Professional Chaplaincy

The purpose of this page is to present an overview of the training and practical requirements that are needed before one can be recognized as a "professional chaplain". In addition it provides some guidance on how to determine if one is suited for this very specialized form of ministry.

Chaplaincy takes place in a number of arenas, such as:

Campus chaplaincy: Campus chaplains are creative and innovative as they demonstrate God's grace and love to students, faculty, alumni, and administrators at colleges, universities, seminaries, high schools, and other education settings.

Corporate chaplaincy: Corporate chaplains provide ministry at manufacturing sites, recreational sites, business offices, corporate headquarters, and community settings. They help employees discover spiritual resources and faith by providing pastoral care and counseling, religious education, and (in some cases) worship services.

Healthcare chaplaincy: Healthcare chaplains are trained to serve in an environment of sickness, pain, birth, and death. Total patient care provides for a person's spiritual needs, as well as physical and mental needs. Chaplain services offering pastoral care in hospital, hospice, or other medical settings is a key service in total patient care.

Military chaplaincy: The military depends upon all faith groups to provide theologically trained, spiritually motivated, qualified ministers to serve as chaplains to all military branches. These chaplains provide enlisted personnel and their families with resources through which they may exercise their right (in the United States) to freedom of religion. Chaplains have served in all major conflicts since at least the Revolutionary War. Military chaplaincy commit-ments range from full-time employment to volunteer service.

Prison chaplaincy: Prison chaplains serve in correctional facilities operated by federal, state/province, county, and local agencies, as well as corporate correctional facilities. They offer pastoral care, worship services, and support to those incarcerated. Each jurisdiction has particular qualifications for hiring chaplains.

First-responder chaplaincy: Public safety and community chaplains demonstrate God's grace and love as they serve with law enforcement personnel, fire departments, and emergency service agencies. Working as pastors, comforters, and counselors, they minister to the community members served by these agencies as well as the agency employees.

Each of these has its own set of criteria for qualifying personnel who serve as chaplains. These requirements include varying levels of education, training, maturity, and endorsement by the individual's home denomination or religious authority.

Spiritual commitment, maturity, character, emotional stability and social skills are essential qualities that all endorsed chaplains must possess. Other requirements can vary depending on the type of chaplaincy position sought. Traditionally, the requirements set by the institution that hires the chaplain applicant influences what is required for endorsement. How an applicant is judged for military chaplaincy may not be the same as the way he or she is measured for hospital chaplaincy. Requirements for prison chaplaincy may differ from what would be expected in endorsing a Fire & Rescue chaplain.

These professional chaplaincy requirements include a broad mix of education (M.Div) or not?, Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) or not?, ministerial experience (or not?), Board Certification (or not?), personal life experiences, credibility and rapport, etc.

The "gold standard" for professional chaplains is that of becoming "Board Certified." This is achieved through a unique process called "Clinical Pastoral Education". Clinical pastoral education (CPE) is a process used to teach pastoral care to clergy, chaplain trainees, and others. CPE is the primary method of training hospital and hospice chaplains and spiritual care providers in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. CPE is both a multicultural and interfaith experience that uses real-life ministry encounters of students to improve the ministry and pastoral care provided by caregivers. The underpinning theory of education that structures clinical pastoral education is the "Action-Reflection" mode of learning. CPE students typically compose "verbatims" of their pastoral care encounters through which they are encouraged to reflect upon what occurred and draw insight from these reflections that can be implemented in future pastoral care events.

There are some other things one needs to think about in choosing a specific CPE Center. Clinical Pastoral Education is usually done in a hospital setting, and so it allows for some hands-on experience. However, it's more important in its role as an opportunity to learn about yourself as a minister, about the gifts God has given you for ministry, and about how you use those gifts and might use them better. In that process the relationship with the individual CPE supervisor is very important, and that needs to be a part of anyone's own assessment of a particular CPE center. So, in a real sense "good" or "better" has a lot to do with what's good or better for you.

The main organizations that accredit CPE centers are: the Association for Clinical Pastoral Education (ACPE); the National Association of Catholic Chaplains (NACC); and also the College of Pastoral Supervision and Psychotherapy (CPSP). While there are some "cultural differences," all three use the same model and the same basic tools for CPE. All use the same measure of a "unit," 400 contact hours, including both clinical time and academic time. So, the "four units" mentioned above comes to 1600 contact hours. Similar accrediting processes exist in many other parts of the world.

In some instances there are competing entities.

One form of the "normal" process for becoming a Board Certified professional chaplain flows something like the following:

M.Div. / Seminary
Ecclesiastical Endorsement
Clinical Pastoral Education
Supervised Experience
Application
Formal Board Hearing

There are of course variations on this theme.

A "Board Certified" chaplain is entitled to use the designation, BCC (Board Certified Chaplain) after his or her name. Most major hospitals in the United States will require board certification for their staff chaplains.

(Please note that much of the preceding content has been taken and edited from various chaplaincy oriented websites on the Internet. It applies primarily to chaplaincy services within the United States and Canada.)

 

The First Step >>
Professional Chaplaincy >>
Pastoral Care: A Toolbox >>
Am I Fit To Be a Chaplain >>
Spiritual Assessment >>