CPSP Pastoral Report

Some seminaries and denominations justify their anti-pastoral counseling stance on the basis that pastors are not trained to do “real” counseling. Yet they do not provide nor require education and training to equip clergy to engage in one of their primary pastoral responsibilities---pastoral counseling. It is regrettable that one can graduate from some of the top seminaries in the nation without taking pastoral care and counseling courses. This represents an age old struggle in theological education. Pastoral Care and Counseling Departments are usually suspect due to their focus on counseling that is also informed by the social sciences, not just theology and the Bible. This is an old war. I don’t think it will go away.

We in the clinical pastoral field must enter into dialogue and collaboration with seminaries and denominations. This way we can work together to provide pastoral care and counseling courses and clinical training experiences grounded in serious works of the social sciences that includes psychoanalytical/psychodynamic theory and family systems theory. In addition to the academic courses, there must be integrated into the curriculum the component of psychodynamic clinical supervision of the practice of ministry. There is no substitute for clinical supervision.

Spiritual Care as Commonly Characterized is Not Adequate to Address Current Levels of Human Suffering

The responsibility, and even the duty, for you and others to provide counseling as clinically trained chaplains/pastors is acute. Thousands of returning soldiers from America’s two recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will suffer from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Untreated, the potential of destroying their lives and the lives of their families is great. In addition to our returning soldiers there is the human tragedy and suffering inflicted upon millions by the current economic crisis who lose their jobs, homes, security and even their identity.

These above two factors alone demands that all clinical training organizations re-commit themselves to the clinical training of clergy as pastoral counselors who are clinically trained and astute in their pastoral engagements. It would be regrettable if CPE programs become seduced by the current “spiritual care” trend and “watered-down” their clinical training programs and supervisory process to mirror the drift towards "spiritual care" that is in the culture.

Equally regrettable would be a situation where institution chaplains, including the military chaplains, began to perceive their role and function as “Spiritual Care Providers”. This is too limiting a frame for the professional chaplain. Chaplains are pastoral counselors. Pastoral counseling is a big frame with a solid professional identify. Clinically trained clergy do not surrender their pastoral identity, responsibility and involvement to the limited world of spiritual care. The well trained clinical chaplain is professionally prepared to address a variety of matters of human frailty and suffering at deep and significant levels in their counseling practice as chaplain.

At best “spiritual care” is saddled with a murky definition and understanding of its practice. The absence of accepted professional education and training requirements and the question as to what, if any, professional qualifications are needed to conduct the practice of spiritual care is problematic. Spiritual care will not be sufficient to address the human need that is before us.

Clinical Pastoral Education Training: A Crucial Role and Opportunity

As clinical trainees in this CPE program you will be invited into the awe and terror of self-discovery and self-awareness. This includes examination of your family history as well as the dimensions of self that trouble your souls. This means that all expressions of your life and relationships might become resources to be understood and known within the supervisory process. I say this to you because I believe a trainee’s story---understood and embraced ---with its frailties and its wonder become the primary tool used by the clinically trained clergy and chaplain in the practice of their counseling ministry.

The Role of the Clinical Chaplain/Pastor

Clinically trained clergy and those who are being clinically trained, such as you, seek emotional engagement and connection within a relationship with those they serve. The clinical work is to draw out, expand and enable the other to express as fully as possible their human predicament, struggles, and heartbreaks with all of it complexities and human frailties found within all of us and our relationships.

In your role as Chaplain Intern you will be providing pastoral counseling. Pastoral counseling at its core is listening. It is about inviting the other to share their story. It is about listening in such a way that a person is touched by their own spirit as they also listen to themselves with deep emotion, self understanding, compassion, acceptance, forgiveness and when needed, judgment. Such soulful listening is profoundly theological but even more important it is profoundly loving, human and healing.

I trust you know that many can find someone who will talk to them. There is an abundance of people available to provide life directions, impart concrete suggestions for a better relationship with God and even offer good advice on handling a life predicament. It is rare, however, to find someone who will listen to soul--our most precious and sometimes dark and disturbing dimensions of self. When such listening occurs, it becomes a gift beyond all measure--a gift that has the potential to become transformational. We, like those we serve as clinically trained clergy, know that once we have been listened to, our life and spirit might never be the same.

Conclusion

I hope in our time together during this CPE training program you will further develop your capacity for soulful listening to another. Equally, I hope you will also experience within the supervisory process and its relationships the profound effect, perhaps even miracle that might emerge by the experience of having been listened to at a depth beyond words. If so, we can call our time together clinical PASTORAL supervision and training. I trust if you are blessed by this gift, you will have also discovered the secret that will transform you into a “Listener”. As a Listener you will know that your ministry and calling is too important and too complex to to professionally identified with and functioning as a “Spiritual Care and Counseling” provider.

I wish you well in your journey to become clinically trained clergy.

Sincerely yours,

Perry Miller, D. Min
CPE Supervisor
Diplomate, CPSP
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Contact Perry Miller by clicking here.