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Spiritual Care Collaborative A Jarring Note of Discord

The Spiritual Care Collaborative sounds all the right notes when it comes to promoting and advertising the SCC as new breakthrough in collaboration between pastoral care and counseling organizations. High ideals expressed on paper sound good and make a good sales pitch but unless accompanied by serious results on the ground amount to nothing more than lofty words blowing in the wind. Rather than creating harmony in the midst of the pastoral care and counseling movement the SCC sound a jarring note of discord tainted by an exclusive elitism. The SCC recently admitted(1) that it has no developed mechanism for including other participating organizations in the partnership of collaboration. So much then for lofty ideals and claims of Collaboration mere code words used as cover for darker motives of control and monopoly.

Note (1)

NOTICE TO MEMBERS OF THE CPSP COMMUNITY RE. RELATIONS TO THE SPIRITUAL CARE COLLABORATIVE
September 3, 2008

Notice to Members of the College of Pastoral Supervision & Psychotherapy Community
From the Executive Committee
Re: CPSP Relations with the Spiritual Care Collaborative

We in CPSP have made ourselves collegially available to the Spiritual Care Collaborative (SCC) since the SCC and its precursors began in 1996. John deVelder and Jim Gebhart have been in good faith, extensive, and ongoing communication with SCC leadership during the past twelve years. The results of years of collegial conversation have come to no resolution.

The SCC has reported officially to John deVelder that it has developed no process for including other organizations in its membership. Thus, the SCC's claim to be a collaborative organization is to date only talk.


The SCC (and its precursors) was founded originally by the Association for Clinical Pastoral Education(ACPE). The data suggest that the ACPE purpose from the beginning was to establish a monopoly in clinical pastoral training under the aegis of ACPE, in a joint venture with the Association of Professional Chaplains(APC).


We in CPSP had hoped that the ACPE, allied with the APC, had abandoned the dream of monopoly. Apparently it has not. There can be no hope of collegial relations until the dream of monopoly is abandoned. For the time being we must consider our conversations with SCC to be fruitless.


CPSP will continue in its mission to promote with all its energy the training and certification of pastoral clinicians of several levels of expertise. We will continue to make ourselves available collegially to other organizations in the field. But we will also energetically resist any claims of monopoly from any other organization in our field of work.

Visit the Pastoral Report the Online Journal of the College of Pastoral Supervision & Psychotherapy
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