“Artful Competence: Exploring New Landscapes in Clinical Pastoral Education” examines the evolving terrain of CPE as it adapts to contemporary challenges and opportunities. Traditional brick-and-mortar residency programs are giving way to innovative hybrid and online units that incorporate diverse clinical settings, including parish and community programs. This shift not only reflects changes in spiritual care delivery but also aligns with the increasing diversity among CPE students, who now come from various educational backgrounds, life experiences, and local faith communities, bringing unique perspectives to the practice of chaplaincy.

This workshop will explore how Educators may bring competency-based learning to life in these varied contexts, focusing on fostering inclusivity and relevance for students from different cultures and educational backgrounds. Participants will engage in discussion and activities highlighting the intersection of ACPE’s new outcomes, indicators, and the creative arts. The presenters will empower Certified Educators and CECs to integrate artistic expression within their CPE curriculum.

This workshop will include an overview of competency-based learning, a review of relevant research about utilizing the creative arts in CPE and chaplaincy, and an experiential component where attendees will gain a deeper understanding of how to use artful competence in chaplaincy education, both in an in-person setting and in online and hybrid units.

In the United States, formal chaplaincy education has primarily belonged to the Association for Clinical Pastoral Education (ACPE). Given the religious landscape of America at the advent of Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) in the 1920s, the structure, language, and resources around which students and educators have been developed have understandably and historically been Christian. Though much has changed over the years to include greater diversity, the resources available, particularly to Certified Educators (CE) and Certified Educator Candidates (CEC), still primarily speak to Christian and/or theistic practitioners. The proposed workshop pulls on a thesis paper written by a Zen Buddhist CEC, which served to provide one of the first resources, specifically integrating the Zen Buddhist tradition into a model for the supervisory relationship of CEs and CECs with their students, Buddhist or otherwise. While not intended to be comprehensive nor exhaustive, the project aims to offer one perspective and practice toward the student-teacher relationship grounded in the tradition of lineage and the practiced wisdom of Buddhist teachers throughout space and time. 

The workshop will present the main findings of the paper, continue to contextualize such findings to the practice of supervision in CPE and offer an interactive and dialogical session to engage the theory and ideas presented. Though a non-theistic perspective and a Zen Buddhist one at that, the material and content of this workshop are in no way intended to be exclusive to such identifying persons or practitioners. Rather, it offers an additional resource to any educators and/or chaplains seeking to explore new methods for engaging students’ learning processes from an alternative paradigm, which could be more inclusive to a greater number of religious backgrounds and spiritually seeking chaplains.

“Your theory is who you are.” This refrain is repeated time and time again to Certified Educator Candidates matriculating through the certification process. The infamous red thread, which is woven through personality, theology, and education theories, the person of the educator and their praxis is the ultimate indication of integration. But how does this integration occur? How does one show up as their authentic self in the practice of supervision? How do pedagogical frameworks and supervisory interventions connect with the person of the educator and the lived experiences that have shaped them? How can authenticity in CPE supervisory practice occupy the same space with the “isms” of society that communicate to marginalized Certified Educators and Certified Educator Candidates that they cannot show up as their full selves?

This presentation contends that a discernible pattern exists between a person’s attachment relationships to their primary caregivers and their attachment relationship (or nonattachment relationship) to the living God—the God of personal spiritual experience.  Each of the four attachment relationship patterns has implications for how therapists work with spiritually curious or spiritually grounded clients.  How can therapists talk about a client’s attachment relationship to God as a displacement of—or defense against—their attachment relationships to parents?  How can therapists talk about a client’s attachment relationships to parents as a displacement of—or defense against—their attachment relationship to God?  Transforming these attachment relationships to restore wholeness and unity is a crucial treatment goal of Attachment-Informed Psychotherapy (AIP) and the central topic of this presentation. 

I will demonstrate how therapists can use AIP to enhance clients’ understanding and lived practice of their attachment relationships to God and to significant others.  AIP is uniquely positioned to address the underlying relationship wounds that so often derail a client’s spiritual journey and their everyday relationships.  The goal of AIP is to uncover and work through resentment and guilt toward parents, often coinciding with a need for their approval and often carried over into one’s relationship to God as a parent figure.  The client’s latent spirituality can become a lever of both psychological and spiritual transformation.  Although there are many methods of harnessing clients’ spirituality, this presentation references the principles of attachment theory to articulate one specific approach that audience members will find easy to comprehend and apply to their own clients.  This approach leverages our understanding of the four attachment relationship patterns that govern the construction and maintenance of all relationships, both to God and to significant others.  A case illustration of AIP applied to a client’s relationship to God is offered.

In this workshop, we will explore participatory theory and practices of contemplative education that can be used in clinical pastoral education and the training of spiritually integrated psychotherapists. We define contemplation as “a form of human activity involving the exercise of sustained attention and the cultivation of awareness leading to states of subjective expansion, wonder, tranquility, illumination, or communion” (Jacob Sherman).

This exploration itself will be contemplative in nature as we draw on methods from the Tree of Contemplative Practices as developed by the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society.

Our practice will be grounded in participatory theory (as developed in the field of transpersonal psychology by Jorge Ferrer and Jacob Sherman) and explore anti-oppressive dimensions in contemplative pedagogies.

Learning Objectives:

Chaplains are essential to the emotional, spiritual, and psychosocial wellbeing of children and families in pediatric healthcare settings. However, anecdotally many chaplains report a lack of pediatric-specific academic and clinical training to help them recognize the range of ways in which children may understand healthcare encounters, or experience and describe their spirituality. Coursework and training for chaplaincy do not always include exposure to seminal and contemporary developmental theories and practices of play as children’s primary vehicle of self-expression, communication, and learning. Also, many chaplains-in-training are not provided with opportunities to study childhood spirituality theories and how children express their spiritual experience. 

In response to the above challenges, the purpose of this collaborative, mixed-methods research study is to examine pediatric chaplains’ perceptions of their academic and clinical preparedness for working with children in healthcare settings. Specifically, this survey- and interview-based study, funded by the Pediatric Chaplains Network, illuminates strengths, gaps, and barriers to enhance training in the developmental and psychosocial needs of infants, children, and youth who may receive spiritual care services in pediatric healthcare settings. This presentation further illuminates issues of equity and access to pediatric training for minoritized chaplains.

In its 100-year history ACPE has been in dialogue with cognate fields in social sciences, understanding and caring for people from different cultures and in different contexts. Professional Coaching is an emerging field in the helping professions and the business world with promising potential for enriching our practices of spiritual care education and therapy.

Coaching is both a discipline and an art. It is partnering with clients in a thought-provoking and creative process that inspires them to maximize their personal and professional potential. Professional coaching competencies (as set forth by the International Coaching Federation, the most globally recognized credentialing program for coach practitioners) align with many practices of spiritual care education and psychotherapy. The workshop highlights aligned competencies, such as presence, effective communication, client-centeredness, evoking awareness, and cultivating learning. The workshop introduces the main competencies through clinical demonstrations and highlights implications for the education of spiritual care providers and psychotherapists. 

Graduate programs accredited by the Council for the Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs (CACREP, 2024) require multicultural counseling as an important aspect of that curriculum with client diversity as an important component in identity development and interpersonal functioning in society.  This educational mandate highlights the importance of research that expands on what we know about marginalized populations who are vulnerable to stigmatization and unfair treatment through bullying, ostracism, and other social injustices (McGraw et al, 2023).  Understandably, these clients often struggle with negative mental health issues that can be complicated by unhealthy anger (Strong et al, 2022) and/or spiritual conflict (Captari et al, 2022) that would require a spiritually integrated psychotherapy treatment plan.  

To date, there is very little peer-reviewed research available on the “furry” population with the bulk of this work falling on the shoulders of an international team of psychologists and social workers known as the Furscience Team.  This team of researchers have welcomed our counseling study items as a part of their most recent survey effort in July of 2024 and this presentation has been designed to disseminate these new learnings.  The content shared in this presentation will help counseling professionals to gain insight into the furry experience for clients who either identify as a member of this community or have family members who identify in this way.  Our hope is to continue this research relationship with the Furscience Team and conduct additional research in the future.

ACPE Outcomes and Indicators explicitly focus on CPE students learning to conduct spiritual assessments that guide their spiritual care. Spiritual assessment is one of the most important tasks of chaplains and is fundamental for effective spiritual care and interprofessional communication. However, little is known about how educators teach spiritual assessments and what spiritual care providers tell us about their learning experiences. In a national survey, we asked more than 1,000 chaplains about what prepared them well for conducting spiritual assessments. We also asked more than 100 educators in the same survey about the ways in which they incorporated teaching about spiritual assessments in CPE.

This workshop will share what we have learned from educators and chaplains regarding spiritual assessment education. We will explore how we can apply our findings and existing research evidence to inform best practices in spiritual care education. This conversation also offers a starting point for improving spiritual assessment and care and the integration of spiritual care with the care provided alongside interprofessional colleagues.

Educational Objectives:

This format of reviewing an interaction with a student or patient helps you be more comprehensive in describing and understanding the interaction, presenting and writing about it for consultation, and also clarifying what you are doing when consulting with colleagues and in supervision. It is especially helpful when writing vignettes, which are part of writing your theory papers. It assists you in comprehensively reviewing your supervision and spiritual care.

This workshop is a combined interactive and presentation session reporting on an anecdotal research project regarding salient words spoken during CPE programs that members remember as having been pivotal in their career and/or life formation. The research project is described below and on the attached page. Workshop participants will involve themselves in small group discussions, receive input on the results of the survey, and discuss implications for CPE program design and practice. Data may be processed regarding demographics such as age, gender orientation, ethnicity, and/or professional organization. A simple graphic (provisional copy attached) will be used to illustrate the presentation and help guide the discussion.