Meeting 2

How can one build, manage, and support effective chaplaincy programs for people undergoing major transitions, including incarceration, rehab, and reentry?

  • ACPE Manual Category B: Awareness of Self and Others, ACPE: The Standard for Spiritual Care and Education (2024)

  • “Healing the Wounded Healer,” Marcia Kesner and James Pann, Journal of Pastoral Care and Counseling (2020)

  • “Reflections on CPE, Law, and Learning,” Dayo Adeoye (2023)

  • “Spiritual AIM and the Work of the Chaplain,” Rev. Michele Shields et al., Palliative & Supportive Care (2014)

[1] Reading List:

[2] Responses, Reflections, and Recommendations:

Our second meeting centered on chaplaincy training, and the group debated the merits and challenges of implementing widespread, and perhaps mandated, Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) requirements. While widely relied upon by hospitals and private organizations, completing supervised units of CPE is not a standard requirement for correctional chaplains and volunteer chaplains who frequent prisons and jails. But should it be? How else can chaplains learn how to be a chaplain, and is there a “right” method?

  1. Overwhelmingly, the group agreed that the most common (and underestimated) training protocol was trial by fire—and everyone faces different fires.

    • Many members expressed frustration that, unlike with logging CPE units, there was no way to quantify the myriad everyday challenges of pastoral work inside prisons and jails. As one chaplain quipped, “you can’t write down ‘I have 4 units of trial by fire.’”

    • Even so, getting in your “reps of failure and success” is invaluable, especially when formal training is not on the table given lean administrative budgets.

  2. Several group members, cognizant of their ability to inadvertently cause harm, described that in conversation with a patient, incarcerated person, or spiritual seeker, their aim should be to “become a chaplain they’re okay with.” This mindset de-centers the chaplain and re-establishes the agency of the person opposite them.

    • Here, the group also emphasized the need for chaplaincy mentorship—time and space to exchange notes, commiserate difficulties, celebrate victories large and small, and generally learn what works for colleagues in other settings and locations.

  3. Trauma-informed care is a necessity inside prisons and jails, but group members noted that taking a trauma-informed approach is easier said than done, especially without the aid of practiced and tested communication skills and strategies.

    • One chaplain (who has worked in both hospital and corrections settings) added that, in the course of pastoral care, “when you’re right” about how to handle someone’s trauma, “you’re right. And when you’re wrong, you’ll never know you were wrong.” This in-the-moment uncertainty and potential long-term bad habit building does heighten the importance of standardized training modules like CPE that can “shorten the learning process.”