CPSP Little Rock Chapter

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 h...

Representatives from the ACPE and CPSP met in Philadelphia on November 30, in an attempt to mediate their twenty-one year conflict. They used the services of JAMS, and in particular, retired federal court judge Diane Welsh who served as mediator. The results of this mediation exceeded our expectations, as you can see in the joint statement below. I want to thank the members of our delegation and to praise them for their wisdom and conciliatory posture. Our team consisted of Jim Gebhart and George Hankins-Hull who with me were mediators, as well as Perry Miller highlighting and Charles R. Hicks, our attorney, were also present and participated in the decision. (Our original six-person team of mediators and consultants was reduced to five with the death of John Edgerton.) On the ACPE side were Teresa Snorton, Sally Schwab, and Tim Thorstenson. If we succeed in living up to this agreement we will have marked a sea change in the clinical pastoral community. This will mean that ACPE and CPS...

I welcome the letter from the Association of Religious Endorsing Bodies that challenges the Association for Clinical Pastoral Education and the College of Pastoral Supervision & Psychotherapy to work collegially together in the best interests of those they train. The Religious Endorsers are quite rightly concerned for their constituents who are caught in the middle of the rift between ACPE and CPSP. Challenging the ACPE & CPSP to put the professional wellbeing of those they train above the politics of self-interest is not only the right thing to do it would also be the best possible pastoral response. George Hankins Hull Read the Pastoral Report the online Journal of the College of Pastoral Supervision & Psychotherapy

A MESSAGE TO THE CPSP COMMUNITY FROM RAYMOND J. LAWRENCE We are heartened by this public expression of concern by the Religious Endorsing Body representatives (REBS) meeting in Nashville last fall. They have the interest in the wider religious and therapeutic community at heart in this call to reconciliation. There is plenty of work to be done in the field of clinical pastoral supervision, chaplaincy, pastoral counseling and psychotherapy. No one organization can respond to the current public needs. The expenditure of time and money in efforts to undermine each other is wasteful and disgraceful. We in CPSP hope that this letter from the REBS signals the end of hostility between the various clinical pastoral organizations, and the end of triumphalism on the part of any one organization or group of organizations. Raymond J. Lawrence, CPSP General Secretary

"One of the public issues that deeply concerns us is the chasm between CPSP and ACPE." AN OPEN LETTER to CPSP and ACPE Association of Religious Endorsing Bodies P.O. Box 340007, Nashville, TN 37203-007 January 11, 2010 To: CPSP and ACPE From: Association of Religious Endorsing Bodies (AREBS) Dear Colleagues in Pastoral Care Ministry,We have been fortunate to be in conversation with all of the cognate groups in Nashville.These meetings have helped us to clarify our identity as endorsers. That search for identity continues to drive us to more clarity and to deepen our relationships with all the cognate groups. We thank you for your patience with us as we have learned about your organizations, your organizational requirements, and also, your help in clarifying our understanding of your identity. What we have discovered is that we share one thing in common and that is our dedication to the goal of providing the best in pastoral care. We all strive for excellence in that process a...

The Spiritual Care Collaborative sounds all the right notes when it comes to promoting and advertising the SCC as new breakthrough in collaboration between pastoral care and counseling organizations. High ideals expressed on paper sound good and make a good sales pitch but unless accompanied by serious results on the ground amount to nothing more than lofty words blowing in the wind. Rather than creating harmony in the midst of the pastoral care and counseling movement the SCC sound a jarring note of discord tainted by an exclusive elitism. The SCC recently admitted(1) that it has no developed mechanism for including other participating organizations in the partnership of collaboration. So much then for lofty ideals and claims of Collaboration mere code words used as cover for darker motives of control and monopoly. Note (1) NOTICE TO MEMBERS OF THE CPSP COMMUNITY RE. RELATIONS TO THE SPIRITUAL CARE COLLABORATIVESeptember 3, 2008 Notice to Members of the College of Pastoral Supervisio...

In May of 2006 the ACPE Board of Representatives at it's spring meeting in Atlanta, a motion was adopted that ACPE accredited centers can no longer offer CPSP units of CPE training. The following reasons were presented as to the rational for the motion: MOTION # 43: ACCREDITATION OF DUALLY ALIGNED (CPSP AND ACPE) CENTERSWhereas, the Accreditation Commission has consistently received reports from students and seminaries of a lack of informed consent about the contrast of ACPE CPE and CPSP CPE; And whereas, the Accreditation Commission has experienced a lack of consistent application of the program standards of CPSP CPE programs, And whereas, the Accreditation Commission finds a lack of transparency with the organization of CPSP, its curriculum processes, And whereas, the Accreditation Commission has received reports ofACPE CPE centers who hire CPE Supervisors who have membership inboth organizations being dropped from the ACPE roster and offering only CPSP CPE after telling the hosp...