concerning the breach of protected health information (PHI). What is a Breach? A breach is, generally, an impermissible use or disclosure under the Privacy Rule that compromises the security or privacy of the protected health information such that the use or disclosure poses a significant risk of financial, reputational, or other harm to the affected individual.What is an example of a breach PHI? An employee accesses the record of a patient outside the performance of their job duties. An unencrypted laptop containing PHI is lost or stolen. PHI is sent to the wrong fax, mailing address, an email address or printer. What happens if a breach occurs? Generally speaking, your institution’s HIPAA compliance officer will need to be notified ...

The Uniqueness of the CPSP Plenary: Many meetings and conferences fail because they follow an agenda which places the conference speaker at the heart of the event and the attendee as observer. The structure of the CPSP plenary stands in sharp contrast to the linear model of many conferences which place an exclusive emphasis on an individual speaker. We avoid this in CPSP by placing the emphasis on the small group process in which the plenary presenters take part in the consultative process of the small group experience. CPSP is unique in our field in how we structure our gathering in a way that wisdom is shared, consultation is sought and community is fostered in terms of accountability. Please click on flyer for further details.

It was to be my first conference with my new found colleagues and mentors. I was shifting into a new role and looked forward to being with same minded people who truly believed in the integrity and grace of the human spirit. Though anticipation was undeniable, I consciously shifted into my Buddhist self so as to be comfortable in the place of “not knowing”. To read more visit the Pastoral Report the online journal of the College Of Pastoral Supervision & Psychotherapy: Pastoral Report CPSP Diversity and Opportunity as a Living Experience

PARISH-BASED CPE RESIDENCY POSITION: Stipend $40,000. Rural Parish with Recreation Ministry; Contracted with the South Carolina Department of Corrections and the Midlands Area Pastoral Counseling Services, Inc. Program Accredited by the College of Pastoral Supervision and Psychotherapy (January 4 – December 31, 2010). Inquire at Liberty Hill Presbyterian Church, Box 170, Liberty Hill, SC 29074 Telephone: 803-273-9191 lhpc@comporium.net . Gene Rollins, Supervisor.For more information about CPSP visit the link below: http://www.cpsp.org/ .

Many meetings and conferences fail because they follow an agenda which places the conference speaker at the heart of the event and the attendee as observer. The structure of the CPSP plenary stands in sharp contrast to the linear model of many conferences which place an exclusive emphasis on an individual speaker. We avoid this in CPSP by placing the emphasis on the small group process in which the plenary presenters take part in the consultative process of the small group experience. CPSP is unique in our field in how we structure our gathering in a way that wisdom is shared, consultation is sought and community is fostered in terms of accountability.

College of Pastoral Supervision & Psychotherapy TASK FORCE FOR THE FUTURE REPORT: Delivered at the 2009 CPSP Plenary By Luise Weinrich The late writer David Foster Wallace, a man of great soul who I believe would have loved a community like CPSP , told this story at Kenyon College's commencement: in 2005: There are these two young fish swimming along, and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says "Morning, boys. How's the water?" And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and says "What is water?" (David Foster Wallace, Kenyon College commencement address, 2005). For over a year now, the College of Pastoral Supervision and Psychotherapy's Task Force for the Future has been at work, talking with our members about your vision for CPSP . We've been seeking your views about where we are, and where we're headed in the future, finding out what the water...

Getting to Know Yourself by George Hankins Hull, Dip.Th., Th.M Self-awareness as a pastoral care giver is essential to good pastoral care. Issues of transference and counter-transference loom large in pastoral encounters. Therefore, it’s of vital importance for the pastoral care giver to understand the use of the Self in the pastoral role. In her book, When Helping You is Hurting Me, Carmen Berry addresses the detrimental aspects of a lack of self-awareness in the person of the care giver in what she calls the “Messiah trap.” The “Messiah trap”, is defined as continued circumstances in which individuals are persistently putting their own needs aside in order to help others. Berry offers an important caution to all in the helping professions against becoming addicted to helping and then, like an addict, seeking out supplies for their fix. Further complicating the issue is what Berry calls the double-sided trap of helping: ‘If I don’t do it, it won’t get done’ and ‘Every one else’s needs...