On behalf of the ACPE Board of Directors, our Board Chair Shawn Mai, and the over 2000 members of our association, thank you so much for the invitation to speak with you today. It is such a privilege to be in your beautiful country for such an important celebration in this history of your organization. These are the kinds of events that my mother loves to share with all of her friends, so proud that her son would be invited to share in such a moment.
I want to say a particular word of thanks to Soomee Kim who has joined me from ACPE and will be presenting later today, and to the organizers and leaders of this Korean CPE celebration. May it mark a stake in the ground, a kind of Ebenezer stone, reminding us of the ways God has been with us this far, and trusting that God will lead us still into all this work holds for the world.
When I came to ACPE nine years ago, none of us could have imaged the world in which we find ourselves today. Rather than simply bemoaning the challenges we face, I have worked with two different teams to study how spiritual care professionals have responded to the COVID-19 pandemic, how they have adapted their practices, and what the future might hold for supervisors, students and those who have come to rely on CPE as a critical aspect of the formation of clergy and pastoral counselors in a wide variety of settings. Today, I’d like to share the findings of those two studies with you, and to offer a few questions I have as we look to the future of our shared work.
To begin, I’d like to go back to the beginning of the clinical pastoral education movement. In the 1920s, Anton Boisen, the founder of CPE, graduated from seminary with a deep concern. While he studied a great deal about pastoral theology, he knew little about the actual practices of the art. He was concerned that he could not translate what he knew intellectually into the faithful practices of ministry. Even amidst his own personal struggles with mental health, he began to experiment and developed his concept of the “living human document.” He worked with early colleagues to develop tools that engaged recipients of pastoral care as sites for exploration and learning. He didn’t exploit those he served but approached them reverently and with a deep and abiding curiosity. From those early days, tools like verbatims, individual supervision, and interpersonal group process began to take shape.
In addition, processes for the formation of supervisors – now known as Certified Educators in the US today – also began to take shape. In the earliest days, psychology and sociology were young disciplines, but they informed best practices for both educators and students. As time progressed, the early dependencies on Freudian ideals gave way to a broader and more meaningful perspective rooted in Family Systems Theory. Today, Internal Family Systems Theory along with an increasing awareness of trauma-informed care shapes much of the theoretical foundations of our work. I expect this to only grow in the post-pandemic era.
I wanted to trace these developments to highlight the fact that the central principle underlying the clinical pastoral experiential educational model – action-reflection-action – expects adaptation, evolution, and change. While there is a theoretical grounding and intention to the model that is clinical pastoral education, the very nature of CPE calls upon educators and students to apply those principles in ways that respond to the changes in the larger world. While it seems obvious, it bears noting that the living human documents that informed Anton Boisen’s work in the 1920s are very different from the living human documents we encounter today. And those differences have been further distinguished by our diverse experiences of the COVID-19 pandemic.
In June of 2020, I was contacted by my friend and colleague, Anne Vandenhoeck, director of the European Research Institute for Chaplains in Healthcare (ERICH). Along with Austyn Snowden in Scotland and Joost Verhoef in the Netherlands, Anne led a team of researchers from around the world in a study of how chaplains and CPE educators adapted their practices to the COVID-19 pandemic. As we know, in the early days of the pandemic, patients were in isolation, often with only a nurse or physician allowed to visit them. Many parts of the world struggled with having sufficient personal protective equipment, and those providing pastoral care often found ourselves unable or unwilling to use the precious supplies, and instead saving them for medical professionals. So how do we engage in a ministry of presence when we can no longer be proximal to those we serve?
This was the underlying question of our survey. We received responses from four continents and almost 1500 respondents. In the end, several key themes stood out:
1. Should there be a global standard for professional spiritual care? While CPE may trace its origins to a congregational minister in Massachusetts in the 1920s, the practices of CPE have been adapted to be more culturally appropriate around the world. Early efforts to bring CPE to some places mirrored colonialist models of mission deployed by US Christians. Today, CPE educators bring different sensibilities, awareness, and commitments to their work, seeking mutual learning when we find ourselves in new contexts rather than assuming one culture is to be educated by another.
It is from that place of mutual appreciation and understanding that we might also explore our shared agreements about best practices as we look to the future. Our study showed little agreement about how effective spiritual care is provided let alone how such care is taught. We wonder about engaging with either existing international associations (e.g., ICPCC, IASC) or creating a new global network of CPE programs to share ideas, examine and encourage best practices, and help places for whom CPE is a new pedagogy to develop programs and educators.
What might a global summit for CPE look like? Could we reach across our cultural and religious barriers to find one another in common cause and to support one another in this beautiful work that is CPE?
2. What will the role of technology be in future spiritual care practices? I know so many educators who would have never considered using an iPad, Zoom, or other digital media as a part of their teaching. Similarly, many chaplains would identify the use of tools as the opposite of what it means to offer a ministry of presence.
All of that seemed to change overnight when we could no longer be together and when our faces were covered by masks and face shields. In many cases, we could only see patients through a glass window in their room. In even more cases, we never met their families. The sudden pivot to technology was an existential necessity. Very quickly, professionals experimented and began to share what they were learning. Nurses and physicians often shared in such moments, entering a patient’s room in full PPE to hold a screen over a patient’s bed for family members to say hello and to share their love, even if for a fleeting moment.
Many programs in the United States began to rapidly develop distance learning programs, enabling students across the country to connect with healthcare facilities, congregations, prisons, and homeless shelters to do their CPE. Educators helped identify and train onsite preceptors while groups, supervision and didactic sessions were conducted via Zoom or Microsoft Teams.
For some educators, it feels as if we have opened Pandora’s box, that CPE will never be the same with the use of these new tools. In all likelihood, they are probably right. But so far, we have no evidence that these new modalities are any less effective than in person CPE.
In the US, we have seen a shift in the expectations of students as well, something that seems like more of a consumer driven model. Thirty years ago, the culture of CPE was such that students relocated to participate in a CPE program. Today, we are finding more and more students demanding to do CPE where they are. This significant change in expectations has also fueled the rapid adoption of online methods for the practices of CPE.
These practices are certainly ripe for greater research. In the meantime, how do we help those who find such practices antithetical to the ministry of presence we strive to teach and embody?
Perhaps we can learn something from the world of physics. You may be familiar with the tiny entity known as a quark. In something that physicists describe as “spooky action,” the movement of a quark on this side of the universe can cause a quark on the other side of the universe to move. If such movement is possible with quarks, surely we can find ways to reach into and through screens to move one another, to provide the kind of embodied ministry that has defined our work for centuries. And perhaps we can begin to imagine a whole new range of possibilities with these new media available to us. But let’s do the research.
3. Do we teach student chaplains to function as a part of a team or solo? When I began my first unit of CPE, I was told I was being sent to an “easy” floor in the hospital: orthopedics. I was told to expect mostly older adults who were there for hip and knee replacements. I felt a deep sense of warmth and some confidence as I made my way to this first assignment. That lasted only a few minutes.
When I arrived on the floor, I checked in at the nurses’ station. The charge nurse encouraged me to visit a young man with a broken leg. He was 17-years old and broke it during a high school football game. That night was special, in that representatives from several colleges were in the stands to watch the game. If they saw potential in the young players, it could mean a scholarship for these young athletes. When the young man realized his leg was broken, he feared his college hopes were doomed. We prayed together, and I promised to visit him again if he was still there when I returned. I don’t know how helpful I was, but I felt a deep sense of connection to him, especially as one who also played high school football.
I returned to the nurse, who looked at a room and hesitated. She said there was a patient who asked to speak with someone, that he has been in a motorcycle accident. But it was also noted in his chart that he did not believe in God. I decided this was a challenge, and I would see if I was cut out for this work of pastoral care. I should have asked a few more questions of the nurse, because when I entered his room, I was immediately struck by the smell, both of the tops of his thighs were without skin. Heat lamps were placed above the bed. He was being prepped for eventual skin grafts. I felt a little light-headed, but introduced myself and engaged him in a conversation. It took a while, but after a few awkward efforts we engaged in what I would today characterize as a pastoral conversation. We didn’t talk for very long, but it was long enough to help me sense that I could learn so much from engaging people in that way.
I thought my day was done. These two initial visits gave me plenty to take back to my group, lots of action-reflection-action material to inform a verbatim or group process session. As I made my way to the elevator, a new nurse grabbed me and asked, “Are you the chaplain?” Her face made it clear that she meant business. I replied, “Yes. I’m a chaplain intern.” She replied, “Well, you’ll have to do.” Not exactly a vote of confidence. She continued: “We have a patient across the hall who is beginning to wake up. When she does, she will learn for the first time that she is paralyzed from the waist down. We think she was thrown from a balcony in a drug deal that went bad. And we also think she will learn for the first time that she has advanced AIDS. Do you have any questions?”
Can I remind you that this was supposed to be the easy floor?
While the young man I first visited was gone the next time I visited, the other two people were there for many weeks to come. Perhaps the beautiful blessing I received in offering care came from the woman who was paralyzed and dying. Knowing my internship was ending, she asked for my last visit which took place in early December that we read together the story of Jesus birth.
As I think back on those visits, I realize now how much I approached them as if I had to do the work alone. I could have asked the nurse so many questions. I could have waited for my first visit to come when the medical team made their rounds on the floor, participating as a member of the team. I could have gone back to the CPE office and consulted with my CPE educator. During COVID, many CPE educators found themselves suddenly outside the walls of their institutions, connecting only through the media tools mentioned above. As medical teams became increasingly exhausted and the divisions in our communities grew even deeper, chaplains and educators became even more vital members of medical teams. The same was true for CPE programs in parishes and the military. At some lovely, deep level, it was as if we agreed even across international borders that the only way through this pandemic was together. May God continue to walk with us as we make our way.
4. What role does ongoing peer support play in educators and chaplains’ practice and well-being? One of the most interesting findings in our study was the recognition that not only is teamwork vital to CPE and chaplaincy, but also peer-to-peer support. The respondents to our survey who indicated the greatest sense of hope often indicated the greatest sense of connection with their CPE and chaplaincy colleagues. One our favorite findings came from our Australia and New Zealand colleagues who participate in something they call “intervision.” Rather than peer-to-peer supervision, they recognize an equality among their members, that members care for, guide, challenge, and support one another. This is what they mean by intervision. It provides a level of accountability that does not let someone get isolated or disconnected from the larger CPE movement.
5. How can educators help chaplains increase their intercultural and multicultural competencies? As colleagues were compelled to deal with their own COVID diagnoses, many CPE educators and chaplains found themselves working with patient and staff populations with whom they were previously unfamiliar. Because of their own exhaustion as well as their well-intended efforts at caring for as many as possible, our data showed that many felt inadequate in their ability to address people from very different religious and ethnic backgrounds. As our world grows in its interconnectivity, one of the convictions that emerged from the data was the sense that our students, educators, and professionals must develop much stronger competencies in diversity and inclusion. Simple awareness of religious practices of respect around food, touch, prayer and even eye contact were noted as vital to the education process.
As CPE programs begin to emerge from the pandemic into a more endemic stage of COVID-19, educators will be wise to develop tools and simple guidelines for students as they seek to provide care to those from traditions different from their own. As Barbara Brown Taylor invites, perhaps we can cultivate a kind of “holy envy” in seeing the beauty of the practices and beliefs of others even as we deepen our own convictions and faith.
6. When we teach students about their “congregation” in a healthcare setting, who do we assume are the primary recipients of care? Prior to the pandemic, respondents noted that around 90% of their care was for patients and their families. Similarly, if a CPE program was in a congregation or on a military base, most of the care provided was offered to members, soldiers, and their families. When the pandemic hit, those populations were no longer available. Whether because they were in isolation, lockdowns were in effect, or health concerns were present, care providers found themselves at a bit of a loss. Those they assumed to be their congregations simply weren’t there.
However, in another case of making a remarkable pivot, CPE educators, their students, and the chaplains with whom they serve recognized the deep and growing needs of the staff. In healthcare, chaplains and students turned their attention to doctors, nurses, allied health professionals and administrators. In congregations, pastoral care providers turned to their colleagues, offering care where in the past there may have been an assumption it wasn’t needed. In the military, CPE educators and chaplaincy students no longer cared primarily for enlisted soldiers and their families; now they found themselves supporting command leaders as well.
While this was a surprise for many care providers, we are eager to see what the long-term impact might be. For example, did COVID reveal the work of CPE and chaplaincy to leaders in new ways, causing them to value this work at a whole new level? We hope that is the case, and that it will mean that another 20 or 40 or even 100 years of good work for the Korean Association lies ahead!
7. How can chaplains and educators advocate for their roles in their institutions? Of course, this theme of care pivoting to leadership and staff has also made it clear that where pastoral care providers made such a move, there is great hope for the future of that work within their institutions. However, where chaplains and CPE educators shy away from engaging senior leaders, their programs can risk being perceived as less valuable by those who make financial decisions about the institutions that house our programs.
This is particularly challenging in the US healthcare system because of the way our hospitals are funded; but this finding was also a global concern. How can we begin to position CPE within the institutions we serve as a resource not only for the students who come to us but also for the professionals alongside whom we serve? For example, an educator in Minnesota provided a CPE unit for managers through his hospital. The experience was so impactful that the CEO asked the CPE educator to participate in senior level negotiations with nurses when there were labor issues in the hospital. When the United Methodist Church in the US recognized a pattern of complaints from church members about the lack of pastoral care skills demonstrated by their clergy, they created a denominational CPE program based at their home office in Nashville. Now bishops often refer clergy from their districts for a unit to build and/or deepen their pastoral care skills through the United Methodist CPE program.
One of the best examples of such advocacy came from one of our educators who is now retired. He served in a large pediatric hospital and started the first CPE program for this facility. When he began, he made a point of going by the senior administrators offices each week, checking in with the administrative assistants, and offering a quick greeting to the senior leaders. After several visits, those quick check-ins began to get a little longer, leading to conversations. Within a few months, the CEO asked if the CPE educator would lead a book study for the senior leaders. When they finished the book study, they began reading scripture together. Increasingly, the CPE educator was seen as a member of the team. He was asked to perform important rituals for the senior leaders, visiting them in the hospital and supporting them through personal crises. He realized very early in his time with this facility that the best way to advocate for his program was to demonstrate it to the leaders who could make decisions about its future.
We heard from CPE educators in Hong Kong, Belgium and South Africa about the concerns they have for the future of their CPE programs, and the anxiety they have about senior level “decision makers.” It is clear that we must develop culturally appropriate models of advocacy for this work along with the research to support those advocacy efforts.
So where do we go from here? Like human beings, the whole process of CPE has been fearfully and wonderfully made. In many ways, it is our trust. But like any trust:
(1)we cannot simply assume that it will continue as it has without our intentional education of the larger world about its efficacy;
(2)we cannot cling to a belief that it will remain as it was when we experienced it for the first or the fourth or even the fiftieth time. It is a growing, adapting, creative pedagogy that will continue to shape students, educators and the recipients of their care as well as the larger contexts in which it is practiced;
(3)we must acknowledge that it will continue to grow in its cultural particularities, becoming less tied to the Anton Boisen origins and more interwoven into the cultures where it is practiced;
4()we must prepare, for it will face new risks and opportunities and will require effective, visionary leadership to shepherd it into its next stage of development;
(5)we must find ways to bring together all of the beautifully diverse ways of practicing CPE that have become so culturally specific so that we can learn from one another, become more aware of our cultural blind spots, and better serve the students and faith communities they will one day lead.
I’d like to close by raising three more considerations, two of which are intimately related. First, best practices in experiential education often include modelling as a part of the learning process. For many CPE programs, students jump right in to caring for people without having shadowed or practiced care. While the anxiety this has raised with students can lead to important learning, it also raises questions about the quality of care the subjects are receiving. As we grapple with what we expect to be an incredibly difficult decade of care after the pandemic, what kinds of modelling do we need to provide, and how can that be incorporated into our CPE programs to better serve people in this time of such great need?
Second, the lack of modelling has also raised critical questions in the US about liability. We are hearing from more and more legal departments within institutions about the need for programs to have liability insurance which covers the activities of students. While we have not had any cases to date, legal experts worry that in our increasingly pluralistic contexts that we are vulnerable to legal actions related to discrimination or misconduct. How are we helping programs think about and develop best practices to address these liability concerns? As with many situations, it would only take one major case to do great damage to our work and our future.
Finally, I was recently struck by a data point that, had it not come when it did, I may have missed its significance. Scientists have data that now shows that the human heart can essentially “feel” the presence of another human being up to six feet away. This principle informs both romantic and scary movies, when two bodies come into that six-foot or two-meter proximity to each other. We often feel it as well when we see it happening. Now, think about the pandemic. How far were we supposed to be apart from each other to practice “social distancing”? Six feet or two meters, right? I’m not sure we have any idea of what damage we’ve done to our sense of what it means to be a collective body – what we would call the Body of Christ in my tradition – by not having access to the hearts of our neighbors and friends. What role can CPE play in healing the breach? How can we engage our students and colleagues in practices that will help us reconnect, to literally re-member who we are as a Body.
This is the work that lies before us. We are not simply teaching pastoral care. We are healing the deep divisions in our societies. We are tending to the wounds of the pandemic. We are, even now, imagining a future where we fulfill God’s vision for humanity that has been with us from the very beginning.
Thank you for your faithful and creative work over these past 20 years. May we draw even closer as we seek to partner in providing the kind of CPE in the coming years that, in the words of our Jewish brothers and sisters, makes manifest tikkun olam, the healing of the world. May God richly bless you in all you do.
“CPE for Pastoral Formation”
For the 20th Anniversary International Conference of KCPE
Thursday, June 2, 2022, 11:40~12:20
by the Rev. Dr. Soomee Kim
The Executive Director of Center for Integrative Pastoral Practice (CIPP)
At General Board of Higher Education and Ministry (GBHEM)
Of the United Methodist Church (UMC)
With such gratitude and humility, I stand before you in awe of God’s providence for our life, God’s guidance to fulfill our Calls, and God’s elaborate scheme that is often beyond our imagination until we follow and become a witness. I will explain further in my presentation what I mean by that, but for now…. The formal greetings!
I bring to you greetings from our general secretary, Greg Bergquist and the chair of the board of directors, Bishop Steiner Ball, and all of the members of the United Methodist Church whose contributions support the work of the General Board of Higher Education and Ministry (GBHEM). It took foresight, imagination, and faith to invest on something like the Center for Integrative Pastoral Practice (CIPP). It was the vision of a very few people that enabled the birth of our center, CIPP, and their trust on the CPE program, especially the ACPE accredited program. I am so excited to share with you on this specific topic, in this 20th Anniversary Celebration of KCPE. Twenty years ago when you were building KCPE, I was following my ambition that had nothing to do with CPE. If anyone told me I would be speaking here on behalf of CPE today, I’d have said, “You’ve got to be kidding!”
If life is like the majestic mountain, following God’s call is like walking the shallow path that winds, and you cannot see what’s around the corner. Walking that path, long and winding road, is a lonely and scary journey. And CPE allows someone, the trained supervisor/educator and peers, to become fellow travelers for a portion of the path. CPE also teaches us how we can accompany someone filled with grief. The walk to Emmaus is a model for me as Jesus provided the best quality pastoral care to those two disciples, whose dreams were shattered, and their future unknown. I always start a CPE group with a didactic seminar, or you can call a bible study, and learn from Jesus how he provided pastoral care to the two disciples in dispair.(despair) Building our center was also like journeying through the winding road. Sometimes, I could rest just around the corner, or find other attractive projects while waiting for the process of accreditation catch up, and get surprises and triumphs around another corner.
My presentation has three sub themes: 1. When a Calling meets a Vision (to share with you how the CIPP got started.) 2. CPE as an Education for Ministry, not just for Chaplaincy (why we think CPE is an excellent program for pastoral formation) and 3. CPE at Center for Integrative Pastoral Practice (CIPP) vs. Traditional CPE (How we manage all the guidelines of ACPE in this creative program).
The Rev. Trace Haythorn mentioned about the work of Anton Boisen in the formation of the CPE practice. The other person that contributed to the birth of CPE is Dr. Richard Cabot, a medical doctor. He started the concept of social workers in the United States and tried to bring more wholistic care for the patients. He knew how the medical doctors are trained as their curriculum provide constant opportunities to integrate the knowledge with skills and practices. So he even financially supported Anton Boisen to do the experimental work that started the CPE movements.
In 1925, Richard Cabot, who was an adjunct lecturer at the Harvard Divinity School at the time, published an article in Survey Graphic suggesting that every candidate for ministry receive clinical training for pastoral work similar to the clinical training offered to medical students. However, maybe because the CPE movements started in the hospital settings, the CPE centers grew in hospitals. But, some seminaries intentionally require CPE for some of their academic degrees.
For example, I was working on my D. Min. at Claremont School of Theology where I also received M. Div., and when I thought I completed all the academic requirements, my advisor said I needed to do CPE. I tried to protest because I was already working as a pastor in charge of a church full time and did not have time to do a unit of CPE. She insisted and said, “we are going to put a Dr. in front of your name with an emphasis on Pastoral Care and Counselling with Claremont School of Theology behind that Dr., and I cannot let you have that title without a CPE.” It sounded like they will not give me the degree without a unit of CPE. And even though some people may have gotten the DMin, without CPE, Claremont School of Theology would not do it. And somehow with a unit of CPE, my degree will be better fit for the kind of reputation the school tried to continue to live on. So, I took my first unit of CPE in 2000 at a hospital near the church I was serving as a senior pastor. When I was On-Call, and when the beeper went off, I had to wake up at whatever time, dress up, and drove to the hospital to meet whatever was waiting for me, death, trauma, or being with a father who was meeting with a coroner to identify his dead daughter.
In 2005, I completed my D. Min. and was hired as the Dean of Student Life and Campus Pastor at my alma mater. Most of my work involved supporting the students emotionally and spiritually, individually or in small groups. Often, I needed to help the students to integrate what they were learning in the classrooms into their life, Calls, and especially in the ministry settings. As I counselled the students, I also encouraged them to take CPE as one of their electives because I knew how that one unit of CPE gave me a lot to chew on. One day I received a phone call from of a M. Div. student who was struggling, to whom I recommended to take a CPE, who told me that he was accepted to a CPE residency program, would be taking a year off the seminary and concentrate on CPE. I told him it was a right decision, and that one year would not be a waste. As I was taking the receiver down sitting at my desk in the Dean of Student Life’s office, God spoke quietly. “How about you?” “How about me? What? Me and CPE?” I’ve already done one unit of CPE. Is there more?
Then the idea came: If I receive training and become certified as a CPE educator, I could help the students integrate what they were learning in the classrooms into their ministry that they might live out their Calls even more faithfully. And I started asking my colleagues and professors at Claremont what they thought about the idea. They told me I have the gifts and encouraged me to pursue. It took a leap of faith: It took two years of preparation, saving money, and moving about 1600 miles, for me to start as a chaplain resident and complete three more units of CPE. Then, I applied to be a Certified Educator Candidate. Along with it, I always kept the vision to take CPE out of the hospital contexts and make it more available for seminarians, ministry candidates, and pastors along with chaplains. I did not have specifics but just needed to follow the long and winding road of the certification path and trust somehow it will happen around the corner where I did not have a clear view.
Two years later, in 2010 I was certified as an associate supervisor, then was hired at the same hospital I received my CPE educator training, Research Medical Center in Kansas City. My job was using CPE as a community outreach. There were four different seminaries in the Kansas City area, and I reached out to them and started to create CPE programs to fit their academic programs. For example, The Central Baptist Seminary had a D. Min. program that included cohort system. The students came to the campus from all over the country for two weeks at a time for class meetings then returned to their home and ministry. They did this three times a year. Most of these students were involved in ministry as it was the nature of the D. Min. program. So, I created a hybrid unit of CPE based on the seminary calendar, one week of orientation when they came to the seminary, utilizing their ministry setting as the clinical placement, then, meeting online for group and individual supervisions when they returned to their home and ministry. The final evaluation was done as an in-person group meeting when they came to the campus again the next time.
I created a supervised internship program that had the combination of the local church and the hospital as their clinical placements. The students could come and visit the patients at the hospital while also working in the local church. I had them write verbatims based on some of the visits at the hospital or what happened during the interactions with the church members and other staff at the local church. That was for M. Div. program at the Nazarene Seminary. For Unity Seminary, I created a Clinical Pastoral Orientation (CPO) program for their chaplaincy degree. They were oriented to the hospital to visit the patients and cover some on calls, and in the group, presented two verbatims, but the hours didn’t really make up for one whole unit of CPE. It was an orientation toward taking a CPE if they choose to, afterwards.
What I did not realize at the time was that, even though I really enjoyed creating those programs and the students benefited from experiencing CPE in their seminary setting while working on their degrees, God had something more in plan which I did not see.
A little further south-east, about 500 miles away in Nashville, the Rev. Bruce Fenner, the director of United Methodist Endorsing Agency was trying to figure out how to help his endorsed chaplains to take one or two more units of CPE in preparation for their APC board certification. He knew about my creative, hybrid CPE from some of my old students who shared their experiences with him. He invited me to join a brainstorming session with the Rev. Trace Haythorn, Greg Bergquist (who is now General Secretary of GBHEM), and himself. So, we, the three white males and this small Korean-American woman, met in Nashville and spent almost a whole day sharing ideas, dreams, knowledges, experiences, and what would take to bring to life this creative idea of CPE. And it took some time for Rev. Fenner to present the idea to the board of directors, came up with a budget, and received green light.
Five years ago, they hired me to build this CPE center under the umbrella of GBHEM. By then, I was back in California and doing a half time pastoral ministry at a small congregation and doing a hybrid CPE with a small one person led center in Colorado called, “Centered Life.” I returned to California to enjoy the family, especially my first granddaughter. And my daughter was expecting the second granddaughter. Do I want to move away from them? I told them, I was interested in the work but was not moving to Nashville. So what do they do? They let me work from my home in CA. I was the first one tired(tried?) to work remotely. It made so much sense! I was to build a center to address the challenges of physical distances. Then, I should be able to do the work remotely and prove it was not only possible but also advantageous in many ways.
You see, the work of GBHEM is a leadership development agency of the UMC and focuses are on supporting the United Methodist’s 13 seminaries and almost 100 colleges and universities and providing guidance, resources, and supports on ministries like ordination, consecration, licensing, and endorsement. The most recent logo is “Nurturing Leaders, Changing Lives.” It is so fitting to have a CPE center in this agency to help the ministry candidates for the formation of pastoral identity and pastors to further develop their self-awareness.
CPE is the best program I know that will help pastors to develop spiritual, vocational, professional, and personal identities. ACPE objectives and outcomes focus on three these areas; Pastoral Formation, Pastoral Competence, and Pastoral Reflection.
As I was working on the accreditation of the center, even though I was following some of the examples of the “traditional centers,” I had to think further and add the components that make our center truly ACPE and also cutting edge. I also heard the comments like, “Is online supervision really effective?” “How does one really focus on the whole of communication, body language and all, on Zoom while supervising a group or individual?.” Some educators even said, “I will never do supervision online. The screen is just too small!”
Well… then, the pandemic hit. Those “traditionalists” had to figure out how to improvise and continue on supervising. Well…. I felt generous when I shared some of the resources. For example, one of our appendixes in our Student Handbook is titled “Etiquette and Rules of Engagement for On-Line Group Supervision.” I already spelled out what are the expected behaviors during the Zoom group supervision.
And GBHEM already had the personnel and resources. For example, most CPE centers I served had the end of the unit program evaluations and exit interviews. And the data from those evaluations and interviews were used to improve the programs. And often, they were also celebrations of the job well done. Well… at GBHEM, we have a whole department on research and data analysis. So those with Ph.D. in the research field helped us to create the baseline survey and end of the unit survey questions based on ACPE guidelines, and they administered the surveys, and evaluated the data for us.
During the pandemic, we were able to move from being a satellite to a full accredited center in provisionary status. We are accredited for Levels I and II, and I set aside the Certified Educator program for now. My current energy is how I can reach the international constituencies. For example, we are talking with Mary Johnston Hospital in Manila, Philippines, how we can partner to provide CPE program there.
I have done about 10 years of local church ministry. Everything a pastor does, if based on a good pastoral care, will produce good results. Even though one is able to preach a brilliant sermon, if the preacher is perceived to be not caring, the listeners will not be able open up their ears and minds and fully listen and embrace the message. Many conflicts in a committee meeting can be resolved through pastoral care. One who is keen on pastoral care will not force the church leaders to do the things that are beyond their imagination without helping them to perceive what can be beyond the horizon. Again, the objectives and outcomes of the CPE hit the most important elements of a healthy and effective pastor; pastoral formation, pastoral competence, pastoral reflection.
CIPP is the first and the only CPE center hosted by a mainline denomination. And we use the various ministry settings as the clinical placements. And we are hybrid, which means we have the combination of in-person time and online supervision. During the pandemic, however, we had to skip the in person part and do all online units. Usually we did in-person part as an orientation to the program. Usually, the students and the educator met in a retreat center setting and spent 3 to 5 days going over expectations, completed administrative components of the group, and really focused on group formation. So, by the time they were ready to leave the orientation, the group was formed and they were ready to do the work of CPE. In the last 2 years, we did all online. The group was eventually formed but rather slowly. The extended units had good results. I saw some limitations from a shorter 12-week intensive unit we offered in the winter. This fall, we are planning to go back to doing in person orientation. We have one group that started in January without in person orientation, but they are planning to meet for final evaluations.
I’d like to now compare the traditional CPE and what we are offering at CIPP and show you how we are meeting the guidelines as the ACPE prescribes. For one unit of CPE, the students need to be involved in at least 300 hours of clinical work and 100 hours of structured education, that includes group and individual supervision. For the 300 hours of clinical work, students can bring the place of ministry they are already engaged in. For example, if one is working as a church staff, the church is the clinical placement. If a chaplain is working full time and needs more unit of CPE for board certification, that chaplaincy work becomes the clinical work. And since the educator cannot oversee all the clinical works of the students, we appoint a preceptor/mentor. This is the supervisor who makes sure the students do what they are supposed to do or what they said they do. If it is a church staff, the senior pastor makes a good preceptor. If a senior pastor wants to take our CPE, then, the chair of the pastor-parish relations committee will be a good choice. This person is not an educator but becomes ears and eyes of the educator, and the students can consult specifics of the responsibilities at the clinical site. We do Preceptor Orientation to clarify the role. Then, we, including the student, all sign the Clinical Placement Agreement, and they are kept in the center portfolio. The preceptor and educator have open communications during the unit, and at the end of the unit, the preceptor fills out an evaluation form. And the educator implements what the preceptor shared into the written final evaluations.
Everything is set up electronically at CIPP. The applications are accepted through SM Apply program. Our classroom is set up in a Moodle platform. And our students have access to the world’s largest library that I know of, the Digital Theological Library, and millions of resources are at their fingertips.
There are many who benefited from our CPE programs. I will share with you two: DF lived in Guam, which is a part of California-Pacific Annual Conference of the UMC. She needed to complete 1 unit of CPE for her ordination requirement. There were no CPE centers nearby, not even on the closest island, which is Saipan. But she was serving a very small church in Guam, and there won’t be enough different experience for her to claim that small church as a clinical placement. We encouraged, and she was able to volunteer at a local hospital as a chaplain and the Department of Corrections in Guam. So she had three clinical placement agreements for 1 unit of CPE, and she was able to complete a unit with variety of clinical experiences.
GW was whom people will say (he) was not cut out to be a UMC pastor, even though he had completed M. Div. program from one of the 13 UMC Seminaries. He was working at a local church as a licensed local pastor and was not too excited about the work. He has a very different theological viewpoint than what I am used to, but we are trained to work with variety of faith backgrounds and theological stand points. My supervisory stance with him was to see him as a person who needs someone to understand where he was coming from and challenge him gently but firmly on where his needs to grow to fulfill his Call if he still wanted to live out his call. At the end of the unit, he declared he was leaving the UMC but did not know what he was going to do. He said he wanted to do another unit of CPE with me, but I felt it was time for him to move on. So, I encouraged him to look into one year CPE residency program where he will be paid to make living and have more CPE experience, which he did. A few weeks ago, he called me to say that he decided on a residency program and is very happy. And he is preparing to join another denomination and continue to live out his Call.
This is our faculty. You see me, a few years younger than now. David Johnson, Cynthia Vaughan, and Jim Rawlings, Jr. are the three retired UMC pastors and CPE educators who started with me from the beginning. They are happy to return to the UMC after 30 + years of working outside the church. Diane Tugel actually came to Nashville to do accreditation site visit and approved us to become a satellite. She is working at another hospital but was quite intrigued with the idea and decided to work with us and supervise a group on Saturdays. Christinah Kwaramba immigrated from Zimbabwe, Africa and is a UMC elder. She was working at a hospital and wanted to try our program. So she supervised a super extended unit on Saturdays, then decided to quit her full time job at the hospital and working with us, supervising multiple groups. Mark Lee is a now Colonel in the US Army, an Episcopalian priest, working full time at the Army Hospital in San Antonio, TX. We had some prospective students who were asking whether they could do a unit of CPE in Korean. I was too busy to run a unit, so I asked around and he came forward. So he is completing the very first Korean language CPE group on June 25th. Michelle Lacock was retiring from her hospital CPE program and wanted to continue supervising some Native American students in her area. She actually brought her students and just completed the first unit with us. She plans to do another unit starting this fall and recruiting the students from her area in the upper Midwest. Jongmi Bae retired last year and started with us the second Korean language group with 5 students. Her group will end on July 8th. This is our faculty.
Bethany Bucher is our registrar. She helps the students to navigate through SM Apply and makes sure all the student files are in safe cyber space. She also helps the faculty members when they have any technical challenges. And here is our website, application site, and email addresses. And I will entertain any questions you may have.