ThiemeWorks - The Missing Link

The training I received for the ministry is relevant to this discussion. There were three years of intensive study, all of which was useful, of course. But the most valuable three months was what we called "clinical pastoral education." In a hospital setting, usually, sometimes a prison or other alternative site, we met every day in a group of six, a "growth group," as we said back then, with a very good supervisor, which was necessary for success.

We showed up, were assigned to wards, and told to go be chaplains. Period.

Then, the supervisor talked to us, nurses, doctors, professional chaplains and got feedback about our performance. Every day we brought our experiences to the group where we were quickly and directly challenged if we were unaware of a lack of congruence between what we felt, thought, said, and did. The goal was to provide feedback that enabled us to integrate what we learned on the job with how we presented ourselves (in ministry, unlike IT and infosec, the person and the interpersonal are the real tools, a context for meaningful pastoral care that was both realistic and compassionate was the intention). We did weekly verbatims, detailing complete dialogs with patients, and were critiqued, and we met weekly with the supervisor for intensive reflection on all of it. We wound up telling him or her just about everything.

Every twelve days we did a 32 hour shift, two full days and a night on-call night, and responded to emergency room traumas and especially DOAs. We often met people at the door as they arrived with their suddenly-dead spouse or child and mediated the grief and horror of the experience.

Unless you were unconscious, you learned that the catechetical approach to ministry (and often to life) - thinking you knew and telling people what was true - did not work. What worked better was what we called the theological approach, i.e. embodying what you believed in how you behaved, being fully present, making what you believed implicit in your interaction with someone, not giving a lecture from your head to theirs.

One week was also dedicated to confronting "death." We processed in the group and with the supervisor the critical experiences of our lives in relationship to death so that when we dealt with such absolutes in peoples' lives, we were not glib, evasive, or in denial about our real feelings about loss and death - which creates incongruity. We learned not to give glib smiley-faced answers and to know when we didn’t know.

“Death week” included immersion in an autopsy, passing around the brain (the regulars always had side bets on the weight of the brain and one who was most wrong had to buy coffee), the inner organs, glands, winding up covered in blood and with the indelible odors of body cavities imprinted forever and deeply. One did not easily forget the way the face, where we read so much humanity, wrinkled with simulated emotion as it was slid up off the skull so they could drill a trap door to remove the brain. That drill was real loud, too. It was very difficult to think of death in an airy-fairy way after seeing the brain of someone you had talked with for weeks in a bottle with a label, taking his organs as they came out of the bloody cavity, etc. Anyone who thinks the word "animal" applies to OTHER animals ought to do this.

The integration of a moral/ethical perspective with a realistic theological approach to life and our work, and a deep profound respect for the facticity of creation as is where is was the goal of that three month session. I remember still with gratitude and affection the guiding hand of my supervisor at Lutheran General Hospital in Park Ridge IL.

In short, the action-reflection model with support for clarifying our feelings and aligning them with our thinking, under the guidance of a well-trained mentor, is critical to the sort of learning such interaction can provide. But the leader MUST have gone through even deeper training so they do not unintentionally skew conversations in any direction of unreality, and in turn, when we did our years of intensive counseling, often during crises, in our ministries, whatever we had not faced and resolved or integrated in ourselves would be an obstacle to allowing the same issues to surface clearly in a counseling session. (example: I was much more effective in marital counseling AFTER my divorce because the issues I hesitated to face before it happened, being afraid, were up and out, known and seen, and I did not subtly divert conversations away from touching on issues too painful for me to face.)

I cannot imagine meaningful ethical reflection without thinking of this highly effective model. Lectures without self-knowledge and self-understanding become the heavy artillery of defending our frightened or fragile selves and defeating another. The catechetical model rather than the incarnational prevents reality from showing up in helpful ways. But it does takes courage to move through that process which is why I think so many avoid it. The courage comes from mutual support, mutual understanding, and ultimately, the mutuality implicit in our shared humanity.