Skip to main content

ACPE & CPSP Challenged to Cooperate

AN OPEN LETTER to CPSP and ACPE Association of Religious Endorsing BodiesP.O. Box 340007, Nashville, TN 37203-007January 11, 2010To:

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 excellence in that process and we understand your dedication in training and certifying our constituents. We have ironed out some of the difficulties and removed some of the obstacles to provide excellence in pastoral care.

One of the public issues that deeply concerns us is the chasm between CPSP and ACPE. We are working to understand the history of each of your organizations so that we can understand some of the identity issues that you face. As Miroslov Volf says in his early work, “Exclusion and Embrace”, the establishment of identity gives a kind of confidence that allows us to look at otherness and at others without the fear of losing our own identity. Volf says that an exploration of identity issues and otherness issues are prerequisite of reconciliation. We have prayed that reconciliation might happen between your two organizations because we feel that some of our constituents are suffering due to the rift between your organizations. We are troubled when our people become vulnerable to this rift. We are also concerned about the face of pastoral care that is presented to our institutions and endorsees.

We confess to being somewhat protective of our constituents, but our major concern is that we remove barriers to a pursuit of our shared goal of excellence in pastoral care. It is important that we find ways to be transparent and to seek each others’ healing. In the meanwhile, we, as endorsers have covenanted to be in prayer for reconciliation.

Prayerfully Yours,
Susan GalassoAREB Chairperson

This Letter was published in the Pastoral Report the online Journal of the College of Pastoral Supervision & Pschotherapy
Labels:

Popular posts from this blog

THE WOUNDED HEALER

“The painful irony is that the minister, who wants to touch the center of men’s lives, finds himself on the periphery; often pleading in vain for admission….He never seems to be where the action is.” I wonder if this says more about Henri Nouwen than it does about the minister’s involvement in critical and crisis situations. “ The minister, the story tells us, is sitting among the poor, binding his/her wounds one at a time, waiting for the moment when he/she will be needed. The minister is called to be the wounded healer, the one who must look after his/her wounds and at the same time be prepared to heal the wounds of others.” --- Henri Nouwen. In his article titled “Wounded Healers”, Thomas Maeder quotes a child of psychiatrists (both parents): “I Think my parents were crazy, I think that, somehow, being psychiatrists kept them in line. They used it as a protection. They’re both quite crazy, but their jobs give them really good cover.” It is no secret that the so-called “helping...
Read more

The Founding of the College of Pastoral Supervision & Psychotherapy

CPSP was formed out of the memories of our own experience in clinical training. It was not formed around the corporate bureaucratic model, that by its very nature smothers criticism with public relations and undermines collegiality by promoting patterns of domination and submission. We remembered the redemptive process of our own clinical training, an experience that was marked by deep criticism and deep respect and care, an experience that we would never demean or trivialize by calling it skill training. We experienced our own clinical pastoral process as transformative. We sought in creating CPSP to rekindle the transformative process that seemed to be diminishing in our professional lives. We constructed the Chapter model out of our memories of the clinical training group as the best hope for fostering continuing transformation, individually and corporately. Learn more about CPSP: College of Pastoral Supervision & Psychotherapy The College of Pastoral Supervision...
Read more

Time to Call the Hospital Chaplain

Sometime ago Don Berwick, MD spoke about 20 improvements that doctors could make in the end of life care of their patients that begins in a simple conversation. Berwick recommended the following considerations as his top three suggestions: Ask yourself as you see patients, "Would I be surprised if this patient died in the next few months?" For those "sick enough to die," prioritize the patient's concerns - often symptom relief, family support, continuity, advance planning, or spirituality. To eliminate anxiety and fear, chronically ill patients must understand what is likely to happen. When you see a patient who is "sick enough to die" - tell the patient, and start counseling and planning around that possibility. To understand your patients, ask (1) "What do you hope for, as you live with this condition,"(a) "What do you fear?," (b) It is usually hard to know when death is close. If you were to die soon, what would be left undo...
Read more