The College of Pastoral Supervision & Psychotherapy is a theologically based covenant community, dedicated to "recovery of the soul" and promoting competency in the clinical pastoral field.
« THE WORLD IS DARK, AND LIGHT IS PRECIOUS | Main | THE GATHERING OF THE COMMUNITY: 2009 CPSP PLENARY »
The upcoming February meeting in Orlando of the so-called Spiritual Care Collaborative (SCC) is sound and fury signifying very little. Perhaps it will be a good time and place to meet some old friends. Otherwise, don’t be taken in by the hype.
The SCC is a circling of the wagons against the perceived threat of CPSP. It is an invention of the ACPE leadership originally, and its purpose is to recover ACPE’s previous monopoly in the training of clinical pastoral supervisors.
That defensive maneuver, with the dream of a restored monopoly, was the motivation for creating the SCC in the beginning, in the middle 1990s. The ACPE leadership has concluded that success by CPSP means failure for ACPE. We hope not. Diversity enriches the clinical pastoral movement. Monopoly stifles it.
We in CPSP do not intend to be threatening, but we do function on a radically different model, and we believe it is a model that the ACPE will need to adopt eventually if it is to prosper.
The ACPE certainly has not prospered. Created in1967 it now has about the same number of certified persons it started with. It began with about 400 and now has about 500. Not much growth over forty years.
We in CPSP always want to be at the table with our fellow professionals where that is feasible, but in this case, for the time being, the door is locked against us. We are not invited to the SCC meeting in Orlando.
I ask you to listen to the hype regarding the SCC and its upcoming meeting:
The SCC has presented itself as consisting of the six major organizations in the field of pastoral care and counseling. Really? “Major” in what sense? Certainly not in size. At last count CPSP certifies more persons than the ACPE.
The SCC misrepresents itself to the public as a group of organizations committed to one agreed upon set of “Common Standards.” The SCC has expended a lot of paper extolling its Common Standards. When you read the fine print you will see that the commitment to the Common Standards is a commitment that the six organizations intend to implement some day. That’s like the dictator who plans some day to implement democracy. The Common Standards as published by the SCC are the standards of no currently existing organization.
The much-touted Common Standards are in any case nothing to write home about. Among other things, they call for five-year peer review of certified persons in order to insure on-going quality. The ACPE put a five-year peer review requirement on its books, but does not enforce it. That said, peer review at five-year intervals is grossly inadequate. Peer review is a critical matter requiring a more diligence than the SCC has given it.
By contrast, CPSP implemented annual peer review at the time of its founding. We of course know that no system of peer review is fail-safe. However, annual review is certainly suggests more serious concern for peer review than a five-year review process.
The SCC is calling the Orlando meeting “the summit.” A summit is a peak, or highest point. We suppose this means that Orlando will be the summit of self-promotion by the ACPE.
While CPSP will have no official representative attending Orlando meeting, some CPSP persons will be attending simply because some of our members also belong to one or more of the SCC member organizations. We encourage our members to engage in dialogue with members of the participating organizations. We also urge our members to keep in mind that we have many friends in the various SCC organizations even if the official position of SCC is unwelcoming to CPSP.
Sometimes we feel a narcissistic injury when not invited to a party. But that’s not an appropriate response to the Orlando gathering. We in CPSP have created a responsible and caring professional community, one that upholds standards without abusing its members. We are a dynamic community. We nurture diversity, and we discourage group-think. Let’s continue our commitment to keep it that way.
________________________
Email: Raymond Lawrence,
Posted by Perry Miller, Editor at December 29, 2008 2:16 PM
