The organization that set out to change the face of Professional Chaplaincy and the Clinical Pastoral training movement, the Spiritual Care Collaborative, has been dissolved as a corporation. “On May 14, 2012, the Steering Committee of the Spiritual Care Collaborative (SCC) voted to dissolve its formal Limited Liability Corporation (LLC) structure.” In its founding the SCC was hailed as a new breakthrough in collaboration between pastoral care and counseling organizations. The SCC announced that it was formed to “provide a common voice for professional pastoral care, counseling and education organizations in the United States and Canada. With the goal “to speak with a unified voice as clinically trained, qualified pastoral/spiritual caregivers who serve as chaplains, pastoral educators and counselors in specialized settings including hospitals and other healthcare organizations, military, prisons, and the business workplace.”
Rather than creating harmony in the midst of the pastoral care and counseling movement the SCC soon found itself struggling for relevancy. In the fall of 2010 the Association of Professional Chaplains, one of the founding organizations, withdrew membership from the SCC. In summation, the APC board indicated, at the time, that “it was not a good use of organizational funds----or staff resources, to continue to pay the yearly dues of SCC or participate in monthly conference calls.” One might be forgiven in concluding that, in the end, the SCC was a waste of time and money - a somewhat ignominious epitaph.