Getting mobile and networked with resources

I first met Janet McCormack, a former army chaplain, at the Yale Center for Faith and Culture’s second annual Workplace Chaplaincy Conference in November of last year. Her forceful presentation on the work of chaplaincy and Denver Seminary’s 9-year old program training chaplains which she directs grabbed my attention. I made plans to visit.

The plans finally came to fruition in April. I was warmly welcomed and my agenda skillfully crafted by Jan herself in consultation with my interests and goals. It began with lunch, at which she described movingly some of the more impressive scenarios on which she cut her chaplain teeth, including one in which she was responsible for removing the weapon from a renegade army recruit holding others hostage. She emotionally disarmed him first by breezing into the holding area, berating the hostile for having gotten her out of bed in the middle of the night. After the ordeal was over, she went outside and threw up.

Such raw courage and ability to do what the situation requires marks Jan and the people she’s trained. One of her graduates, Wayne Hall, was responsible for organizing the next-of-kin response at Ground Zero. Wayne wrote an article on his experience, praising not only the entire training at Denver Seminary, but Jan’s discipline specifically. He, in turn, was praised in an email to Jan by the chief relief officers at Ground Zero, who told her to send any of her graduates their way.

Episcopal chaplains would have much to gain by training at Denver Seminary. A hallmark of their innovative program is their “Teaching and Mentoring Program,” a labor-intensive, character-based pedagogical initiative involving concrete learning contracts crafted and executed in conjunction with faculty, lay leaders and clergy in forming the chaplain-to-be.

At a subsequent meeting Jan and I had during the Associated Professional Chaplain annual conference several weeks later in San Francisco, we discussed ways in which, short of enrolling in a full-time program there, Episcopal chaplains might avail ourselves of Jan’s tremendous talent and experience. She has graciously offered to “get mobile” on our behalf. With proficiencies in brief counseling and crisis intervention, she also offers a course in a compelling and critical overview of the chaplaincy profession in all its gore and glory. I look forward to the prospect of putting her on the road in modular instructive format to the benefit of our folks in the ranks.

Her colleague, the also impressive Naomi Paget, crisis interventionist to the FBI, and adjunct professor at Denver Seminary, has similarly agreed to go where the need is for training our chaplains. This approach, of going where the need is, interestingly corresponds with the very nature of chaplaincy work itself, a point that Jan and Naomi have made in their small but comprehensive book entitled The Work of the Chaplain. Readers will appreciate not only its direct style, its careful distinctions between the work of parish clergy and chaplains and many other insights, but also the appendices with synopses of important topics as well as supporting organizations as contacts and networking sources.

Also at the APC conference, Gina Rose Halpern (of the Chaplaincy Institute for the Arts and Interfaith Ministry; see earlier blogs) and I met with Kimberly Murman, an educational program official for the APC and received their pledge of working with us to provide continuing education credits for any of the programming we put together that they approve. This linkage gives our efforts added effectiveness on many levels, drawing future students from the ranks of the APC membership and conversely linking students in our learning venues with the large network of fellow chaplains of the APC.

In addition to providing stellar faculty for modular mobile units of education, the Chaplaincy Institute is also graciously considering taking on students from the Episcopal Church at their institution for less than what a full degree would require. This is an interesting opportunity that I hope will come to fruition.

This week, I am headed to a national training on reconciliation in L.A. sponsored by Reconcilers.net in response to General Convention’s citation of reconciliation as a key issue for our day. The presenters have traveled widely to dioceses in the U.S. and abroad offering their program which has been tested and honed over the past 12 years. I am hoping that they might be willing and able to join a growing cadre of individuals (in addition to the institutions I am visiting) qualified and dedicated to training our chaplains in flexible and adaptive modes. I look forward to filing my next report on the other side of this fascinating opportunity.

Until then,

Maggie Izutsu