CPSP Pastoral Report

I wanted to speak to you at some length about Keller and Boisen; about Cabot, Guiles, and Dicks; and about Dunbar, Wise, Fairbanks, Hiltner: People who played critical roles in the development of the principles on which we still operate. Time will fail me to tell stories about Billinsky, Norstad, Kuether, Bruder, Fletcher, Keith, Terkelson, Plummer, Gebhart, Maguire, Lawrence, Beverly, Parker, or countless others. But with that caveat, let us begin.

INTRODUCTION: THE MILIEU

I want first to set the stage by reminding us all about some of the cultural milieu when Clinical Pastoral Education began to take shape. As the twentieth century began to pick up steam in this country, a lot of things were happening that contributed to the history of our organization. This was the day of the social gospel. The churches in America were moving toward the idea that the church ought to be involved in the world in a way that would impact the lives of people, not just individually, but by addressing the problems and issues of the society as a whole. People like Harry Emerson Fosdick at Marble Collegiate Church in New York, felt a commitment to preach sermons about peoples� real problems�give them practical wisdom. As he puts it in his book, people do not come to church with a burning desire �to learn whatever happened to the Amalikites.� He also developed a significant counseling program related to that church.

This was also the era of Freud. The idea that our notions of ourselves and our behavior, especially anti-social or self-destructive behavior could be understood in terms of our emotional history, and that therapy, or analysis could assist a person to peel back the layers of defensive constructs and free themselves from harmful or self-defeating psychopathologies. Not everyone accepted this interpretation of the nature of emotional illness, and the fact that two of the progenitors of Clinical Pastoral Education, Boisen and Cabot, came down on opposite sides of this fence was, perhaps, to blame for a lot of the major division which characterized the first three decades of the movement.

Then consider the nature of theological education at that time. Theological education was considered a classical discipline. While the church was becoming more progressive, theological education had not kept pace with the direction that Christianity was taking in this era. Clinging to an academic approach to the traditional subjects that had been taught of generations, the seminaries did a good job of grounding pastors in the tradition, providing them with tools for studying the scriptures in the original languages, and preaching in the oratorical style of the nineteenth century, but there was not much in theological education that gave students preparation for church administration or program development. Most significant for us, seminaries did not offer any sort of �hands on experience� of ministry, or teach students how to pastor their congregations.

A different scene was developing in medical education. Here, the practice of providing medical students with an internship was becoming common. Advanced medical students were brought into the clinic to learn by watching their teachers practice their profession, and eventually, to work directly with the patients under the supervision of their teachers: Supervised education.

THE BIRTH OF CLINICAL EDUCATION FOR MINISTRY

It was into this setting that Clinical Pastoral Education was born. Incidentally, this place where we sit today is not far from sites that are significant in the history of Clinical Pastoral Education. William Keller�s work in exposing theological students to a clinical experience of social work< an effort which predated Boisen�s chaplaincy at Worcester State, took place a few miles from here in Cincinnati. Anton Boisen was born a couple hundred miles west of here in Bloomington, Indiana, where his father taught at IU, the university from which Boisen received his bachelor�s degree. And Miami Valley Hospital in nearby Dayton is the oldest clinical training site in this region.

Now I would like to refresh our memories about some of those first generation leaders in the clinical pastoral education movement. Let us begin with Boisen, himself, known to all of us as the father of Clinical Pastoral Education. To some, affectionately referred to as �Pappy Boisen.�

Anton Boisen

As we all know, the father of Clinical Pastoral Education was crazy. By this, I not only refer to his several well-known psychotic episodes, but also his lifelong fixation on Ann Batchelder, who could never quite dismiss him or accept him. I do not say this to denigrate his contribution or his memory. On the contrary, he is a prime example of St. Paul�s assertion that, �we have this treasure in earthern vessels.� Boisen was an imperfect vessel, as we all are, and perhaps more than many, but the treasure that poured out of that vessel should not be underestimated. A few short vignettes from other writers can help us fill in our picture of Boisen. Seward Hiltner tells this revealing story about having Boisen over to his home for dinner:

My wife had been hearing, ever since we met, of this great teacher of mine, with all the stories and folklore that had grown up about him. She would have been prepared, I think, if he had been gruff, or had sat all evening in the corner, or had given a lecture over the dessert. When he left she said spontaneously, �He is charming.� And he was. He listened to her better than I have been able to do before or since.

Carroll Wise wrote of Boisen�s psychoses:

A lesser mind would have succumbed in the first psychotic episode, but not Anton Boisen. For he had learned something about the necessity to use his illness creatively. The Clinical Training Movement is the child of that creativity, tempered as it was by intense struggles. We owe Anton Boisen a great debt of gratitude.

Chuck Hall says on the same subject:

Some skeptics have suggested that Boisen made outstanding contributions despite his mental illness. But in his autobiography, Boisen says his contributions were due to his experiences, including the struggle to understand the meaning of his psychotic episodes.

Psychologist Paul Pruyser, visiting Boisen near the end of his life described him as one who was not without humor and delicacy but something had happened to his feelings and their expression�The language is beautiful, the topics are moving, but there is something utterly pathetic about it all.

Boisen was a creative genius, a solid intellect, a charming man, and a troubled soul. He managed to see, even his own painful life as a human document, and not only learned from his own illness, but offered it to others to learn from as well.

When Boisen experienced his first psychotic episode, he was treated in Worcester State Hospital. During this episode he believed that he had broken through the wall the separated medicine and religion. After his recovery and release, in 1922-23 Boisen was in Richard Cabot�s course on �The Essentials of Case Records for Teaching.� Boisen caught the interest of Richard Cabot who was already working on the conviction that theological students ought to have a year of clinical training. Cabot apparently liked Boisen, and became a facilitator of Boisen�s further studies in Boston. Boisen studied at Harvard and at Andover Newton Semi nary. Cabot would take Boisen around personally, to various professors and say, �This is Anton Boisen, he is going to be in your class this term.� Apparently, Cabot�s standing in the academic community made it hard for others to say no to him.

Boisen learned the case study method from Cabot, but he modified for his own purposes. It became the basis of his teaching and research in his work at Worcester State and later in Chicago. Richard Cabot respected Boisen and facilitated his commitment to finding ways of caring for the sick, and teaching people to care for the sick, although they differed on some significant points�one of which I have already alluded to: Cabot was a firm believer that mental or emotional illnesses were expressions of some physiological cause�a chemical imbalance, as we would be prone to say. Boisen was just as certain that mental illness was psychogenic. He further believed that his own illness represented a problem solving religious experience.

This difference, whether mental illness was physio-genic or psychogenic, would lead to one of the characteristics that would divide the young Clinical Pastoral Education movement: Following Cabot�s view, the education of young pastors would focus on the intellect. Following Boisen�s view, would give primacy to insight and intuition. This is a dialogue that continues today to reverberate through our movement today.

Philip Guiles

Philip Guiles, one of the early leaders in the movement, was a theological student at Union Seminary in New York when Richard Cabot came there to deliver a lecture entitled, �A Plea for a Clinical Year in the Theological Course of Study. Guiles was so impressed by this lecture that he actually followed Cabot from the Seminary that day, got on the train with him back to Boston and engaged Cabot in conversation, saying, �Now I know why I enrolled at Union, it was in order to be there when you presented that lecture.� Guiles became part of the early movement.

Carroll Wise

Carroll Wise was one of Boisen�s early students. He was one of the theological students of his generation who sensed keenly �the gap� between the systematic theology he learned at Seminary and the expectations and demands of ministry in a congregation. In Clinical Training he saw the means to close that gap. Upon Boisen�s departure from Worcester State, Wise became the Chaplain there, and shortly began to supervise students. If I may be permitted a personal aside, Carroll Wise is the only member of this first generation of our founders I had the chance to meet personally. In the 1980s, when he was advanced in age, he addressed a conference I attended in Chicago on caring for patients in rehabilitation programs, something he had experienced personally in recovering from near fatal burns late in his life. I still remember being impressed by his small stature, his venerable age, his wisdom and his tremendous energy as he stood before us.

Russell Dicks

Dicks was another early student of Boisen. He was responsible for adding another dimension to clinical training. Up to this point, training had been done only in mental institutions. The assumption seemed to be that by studying the behavior of persons in mental and emotional distress could reveal to students more about how the mind works. It was also Boisen�s belief that these often forgotten patients needed more care and attention to their religious concerns that they were receiving. This was not only a humane concern, but also his belief that mental illness was in its essence a crisis of faith, of religion in the patient�s life.

Dicks represented another point of view. He believed that we should be training clergy students in general hospitals, since most of the patients to which pastors would be exposed to in their ministry would be in general hospitals. Dicks established a program in Massachusetts General, where he invented one of the most ubiquitous teaching tools in clinical learning: the verbatim. In searching for a way to document his work and reflect on it, he began writing down everything he and the patient said to each other. This impressed Richard Cabot. After his first summer there in 1933, Cabot said of him,

Here is a man that writes down the conversation and prayers he has with a dying man. That�s the craziest thing I�ve ever heard of. We�d better ask him to stay on. We might learn something. (Hall 22)

Helen Flanders Dunbar

Dunbar was perhaps intellectually the most brilliant person in that first generation. She was actually the first student Boisen recruited for his first program. She was a divinity student at Union doing a Ph. D. on comparative languages (She was conversant with some fifteen languages). Finishing her Ph. D., she went on to complete the first year of medical school a month later. She was a pioneer in psychosomatic medicine and the founder of The Journal of Psychosomatic Medicine. Dunbar did not see any conflict between science and religion, but she did chastise her colleagues in ministry for �inadequate handling of the symbols through which religious concepts are expressed.� She felt that the �unbelief� of that period was a result of the fact that religious symbolism was interpreted literally, and it was this literal interpretation that comes into conflict with science. Philip Guiles once said that Richard Cabot despised Dunbar, because she outsmarted him on most occasions.

Dunbar became the president of the Council for Clinical Training following Cabot, and she moved the headquarters of the Council to New York. But more than the headquarters moved. There was also a developing ideological split. This eventually became the split between the Council for Clinical Training and the Institute of Pastoral Care. We will pick up the story of CPE with the significance of this schism in just a moment. But before we leave the consideration of these first generation leaders, I want to list for us etiology of some of our most cherished phrases and concepts, and trace their origins.

Of course we can thank Boisen and Cabot for bringing the concept of Case Study into CPE. For Boisen and Cabot this was both a teaching device and a research tool. Boisen was impressed that while seminaries were not teaching anything about human personality, physicians in training were making careful, systematic study of living men and women and were in fact becoming �physicians of the soul,� while the clergy were becoming nothing more than custodians of the faith. So Boisen began to use the Case Study method with his students in order to make clergy truly �physicians of the soul.�

We often use the phrase, �the art of pastoral care� or the �art of supervision.� Philip Guiles was the first to describe pastoral care as an Art. Guiles was cautious about introducing the teaching of techniques to students too soon. He preferred to trust the young pastor�s instincts, which he likened to the leading of the Holy Spirit in Acts. He believed that if students were placed in the presence of patients, and prepared with the right attitude, to listen, to care, and not to prescribe, each student would instinctively find his or her own way to relate meaningfully to the patient.

We have already seen that Russell Dicks was responsible for introducing the Verbatim as a learning tool. As for the format most of us have used, we also have to credit Rollie Fairbanks, one of Dick�s students. He discovered that Dicks was so busy that it was difficult for him to get face to face time with Dicks to discuss his visits. He found that if he left a wide margin at the side of his verbatim and handed it to him, Dicks would make comments in the margin and return it to him.

The phrase Trust the Process is attributable to the popularity of John Dewey whose educational philosophy was in vogue at the time. Dewey emphasized the experiential side of learning and stress that �how we think� is as important, or more so, than �what we think.� It is this process, reflecting on �how we think� that was originally meant by this term. There are innumerable examples of how this concept was employed in the history of our movement. An example of this would be the Conference in 1962 in Craigville, Massachusetts which provided the first opportunity for the executive committees of the two organizations to sit down together, face to face. Although the chairs were in a circle, all the Institute supervisors sat on one side and all the Council supervisors on the other. They stared at each other. Chuck Hall and Francis Lehman who were the respective chairs of the organizations started into a business-laden agenda. It was going badly. Chuck recognized the need for a �process dialogue.� He suggested they lay aside the agenda and begin to share their perceptions of each other. In a couple hours, they were relaxed, comfortable, and laughing at the stereotypes which that had carried into the room. How many meetings have you been to, where the first item of business has been a process dialogue?

Richard Cabot is responsible for the phrase, Growing Edge. This phrase comes from biology. When an organism grows at a cellular level, one can observe a ragged edge where the new tissue forms. Cabot began to use this concept metaphorically to suggest that students must find the ragged edge of their knowledge, the place where there are gaps or inconsistencies, for these are the places where growth in our understanding can take place. I think it is unfortunate that too often we have equated �growing edge� with weakness, as in �strengths and growing edges�

Of course we are all well aware that most familiar concept in CPE was given to us by Boisen himself, who, as far as we know, created the phrase, Living Human Document. I don�t think this requires any elaboration.

THE INTERNAL STRESS AND DIVISION OF THE MOVEMENT

The launching of this movement in Boston, in the 1920s was an outcome of a mix of creative people among whom the principle players were those we have seen: Cabot, Boisen, Guiles, Dicks, Wise, and Dunbar. They were unified in the belief that theological education needed a clinical dimension, but that is about where their unanimity ends. These were people from different backgrounds and with different ideas about medicine, about faith, and about human nature.

There were two significant ideological differences between Boisen and Cabot. Cabot, along with others believed that the clinic was a place to apply theology. Boisen believed that the clinic was a place to learn theology. In short, Cabot thought the current systematic theology was fine and we just needed to learn how to translate it into the lives of modern persons. Boisen, on the other hand felt that classical theology often missed the point and that the clinic could teach us theology.

The second significant difference between them was that Cabot was certain that mental illness was the manifestation of a physiological condition. Boisen thought mental illness was a function of the psyche, that was essentially a problem solving effort of the self, and was religious in nature. After Boisen�s second psychotic episode in 1930 Cabot decided that Boisen should not be allowed to teach in the clinical training programs at all.

The Council for Clinical Training was first established in Boston, among the originators of the movement. Cabot was the first head of this organization. When Cabot was voted out of the office of president of the Council, and he had broken with Boisen, he turned his attention to the work of Dicks and Guiles, and remained closely allied with the New England Seminaries. This group took on the unwieldy name of, �The New England Theological Schools Committee on Clinical Training.� It is pretty clear that the founding fathers could have used a public relations firm to help it with names, but the name they chose does emphasize that the New England group essentially thought of itself as an extension of seminary community, which was seeking an evolutionary change to what they felt was for the most part a functional institution.

Meanwhile, The Council for Clinical Training, whose principle members were Helen Flanders Dunbar, Carroll Wise and Seward Hiltner, moved to New York and found themselves still quite comfortable with Boisen�s approach to the movement. Boisen, for his part, wanted to remain in contact with both groups. As the groups evolved, they developed clearly different identities. The CCT, now located in New York, wanted an independent clinical education organization, because they felt that if the seminaries had control, the supervisors would not be free to develop as they felt they should. The seminaries were skeptical about having Supervisors of Clinical Education who were not held responsible to them, teaching their students. For this reason, the CCT was the first of the two organizations to adopt standards. By this action, they intended to assure seminaries that the Supervisors would be professionally competent. The Council agreed with Boisen that it was essential for the Supervisors and clergy to have a psychodynamic understanding of themselves as well as their patients. For this reason, they favored mental hospitals as the venues for clinical education. They also felt that their supervisors should have psychotherapy as part of their training. The Council expressed their concept of clergy as being �shepherds of the soul.�

The New England group, which eventually took the name, the Institute of Pastoral Care was more academically oriented, aligned with the seminaries as we have seen, and viewed clinical pastoral training as applying traditional theological insights to the practice of pastoral care. They tended to teach the use of traditional pastoral techniques and resources such as reading of scripture and devotional writings, prayer, and sacraments. They sought, through these techniques to establish a deep connection with the patients. Unlike the Council, the Institute emphasized the need for their Supervisors to pursue advanced degrees, rather than get psychotherapy. In contrast to the Council�s use of the phrase, shepherds of the soul, the Institute tended to use Boisen�s description of clergy as physicians of the soul.

In summarizing this early split, it is fair to say that the Institute was viewed by the Council as being Conservative, since it took an academic orientation, and seemed to pursue an evolutionary change in the current education system. The Council was viewed by the Institute as being radical, not only because they were seeking more thorough-going reforms to the education of pastors, but also because the supervisors who aligned with the Council wanted to be independent of the seminaries. They were viewed as radical, sometimes irresponsible people who expressed their sense of freedom in socially unacceptable ways. Obviously, these are overall stereotypes that did not fit every case, but in the main, they were probably pretty accurate.

A note needs to be inserted here, that deserves more than the nod we can give it. That is to be aware that some denominations felt it important to sponsor Clinical Pastoral Education programs of their own, not organically connected to either the Institute or the Council. Enduring among these were the Lutherans and the Southern Baptists.

THE SPREAD OF CLINICAL PASTORAL EDUCATION

By the decade of the forties, CPE had spread around the nation. There is a pattern to the way supervisors dispersed. The Institute had spread out of New England and also on the West Coast. The Council had spread out into the middle of the country, what might be regarded broadly as the Midwest. The Lutherans proliferated in the north central area and the Southern Baptists had centers in the south. It is also important to say that although the Lutheran and Southern Baptist CPE programs represented denominational affiliations, their programs were by this time ecumenical.

During this period two other phenomena manifested themselves that were important to the development of the movement. One of these was the initiating of national conferences, and the other was the organizing of CPE on a regional basis. The first national conference was convened in Pittsburgh, at Western Seminary in 1944. It was conceived and planned by Philip Guiles, but it was not an Institute function. It was billed as �The Gathering,� and was attended by fifty people, over half of whom were seminary representatives, not supervisors. It might best be described as a conference of clinical training in theological schools. This conference, occurring a decade after the split in the movement, represented a beginning in the dialogue that eventuated in the merger, though it was still twenty-three years in the future. The conference produced a document of agreement, drawn up by Seward Hiltner, who, although he was aligned with the Council was actually more a centrist, able to keep contact with and sympathy for both sides, and was in addition a good strategist. I will not take time to list the six points of agreement, but they are very much in line with what CPE still believes about what goes into a program.

From that time on, representatives of the various strands of CPE met on a fairly regular basis. They explored areas where they might cooperate. In 1947 the Institute and the Council each launched professional journals; the Council started The Journal of Clinical Pastoral Work and the Institute published The Journal of Pastoral Care. This was one of the first ventures on which the two groups considered cooperation, and in 1950 they merged the journals, taking the name of the Institute�s publication, The Journal of Pastoral Care.

By the 1948 national conference, there was a proposal on the table to merge the various CPE groups. This came about because Rollin Fairbanks editor of the IPC journal and Ernie Bruder, editor of the CCT journal had brought this proposal to the CCT Conference of Supervisors. The proposal contained a name for the new organization, cleverly taking parts from both former names. They proposed to call it: The Institute of Clinical Pastoral Training. The proposal also listed four aims in merging the organizations:
1. The Teaching of Pastoral Care through understanding people or human nature and learning of pastoral methods.
2. Publication of literature in the field
3. Standardizing and certification of programs and individuals
4. Encouragement of research in the field.
In 1951 another momentous development occurred. It was to be crucial to the merger negotiations but it got started out of a parochial concern. Carl Plack was the executive of the Lutheran Advisory Council (their CPE institution), and as he saw the major CPE organizations moving toward union, he feared lest the Lutherans would get left out of the negotiations. So he proposed a meeting of representatives from all the groups promoting CPE. At Plack�s urging an unofficial meeting took place in his hotel room at the 1951 meeting in Boston at which there were three representative each from the Lutheran Advisory Council, The CCT, the IPC and the Southern Baptist Association. It read like a who�s who in CPE. Among those present were
John Billinsky, Paul Johnson, Fred Norstad, Ernie Bruder, Seward Hiltner and Fred Kuether.
The twelve men agreed to meet before the national meeting in 1952 in Buckhill Falls, Pa. They submitted to that 1952 meeting a proposal for joint standards for CPE upon which all four organizations could agree. It was accepted for deliberation in that conference, and after some modification it was adopted by the 1953 Conference.

In the 1956 meeting, Fred Kuether, described the historical development of CPE as a dynamic process by pointing out the evolution of the focus of CPE over the several decades of its life. The question people were asking in the beginning of CPE was What must I do to be of help? This represented the milieu of the social interest of the early Clinical training movement when Boisen and Keller were interested in providing concrete care of persons in need, and in training clergy by exposing them to those needs. The second question to evolve in the CPE movement was, What must I know? This represented the era of the case study when a body of knowledge was developed to assist clergy in meeting the needs of persons. The third question was What must I say? This represented the focus on the verbatim and careful attention to how the student communicated with the person in need. The fourth question Kuether proposed was, What must I be, to be of help? This question emphasized that the inner journey of self understanding was as important as the outer journey of learning skills and techniques. In this four question paradigm, What must I do, know, say, be, to be of help, we can see not only the progression of understanding that unfolded in the CPE movement, but also the individual journey of most CPE students from the time they enter the program until they gain a broader, deeper perspective on ministry, and themselves as ministers.

In the 1956 national meeting there was, for the first time, a face to face meeting of the supervisors of the various groups, not just their leaders. I described to you earlier how this meeting began in awkwardness until they remembered who they were�process people. When they began to practice with each other the techniques that taught to their students, they began to develop relationship and intimacy. This primary process interaction has been the core magic of CPE in my experience, and is the main thing to be taught and learned in our professional work.
It is what makes our group work successful, it is what makes individual supervision successful, and it is what makes work with patients in the hospital, clients in the counseling room, or parishioners in our churches successful. My concern is that our fear of legal actions against us, complaints of professional lapses, or fears that we may lose the endorsement of the United States Government will eventually launder the primary process pretty thoroughly out of our teaching, our interactions as colleagues, and our certification of supervisors. When that day comes, whatever else we may have left, it will hardly be CPE as it was at its best.

Some years ago when ACPE added a list of �outcomes� to the standards for each level of CPE, I began to speculate what would happen if we ever extended that philosophy and decided to institute outcomes for different types of pastoral calls. I wrote a fictitious verbatim, entitled, Outcome Based Pastoral Care and published it as an article for the East Central Region of ACPE. I believe it will speak to the issue I have raised so I share the essence of it with you.

I have just been called to the pre-surgical area of the hospital to respond to the request of a patient who wants a visit from the chaplain before she undergoes a coronary artery bypass graft. Arriving in the room, I meet an anxious woman, Ima Wreck. The following conversation takes place:
Key: C = Chaplain
P = Patient

C: (Knocking on doorframe) Ms. Wreck, I am Chaplain Comfort.
P: Oh, thank goodness you are here, Chaplain, I�ve been waiting to see you. I really need to talk to you before I have surgery. You see, something is on my mind, and I need to share it with someone. It�s just that�
C: Yes, yes, Ms. Wreck, but let�s get off to a proper start. You know that since you are about to have surgery, this visit comes under the federal government classification of �pre-surgery call.� I want to assure you that I am certified for both �pre and post-surgical calls� and am licensed at the �Master�s� level for all surgically related ministry.
P: My goodness, Chaplain Comfort, I had no idea! It makes me feel so secure to know that!
C: Well, yes, it�s true. Now I need to inform you at the outset what the desired outcomes for a pre-surgical call are: At the conclusion of this call, The successful patient will better understand the relevance of her/his own belief system as a means of spiritual support during this critical experience; The patient will know three Scriptures from a religious writing of her/his own choosing that will be meaningful in the patient�s situation; The patient will have a reduced level of anxiety; The patient will have experienced a prayer appropriate to her/his own belief system; The patient will be reassured of the competence of the medical/surgical team to give the patient the best chances of survival. That, Ms. Wreck, is what we can do together today, what do you think?
P: Well, I don�t know� I mean, don�t you want to know what I am concerned about?
C: (Showing slight irritation) Ms. Wreck, we have a lot to cover, but what is it you want to tell me that I didn�t cover?
P: See, Chaplain, I have been through a lot of surgeries, and I am all right within myself. I know that I will probably survive this experience. I also have faith that if I do not survive it will be all right, too. I know ten scriptures that are dear to me and comforting in this moment, and I have no trouble placing myself in the hands of the doctors who will operate.
C: Dear Ima (if I may call you by name), then why did you ask for a pre-surgery visit?
P: Actually, Chaplain Comfort, it was not me who �classified the visit,� I just asked to see someone. But what I wanted was this: I am so worried about my Husband, Hesa.
C: Hesa? Your husband is Hesa Wreck?
P: Hesa is very ill himself, and has taken to his bed more than a year ago. If I die, or if I do not fully recover, I don�t know what will become of him.
C: (Showing some distress) Hmm. � Well, you know, I�m not really qualified in that area, I could give it a try, or perhaps I should call a Chaplain who is certified in that area. Here, if I may use your phone�
P: Oh, I think you are probably all certified! Why don�t I just lie back and let you lead me through your five-step, outcome based, pastoral care process. I�m sure I�ll feel better when this visit is all over!
C: Very well, Ima, let�s begin�
P: (Falling back on the pillow and rolling her eyes) Dear God!...

(The verbatim is a creation of the writer, B. Frank Ciampa, and is copyright protected.)

UNION AT LAST

So, to pick up the thread of our history following that digression, let me say that as the sixties came in, the stage was set. There had been over a decade of national conferences. The committee of the twelve had done its work, and with some changes in personnel and focus this group became the committee on merger. Successive meetings had worked on common standards, qualifications for supervisors, minimum essentials for a CPE program, and qualifications for a center to be accredited. By now CPE was available all over the country. There were meetings of Supervisors in regional conferences as well as national meetings. I am quite amazed at the ability these professionals had to get out to meetings all across the country with considerable frequency. Most of them, I would imagine, at least prior to the sixties, did so in trains or even buses and automobiles. One can infer from this a high level of passion for this work, and a high level of commitment to it. I wonder how many of them did this traveling on institutional budgets, and how many found it necessary to underwrite part or all of it themselves.

One great help in the merger process was a grant for $100,000. received from the Stone Foundation to assist in completing the merger. This money helped the leaders to meet over the next four years, and it also assisted in enabling the Lutherans and Southern Baptists to be a part of the final negotiations and the resulting merger.

The merger proposal was sent to regional meetings. Over the final year there was a movement from anxiety to confidence in the regions, that they were well-equipped and prepared to enter into this union and be a productive part of it. The final, principal players in the merger were Chuck Hall of the Council and John Smith of the Institute, the respective presidents of those entities, who with care and sensitivity brought their respective organizations to the point of affirming the merger. Most people, including Chuck Hall expected and hoped that John Smith would be the first Executive Director of ACPE, but John declined the appointment, for personal and family reasons, and Chuck Hall became the first Executive Director of ACPE, serving in that capacity for seventeen formative years, to the satisfaction of most of the constituency.

THE CHUCK HALL YEARS 1967-1984

The first seventeen years of the existence of the merged organization under Chuck Hall, were years of consolidation and standardization. At the time of the merger, ACPE was an organization born of the protestant church in America. Like the churches from which it sprang, ACPE was white, largely male, protestant, and Christian. There were a few women from the beginning, including Dunbar and Terkelson. There were some African Americans, like Julian Byrd. Soon there were a few multicultural supervisors. The first group that was outside of the original demographics to come to ACPE in larger numbers was the Roman Catholic contingent. The National Association of Catholic Chaplains was founded in 1965 and there were some negotiations at the time of the ACPE merger regarding the possibility of NACC being a part of that merger. However at that time NACC was not a pastoral education organization and ACPE took the stand that until they had some history of educating and certifying supervisors, it would not be appropriate for NACC to be part of the merged organization. Whether or not this was wise, this was the decision. The result was that the Catholic clergy and religious came to ACPE for supervisory training and many priests, men and women in holy orders and lay Catholics (many of whom had recently left orders) took CPE in ACPE program, a number of them becoming supervisors.

The African American presence in ACPE has also grew steadily over this time period and a steady, if small stream of students from other countries, especially African and Pacific rim persons entered our CPE programs and larger numbers of them stayed to become ACPE Supervisors. The interest of Roman Catholics in CPE was one of the entry points for women in CPE, as many of those applying for CPE from that faith were women in ministry. In addition to nuns and ex-nuns, there were women beginning to enter CPE from protestant denominations. During this period the percentage of women seminary students in American protestant seminaries was dramatically on the rise, and the women in Seminary were no longer seeking degrees in Christian Education or music ministries, they were after M. Div. degrees and headed for ordination. A personal illustration of this, if I may be permitted. When I was in Seminary, from 1959-1963, there were two women in my class, out of 38 students, and neither of them sought M. Divs. In recent years in that seminary, the women have outnumbered men, and most of them are M. Div. students. As this shift occurred in the gender of candidates for ministry in the protestant churches, it was reflected also in the number of women in CPE, and, of course, the number in supervisory training.

I think to some people this seemed like the golden age of CPE. The old divisions had been surmounted; we had a strong, growing, organization. We were proud that we could say we were inclusive, pointing to the increasing number of �minority� members, Roman Catholics, women, and �foreign students� (as we tended to refer to them at that time). But we were not yet ready to understand or accept the monumental changes that were on the horizon as a result of this growing tendency to inclusion. We had not yet faced the fact that crossing the gender line would pass judgment on the way we did business, how we experienced collegiality, how we educated students, and what we considered appropriate. We did not realize that we would also have to learn the same lessons again as a result of multi-cultural presence in our organization. Support networks sprang up in ACPE to provide a place where subgroups could gather to find a kind of acceptance they were not feeling in the total organization. These quickly became advocacy groups, exerting pressure on the organization for education, change and acceptance of the realities of our need for greater sensitivity the issues these groups brought into the organization.
These groups included Women in CPE, Racial Ethnic Minority (later called Racial Ethnic Multi cultural) Network, Gay-Lesbian Network, Men in CPE, and the Network for Social Responsibility.

So the seventeen year period of Chuck Hall�s directorship became a time of consolidation of the new organization that gradually was experiencing increasing growing pains of inclusion and change. The challenge was to successfully incorporate the increasingly diverse membership and learn the lessons these new cultures brought to the organization while retaining the essential genius of our educational and professional process. This proved to be a daunting task.

THE LAST TWENTY YEARS

The last twenty years has seen a tremendous amount of change in the organization. ACPE has had three Executive Directors in this time, not counting an interim: Duane Parker, Russell Davis, and Teresa Snorton. The coming of Teresa to this office is indicative of the fact that the inclusionary process has come a long way. She is the first woman Executive Director and also the first person of color to hold that office.

Of course this is also the period of time when a group of supervisors who were wrestling with the question of whether ACPE was straying from its unique heritage began, first an underground newsletter, and then an organization�CPSP. Since George is going to come up here and talk about this part of our heritage I will not elaborate, except to say that many of us who have not aligned with College have wrestled with the same questions. Let it suffice for me to say that I have attended meetings of CPSP on several occasions, the first one being here in Columbus in the first year of my term as Regional Director of the East Central Region. Many of the CPSP supervisors have been valued colleagues and good friends, and I am honored to have been selected to address you on this occasion. I share the concern of fellow Supervisor, Tom Summers who has commented in his autobiography, Hunkering Down, that he shares the concerns and efforts of CPSP to find ways in which we can �Recover the Soul� of CPE.

The growing pains of our organization are evident in the increasing number of complaints lodged by CPE students in our organization; the growing number of appeals of Certification decisions; and the growing number of changes we have felt obliged to make in our organization to protect ourselves from legal actions. These realities have made our process longer, they have made our education less flexible, they have made CPE more expensive for our members and for the organization.

In these last twenty years we have overhauled the polity of ACPE, we have rewritten our standards and manuals, and we have attempted to make our processes fair and sensitive to our increasingly diverse populations. We have seen a new emphasis on rediscovering our rightful concern about social issues; we have seen an appropriate new level of attention to research; and we have seen serious attempts to simplify, streamline and slow down the rate of change to our accreditation, certification and standards processes. We have also seen a new examination of the relationship between the regions and the national organization. All of these things are necessary and important, but let us pray that in the midst of all these complex and complicated functions, we will also be able to recover the soul of our heritage. I believe that this will include a new dialogue between ACPE and CPSP. I thank CPSP for the journey you undertook nearly two decades ago, and I, for one, look forward to learning from your unique journey what you can say to the whole tradition of education that began with Boisen, Keller, Dicks, Guiles, Dunbar and the rest.

Thank you.