CPSP Pastoral Report

    Today there is only time to focus on the first two words:  College and Pastoral.  Perhaps next year we might address the last two words regarding the science and art of pastoral practice.  We will see.

    But first, this word College.  Our founders were very wise to have chosen this name.  Or perhaps divinely inspired, which is a bit of a stretch knowing them as we do today.  Perhaps both.  But is the right name at the right time and the right place.  The College. 

    You might pause and notice that no other pastoral organization embraces this term, much less begins with it.  Others feature a national or geographic focus of activity:  The American Association of Pastoral Counselors;  The Canadian Association for Pastoral Practice and Education;  The National Association of Jewish Chaplains;  The National Institute of Business and Industrial Chaplains;  The National Association of Catholic Chaplains.  Still other groups define themselves by administrative function:  The Association of Clinical Pastoral Education;  The Association of Professional Chaplains.  Now these titles are all appropriate, all well and good and honorable.  They accurately identify a focus.  But it is no accident that we, in our life together, began from an entirely different point of view.  It was never envisioned that we would be limited by the boundaries of this continent. That is very obvious as you simply look around you at this international audience.   And likewise our identity was never framed in terms of political or administrative function as these were the bane of the founders and the point of the original reformation. 

    And so another name was chosen.  The College.    There had been another College once, the College of Chaplains, of which I was a Fellow for twenty-five years.  I was at first astonished that the old College would give up this name.  But then it made sense.  Their primary new identity was to be an association to certify chaplains and not a company of persons intent on living together.

    We are The College.  The Latin origin is both collegium from which come our words colleague or collegiality, and collegia referring to a corporate partnership.  Once in a while someone objects to this name thinking it refers to a school of higher education that grants a degree.  But this is only a more recent definition; its historic definitions are much more clear.  They include:  �a self governing society of scholars for study and instruction� (e.g., the College of Surgeons); �a company or assemblage of persons with a common purpose;�  �a gathering of clergy living together� (e.g. the College of Cardinals); and �an association of churches or religious leaders each equally empowered.� 

    So seize this first word of our name, College, and work with it.  Our identity begins here:  in the interface of each of us with one another.  It is the language which pervades our inspired Covenant:

 

      We see ourselves as spiritual pilgrims seeking a truly
        collegial professional community . . . We covenant to
        address one another and to be addressed by one another
        in a profound theological sense. . . Our governance will
        be dealt with primarily in Chapters . . . We place a premium
        on the significance of the relationships among ourselves . . .
        We believe we should make a space for one another and
        stand ready to midwife one another in our respective
        spiritual journeys. . . We believe that persons are always
        more important than institutions.

    These are astonishing words.  They always bring us to a pause, to a hush, when we recite them together.  We are transported by their challenge.  And then, at least most of us, stir uneasily, a little small cloud of skepticism appearing on the horizon, as we wonder if this can really work.

    It happens every year when we assemble as a community.  People find themselves �assigned� to a group where they will spend many hours during the conference.  There are to be no exceptions; all of us are to be engaged.  (With the exception, of course, of the President who is granted a two-year amnesty from any negative challenges.)  And there is usually ambivalence about this.  We prize our time together and want to seek out old and trusted friends.  Yet here we are committing ourselves to a time with some new faces, with strangers, a time when we are expected to be forthcoming with our more naked souls.  And we ask:  can this really work?

    Yet this is precisely what attracted me to CPSP:  the sharp focus it was giving to  candor, disclosure, intense interaction, and a high commitment to work through painful changes.  I had spent a decade of my life running encounter groups in the 1970�s, and I had known the transformation that comes when persons take the risk of truly knowing and being known.  Carl Rogers, the patron saint of pastoral care, had called the encounter group the most encouraging and promising development in the history of psychotherapy.  But, sadly, that interest subsided, due partly from the doubts about the lasting efficacy of primal experience, but also to the movement away from intimacy.  Experiential psychotherapy and existential engagement became slowly replaced by the new emphasis on cognitive focus and behavioral modification.

And so I came over to look into this thing called CPSP.   I have written about that, stirred by the word that persons were seeking to live out their professional lives in chapters where they vowed to address one another �in a profound theological sense�, to �midwife one another� in a personal and communal search for �the recovery of soul.� When I attended my first plenary as a visitor I was astonished that the Tavistock experience was featured, something which I thought had faded from history.  And in the candid engagement of one person with another I saw the actual manifestation of these lofty visions.  Here were persons seeking to be the new wineskin, the corrective which places leadership back in the hands of Chapters while preserving the essence of the great traditions of pastoral care and education.

    A number of responses to my article in The Journal last year have been the same:  in this proposal of an Order of pastoral care, are you offering a metaphor or do you present this as a realistic possibility?  And my answer is yes and yes.  It is a metaphor, like the �Kingdom of God� is a metaphor, or �the recovery of soul� is a metaphor.  But it is also a literal possibility that persons who deeply prize their autonomy can preserve it at the same time they direct it to the common good of the community, to fidelity to an Order, to a College.

    And how are we doing in this pursuit?  We are still trying to gauge that.  Our Chapter Life Committee�s report is very promising:  stories of high commitment, authentic engagement, open accountability, creative work and self-scrutiny.  Yet we don�t know enough  yet about those chapters which are said to not be doing very well, or those which seem not to be really open to new members, or those that are too big but reluctant to divide.  I have a particular concern that some chapters are unable (or unwilling) to pay the costs of sending their delegates to the mid-year meeting of the Governing Council and thus lose their connection to our self-governance.  And I have a concern that some chapters are said to be giving only token recognition to the central authority of CPSP, resisting the necessity of imposing upon themselves the common standards of CPSP. 

    And so a clear word about this.  Standards are the public description of our actual process and product.  And it is therefore imperative that we function just as we describe ourselves.  Anything less is not only anarchy, organizational chaos, but it is a profound threat to our public integrity.  And in those instances where our process and process is anything other than what we say it must be, it can become a serious liability in courts of law.

    Our General Secretary yesterday found the relationship between chapters and the structures of centralized governance to be analogous to a marriage, a work in progress.  He is absolutely right.  I would only add that, until now, the darling of this marriage has been the chapter.  It has received the bulk of attention because of our historic aversion to heavy centralized governance.  But a healthy marriage is a dynamic dialectic and this requires that the all the structures of centralized governance  receive attention equal to that of the chapters, that full accountability must flow both ways:  from chapters to the Governing Council and back again.  The most specific instance where this must occur is in the certification and the accreditation processes.  The locus of responsibility for both of these functions is the chapter, yet this activity must be fully scrutinized by  some agent of our central governance. This is quite simply required to assure ourselves that we are all in compliance with our standards.  It is essential if we are to be a College.

    To this end I bring two matters to your attention.  First, there is an action before the Governing Council to call every chapter into a relationships with two or more other chapters, presumably those which are geographically adjacent.  The reasons for this recommendation are that chapters can expand their range of experience, coming to know others of our College in greater intimacy, and to learn from other chapters as to what is helpful and what is an impediment to our continued growth and function.   Second, I will ask the Governing Council to find the ways and means to enable the Chapter Life Committee to designate a delegation of leaders so that every chapter is visited at least once over the next two years.  The purpose of this visitation is not to criticize but to consult and to study our chapter life.  What is flowering and what is not?  And why?  Too much of our information is anecdotal; what is needed is to study the situation and report back to us on how this marriage of chapters and central governance is working.  To have a report on the status of our College. 

    And now for the second word, Pastoral.  And again, as we re-look at this word some old defenses kick in because of all those times we had to define our pastoral identity.  And the task is always to claim the richness of this treasure, of  the  blessing with which we have been endowed.  The pastoral office exists within the deepest structures of the secular world, yet is also dramatically juxtaposed and set apart from the secular.

    I want to point to these with two personal vignettes which speak more clearly to this matter than any discussion I could offer.  The first is those unforgettable days following 9-11.  Picture (and remember) the fireman who quietly walks over.  He has seen the �Chaplain� vest and has been watching.  His face is forever tired and sad, his eyes seem empty, his voice flat.  But now he wants to say something.  And what he says is this:  �I want to tell you how much your chaplains have meant to us.�  He paused, then continued:  �The mental health workers mean well, but the chaplains let the men tell their stories.�

And then he continued, telling his story once again.  Was it the third time?  The 20th time?  It had a confessional dynamic, the need to keep telling it until he was finished.  He told of how he was off duty that morning over in the Queens, stopped to get a bagle, then was driving home when the call came.  He returned to the station as the first engine pulled away.  He quickly donned his equipment, then followed in the second engine.   Over to the river, then down through the tunnel, then up and over toward the Trade Center.  And then, in front of him, the engine manned by his buddies suddenly disappeared in a cascade of stone and smoke and hell.  He was still working through that, and probably is doing so still.

    When I returned to Columbus I recounted that story to our Red Cross mental health team. Some of them resented the story and the implication that mental health workers would not be able to perform as well as chaplains.  My response was this:  �Hold it!    Take a deep breath!  Now, obviously, any good psychotherapist will know how to �let the men tell their stories.�  But what is important here is the perception, a perception which originated somewhere.  That perception is that the mental health workers are going to be quick to teach:  teach the seven things that you need to know about post-traumatic stress,  or the ten steps of addressing anger appropriately, or the principles of grief, or the importance of sleep, and the rest.  Let us hear that social perception.�

    Our fireman had observed that the chaplains did not engage in this.  Possibly it was because they did not know what on earth they could possibly say in that horrific situation!  This is an experience we learned in CPE 101, and I have told psychology classes about it again and again, how it was seminal to my training as a psychotherapist.  We all remember:  how you stand in the hospital corridor before going in to see that patient, in that God-awful crisis, and you think �I do not know what to say or do in this next moment!�  And in that honest claiming of inadequacy you enter the room, but, now, paradoxically, you bring that which is essential to the possibility of a genuine meeting of souls. �When I am weak then I am strong.�   Sheldon Kopp wrote about this in his words:  �We must learn the power of our helplessness.�  We who are pastors know about that as well as anyone.  It led us to a high commitment to being present in our daily work without trying to �fix� someone, without being one more mental health mechanic.  This art of listening without premature interpretation is the signature of pastoral care.  The fireman saw that. 

    The second vignette speaks to how we sometimes lose sight of the central authority of our pastoral office.  This story is even more personal and I feel a bit vulnerable in telling it.  But here goes.

    The scene was a continuing education seminar for psychologists.  In my slight resentment of the required nature of these events, I usually sit toward the back trying to keep busy with some reading.  On this day a discussion had developed over the issue of the necessity of psychologists to speak the truth about their science, to inform the public and counter the myths and misunderstandings that are abroad.  My ears perked up when one speaker continued to reference the church.  The church, he kept saying,  is damaging our society, telling people that psychotropic medication is a crutch and a crime if given to children, that homosexuality is a perversion, that stem cell research is murder, and the like.   And the more he kept talking about the church, or religion in general, the more intently I listened.  And then, to my surprise, I found myself on my feet with the microphone in my hand.  I found myself very interested to hear what I was going to say.

    And the following is a rough verbatim of what I did say on that occasion.
    �I�m Jim Gebhart.  Many of you know me since I have been in practice forever over near Riverside Hospital. But what many of you may not know is that I am first and last a minister.  And so when I hear references to the church I listen carefully.�

    At this juncture there seemed to be a sigh of discomfort.  What is this?

    I continued.  �I would inform the colleague who has these concerns that I generally agree with all he has said, and that most all of the clinically trained ministers I know would say the same.  And I would go further.  I am not just alarmed by some of the foolishness coming out of the churches, but I am actually jaundiced regarding the near future of the church.  It is a grim picture with the growing majority of fundamentalists, persons motivated by fear, by insecurity, who cannot tolerate ambiguity, who require black-white thinking.  They are quite vocal, they polarize our society, and they cause people of reason to turn away.

    �This has happened before.  Arnold Toynbee wrote that about every five hundred years in Christendom the faith becomes increasingly irrelevant to the masses, spinning off a variety of weird cults before it transforms itself.  Well, it has been five hundred years since Luther.�

    This reference prompted a number of smiles and side comments.  The audience seemed to be warming to the to this critique of the church.  And this fueled me.

    �But let�s imagine for minute that this disillusionment of the church continues and reasonable people turn away for the foreseeable future.  Gone, now, is the pastor, the village philosopher, the spiritual leader of the community.  But who will replace this pastor?  Will this person appear out of the discipline of medicine, reclaiming the ancient shamanic tradition?  Or perhaps this person will appear from the camps of education which has always had as its focus the question �What is true?�  Or, possibly could this person appear out of psychology which claims to have one foot in both medicine and education.  What if it is you who replaces the pastor?�

    The smiles and rapt attention had increased.  I was fascinated with what was evolving.  I was on a roll.

�But if it is you psychologists who fill this role, who become the new village philosophers, then it will be necessary always to inform the world what is true.  But that is only a part of the goal of the philosopher whose pursuit is of the true, the beautiful and the good.  And are you prepared to address both what is true in contrast to what is fiction, what is beautiful in contrast to that which is ugly and hideous, what is good in contrast to what is evil?  These are cosmic categories, and you can�t just be thinking off the top of your heads.  The study of the true, the beautiful and the good will take you beyond psychology to the study of history, archeology, culture, theology.  To do that you might even have to go to seminary.�

    Now the interaction was lively, psychologists finding some delight at the image of their going off to seminary to qualify for this new role.  Theological education, previously short on legitimacy, seemed suddenly to be revisited with new eyes now open to its rich possibilities. 

    But then came the moment that humbled me.  Over to my left a woman stood, composed her thoughts, and remarked:  �I think I would qualify to assume some of this new role.  I had an undergraduate major in philosophy, have always been interested in the science of Biblical study, and would welcome the seminary and the study of theology.  But that would not do it. That is not enough. I do not feel equipped to bring people before the face of God.  To teach them to pray.  To pronounce the absolution of their sin.  To have the audacity to proclaim the very Word of God.�

    Now there was a very long silence.  During this silence I found myself remembering words I had so often said to students:  �Be aware of your reluctance to claim your pastoral identity.  Your pastoral  authority.�

    I do not believe I was in any way ashamed of the gospel that day.  I guess I just found it easier to talk about disciplines and pedagogy than vocation.  Our vocation, ordained or not.   This claiming of our vocation  is the most intimate and vulnerable disclosure we can make to the world.  To have the audacity to present ourselves as persons who have been called by God to do God�s work!  To claim the blessings promised by God!  To actually call people to transcendence and to transcendent commitments!

    This was my learning and I share it with you.  We may not always be comfortable in being called pastor but that has a profound meaning to much of the world.  We are proud of our title as clinically trained ministers, but never forget that it is the latter half of that title that makes us unique to the world.  Our pastoral identity, our pastoral authority.  This man, this woman stands in the order of Melchizedek with all the resources of that tradition.  To offer the sacraments.  To hear confession.  To make the bold proclamation of salvation and new life.

   

Pastors in the eyes of the world!  May we remain as humbled and as empowered by that astonishing identity as the day we took our vows.