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September 30, 2012
HOW TO HELP TO SHAPE THE FUTURE OF CPSP by David Roth, Chair, CPSP Chapter-based Governance Task Force
Following the publication in Pastoral Report last March of my article on the future of CPSP governance, the leadership of our community that gathered before the annual Plenary established a Task Force on Chapter-based Governance.
The creation of the task force, with me as its chair, was agreed by the General Secretary and the President along with the Conveners and others representing their Chapters in Pittsburgh. Our mandate, in brief, is threefold: 1) To explore a system of government based on chapter life to effectively continue serving the CPSP community; 2) To review the foundational legal documents (the Covenant, Constitution and By-Laws) and policies & procedures (Standards, that apply to certification of pastoral care givers and accreditation of clinical pastoral training centers) in order to reconcile them and suggest the amendments needed for the new system of government; and 3) To make a proposal of effective governance practices for the present and future wellbeing of the CPSP community within the US and abroad.
Since March, task force members have been consulting with CPSP members in an effort to better grasp the issues we face in adapting how we govern in light of our rapid growth. We have been seeking to learn from the experiences of our diverse community and to find out your concerns and interests.
In May, fellow task force member Steven Voytovich and I presented the concept of an expanded form of chapter-based governance at the National Clinical Training Seminar hosted by former President Francine Hernandez who is also on the task force. I expanded upon the concepts that I set out in the Pastoral Report article and Steven presented about the important issue of creating an authentically indigenous CPSP congruent with the Covenant. As a group of 60 we role-played the representative chapter-based governance model itself and the participants’ responses were generally very positive. The further information we used to model governance is available HERE. This model is entirely provisional and open to further refinement, of course, and has not been adopted. For now, it is a working model.
We on the Governance Task Force want to hear from you. If you haven’t read the original article I wrote, I invite you to do so. We invite and would appreciate everyone’s comments. If you want to tell us more about what you want chapter-based governance to look like, you can email us directly at cpspgovernance@gmail.com.
Lastly, conveners, please bring our request for input to your chapter members by linking them to this Pastoral Report article. Simply cut and paste the web address above and sending it to them
David Roth
drdavidroth@gmail.com
Posted by Perry Miller, Editor at September 30, 2012 10:37 PM