Abstract:
This
is a book review on “The Work of the Chaplain” by Paget and McCormack. The
subject is chaplaincy. The purpose is to offer insights into many different
chaplain ministries and to clarify the nature of the work of the chaplain. The
thesis is that chaplains carry out the Great Commission when they go and serve
people in crisis in a pluralistic arena as representatives of God. The authors
have remained focused on describing the work of the chaplains throughout the
book. However, they are too ambitious in their purpose, as there are many
articles in the literatures on role confusions in chaplaincy, and a lack of a
clear definition of “spirituality.” Nevertheless, it is a good introductory
book as most of the tasks and skills needed by a chaplain are mentioned.
However, “work” is practical and one cannot understand the work of a chaplain
without practical experience in chaplaincy.
This
is a book review on “The Work of the Chaplain” by Paget and McCormack. The
title tells us that the subject of this book is chaplaincy. The target audience
is Christians, especially “pastors, students, chaplains and laity who seek to
provide effective spiritual care.” The purpose of this book is “to offer
insights into many different chaplain ministries and to clarify the nature of
the work” of the chaplain.[1] The
thesis is that chaplains provide spiritual care to people even when they are
not in church, and especially in crisis situations.[2]
Therefore, chaplains carry out the Great Commission when they “go” and meet
people in their pain and suffering[3] in
pluralistic settings, providing the same spiritual care to all people in the
identified ministry group.[4] Christian
chaplains act as ambassadors for God through their “character, integrity,
compassion and witness.”[5]
The
book structure consists of an introduction, three major parts, and a
conclusion. The introduction gives us the purpose of the book. Part one talks
about the foundations for chaplaincy and consists of two chapters. The first
chapter is on the historical and legal foundations for chaplaincy. The second
chapter is on the biblical basis for chaplaincy. Part two talks about the work
of the chaplain and consists of seven chapters. The first chapter covers the
ministry tasks and competencies for chaplains in general. The next few chapters
talk about specific settings of chaplaincy: military chaplaincy, health-care
chaplaincy, workplace chaplaincy, correctional and prison chaplaincy,
first-responder chaplaincy, and other chaplain specialties. Part three talks
about the person of the chaplain and consists of three chapters. The first
chapter talks about keeping the chaplain accountable. The next chapter is on
“minefields” for the chaplain. The third chapter talks about health and
empowerment for the chaplain. In the conclusion chapter, the book closes with a
repetition of the words from the Great Commission, “therefore go…”
Paget and McCormack use a catalogue of relevant topics to provide
information about the work of the chaplains. Chapter one gives us background
knowledge about the origins of chaplaincy. The word chaplain has to do with a holy man in the fourth-century, Bishop
Martin, who shared his cloak with a beggar.[6]
The most documented type of chaplaincy is military chaplaincy. The second most
documented is health-care chaplaincy. Many other types of chaplaincy have developed as an
outgrowth of military and hospital chaplaincy, such as workplace chaplaincy.[7] Chaplain ministry developed because people
needed spiritual care even when they are not in church, and especially in
crisis situations. Furthermore, the chaplain is to provide service to everyone
who requests it, not just those in the same faith tradition as the chaplain.[8]
Chapter
two gives the biblical basis for chaplaincy using various passages. Matthew 25
is used to illustrate the importance of caring for the marginalised people in
our society,[9] that chaplains are to take the initiative to
seek out those in need of ministry,[10] and that “good works” must accompany faith.[11] Matthew 26:36-45 explains the ministry of the
presence, where the chaplain acts as a representative for God in “keeping
watch” over people in their darkest moments.[12] Acts 17:16-34 is a reminder for chaplains to
be culturally sensitive in a pluralistic environment.[13] This is a very important chapter to place in
the beginning of the book as it explains why the work of the chaplain is
consistent with God’s command in the Scriptures.
Chapter
three describes the four main ministry tasks of
chaplains: minister, pastor, intercessor and healer. As a religious
minister, the chaplain performs rites and rituals and acts as a religious
witness to his or her own faith tradition. The chaplain is a priest who stands
before the people to cry out to God.[14]
The chaplain is a pastor who provides spiritual care,[15] which
includes emotional support, physical assistance, relational reconciliation and
spiritual encouragement.[16]
The chaplain assesses the needs of the person, offers counsel, and makes
appropriate referrals.[17] Chaplains
serve as intercessors and advocates.[18]
As a personal advocate, the chaplain helps, advises, exhorts, comforts,
strengthens, encourages and intercedes for the individual. The chaplain acts as
an institutional advocate by clarifying appropriate action, suitable outcomes,
right behaviour, or proper protocol.[19] The chaplain is a healer concerned with a person’s holistic condition[20]
and need the following skills to address the whole person: being present,
listening, encouraging, crisis intervention and teaching or providing
information.[21]
Chapters
four to nine describe the works of the chaplain more specifically, with each
chapter focusing on a type of chaplaincy specialty. It is natural that Paget
and McCormack begin with military chaplaincy, the oldest and most regulated
form of chaplaincy. This is followed by health-care chaplaincy, the second most
documented type of chaplaincy, and then several other types of chaplain
specialities. The authors give us the historical backgrounds, unique
characteristics, basic training requirements and specific duties of each
chaplain specialty. Since I am doing my fieldwork in hospital chaplaincy, I will
examine what the authors say about health-care chaplaincy in more detail.
Chaplaincy
in the US hospital developed in the mid-1920s.[22] There are several types of health-care
chaplains, including PRN chaplains who need to do at least 400 hours of Clinical
Pastoral Education (CPE), staff chaplains who need seminary education,
ordination and endorsement, department chair chaplains who may need a DMin, CPE
supervisors and CPE interns.[23]
Professional health-care chaplains are employees of the health-care agency and
often the first to be terminated when institutional administrators look for
areas to cut costs.[24]
Untrained volunteer clergy are often ineffective and sometimes damaging.[25] Health-care
chaplains may perform all the rites and offices of a religious leader,[26] act
as intercessors and advocates, and provide spiritual
care through the ministries of presence, listening, and dialogue with patients,
family and other staff, thus helping people re-evaluate values and beliefs that
give meaning to life and relationships.[27]
Chapters
ten to twelve move away from the works and onto the person of the chaplain. Chaplains
maintain accountability themselves and others when they practice “according to
their institutional expectations, individual faiths and beliefs, professional
standards, legal statues and personal ethics.”[28]
Chaplains need to be careful of “minefields,” especially with relation to confidentiality,
making accurate assessments and setting personal boundaries.[29] Chaplains
need care too, from their institutions and professional organisations, as well
as developing good self-care habits, so that they do not develop compassion
fatigue and burnout.[30]
The book then closes with the Great Commission, so this is clearly the
“take-home message.”[31]
The
authors did a good job in remaining focused on the topic of “the work of the
chaplain,” and at the concluding chapter returned back to their thesis about
how chaplains carry out the Great Commission when they go and serve people in
crisis in a pluralistic arena as representatives of God. The chapters flow logically
in its arrangement. However, when I searched the literature, I was overwhelmed
by the amount of articles and books on chaplaincy. What complicates the picture
is that chaplaincy is still “a profession in process.”[32]
Therefore, the authors seem too ambitious when they say their purpose is to
clarify the nature of the work of the chaplain.
Hospital
chaplains are members of two professions.[33]
They are licensed by the church and employed as hospital staff, so there is
confusion as to whether chaplains are clergy or health professionals.[34]
According to a survey of chaplains, more than 50% see themselves as
counsellors, some see themselves as professionals, and only 11% think they are
religious functionaries.[35] Chaplains
are placed at the intersection of issues: illness, health, secularisation,
belief, professionalism, etc.[36] and
often experience role conflicts.[37] They
do not have a monopoly on the spiritual care of patients, as good nurses and
doctors play a role in this too.[38] Their
work overlaps with social workers and local clergy.[39]
There
are many challenges hospital chaplains encounter in their work. They are often
called when there is “nothing to do” from a medical perspective,[40]
which puts them at the danger of undervaluing the care they provide.[41]
Chaplains are pressured by a need to define their role in improving health care
and being “therapeutically effective,”[42]
but their work is difficult to measure in conventional quality improvement (QI)
terms, as the precise duties of their job are unspecified.[43]
Furthermore, it is widely agreed that “spirituality” is difficult to define.[44] Goodliff
contends that many clergy adopted aspects of ‘new-psychology’ uncritically to
boost their credibility.[45]
Mohrmann
believes “the difference between chaplains and other clinicians is that
chaplains are specialists in spiritual care” and are “professionals responsible
for creating “sacred space” within the hospital.”[46]
SYWDC defines chaplains as “representatives of their faith communities which
require them to live out the commitment of those communities to the wider world.”[47]
Macritchie describes the chaplain as a translator, whose work is to bridge gaps
and create connections. The translator occupies the uncomfortable space between
two languages, or between two ways of seeing things, and has to find a common
language, language that is known to both parties.[48]
Chaplains also translate situations, eg. Is the family in denial?[49]
Recurrent
themes among the literature on the skills need by chaplains to provide
spiritual care include offering presence, listening,[50]
and assisting with the search for meaning.[51]
More specifically, hospital chaplains are often seen as being experts on
matters of life and death,[52] who
often have to address “questions of life, death and suffering,”[53]
help people find hope,[54] and
help relieve the spiritual suffering of patients and families.[55] WHO
spiritual-care intervention codings include that of spiritual assessment,
spiritual counselling, spiritual support and spiritual ritual.[56] Paget
and McCormack’s overview of the main ministry tasks of chaplains in chapter
three mentions most these skills and tasks, but only briefly. So reading this
book alone is inadequate and other complementary materials are needed.[57] However,
“work” is practical, and one cannot understand the work of a chaplain unless
one has practical experiences in chaplaincy. Although a good introductory book,
I cannot understand what chaplains do just from reading this book.
Bibliography:
Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Hospital Chaplains, episodes 1-8.
Sydney: ABC, 2012.
Barger, George W. et al. “The institutional
chaplain: constructing a role definition.” The
Journal of Pastoral Care 38 (1984): 176-186.
Brault, Emily R. “Pastoral care and
counseling in prison: what works?” The
Journal of Pastoral Care & Counseling 68 (2014): 1-10.
Cadge, Wendy. Paging
God: Religion in the Halls of Medicine. London: University of Chicago
Press, 2013.
Carey,
Lindsay Brian and Barbara Gleeson. “WHO-ICD-10-AM Spiritual-Care Intervention
Codings.” Accessed December 7, 2018.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/322113563_Spiritual-Care_Intervention_Codings_-_Summary_Table_WHO-ICD-10-AM
De Vries,
Raymond et al. “Lost in Translation: The Chaplain's Role in Health Care.” Hastings Center Report 38 (2008): 23-27.
Fitchett,
George et al. “The Role of Professional Chaplains on Pediatric Palliative Care
Teams: Perspectives from Physicians and Chaplains.” Journal of Palliative Medicine 14 (2011): 704-707.
Galek,
Kathleen et al. “Referrals to chaplains: The role of religion and spirituality
in healthcare settings.” Mental Health,
Religion & Culture 10 (2007): 363-377.
Goodliff, Paul.
Care in a Confused Climate: Pastoral Care and Postmodern Culture. London:
Darton Longman and Todd, 1998.
Idler,
Ellen L. et al. “Practical Matters and Ultimate Concerns, 'Doing,' and 'Being':
A Diary Study of the Chaplain's Role in the Care of the Seriously Ill in an
Urban Acute Care Hospital.” Journal for
the Scientific Study of Religion 54 (2015): 722-738.
Lopez,
Charles J Jr. “Hospice Chaplains: Presence and Listening at the End of Life.” Currents in Theology and Mission 45
(2018): 45-51.
Macritchie,
Iain. “The Chaplain as Translator.” Journal
of Religion and Health 40 (2001): 205-211.
Miller, David Ward and James Dennis LoRusso.
“Faith at work.” U.S. Catholic 83
(2018): 19-22.
Mohrmann, Margaret E. “Ethical Grounding for
a Profession of Hospital Chaplaincy.” Hastings
Center Report 38 (2008): 18-23.
Nolan,
Steve. “Chaplain as 'hopeful presence': working with dying people.” Practical Theology 4 (2011): 165-179.
Orchard, Helen. Hospital
Chaplaincy: Modern, Dependable? Sheffield: Lincoln Theological Institute
for the Study of Religion and Society, 2000.
Paget, Naomi K. and Janet R.
McCormack. The
Work of the Chaplain. Valley Forge: Judson Press, 2006.
South Yorkshire
Workforce Development Confederation. Caring for the Spirit: A Strategy for
the Chaplaincy and Spiritual Healthcare Workforce. Sheffield, 2003.
Swift, Christopher. Hospital chaplaincy in the twenty-first century: the crisis of
spiritual care on the NHS. Farnham: Ashgate, 2014.
Threlfall-Holmes, Miranda and Mark Newitt. Being a Chaplain. London: SPCK, 2011.
Wittenberg-Lyles, Elaine et al.
“Communication Dynamics in Hospice Teams: Understanding the Role of the
Chaplain in Interdisciplinary Team Collaboration.” Journal of Palliative Medicine 11 (2008): 1330-1335.
Woodward, J.W. A
Study of the Role of the Acute Health Care Chaplain in England. Open
University, : School of Health and Social Welfare, 1998.
[1] Naomi K. Paget, and Janet
R. McCormack, The Work of the Chaplain
(Valley Forge: Judson Press, 2006), v.
[2] Paget and McCormack, The Work of the Chaplain, 4.
[3] Ibid., 117.
[4] Ibid., 4.
[5] Ibid., 117.
[6] Paget and McCormack, The Work of the Chaplain, 2. His cloak (capella in
Latin) was enshrined as a reminder of the sacred act of compassion. Chaplain is derived from capella.
[7] Ibid., 3.
[8] Ibid., 4.
[9] Ibid., 5.
[10] Ibid., 6.
[11] Ibid., 8.
[12] Ibid., 10.
[13] Ibid., 11.
[14] Ibid., 14-17.
[15] Ibid., 18.
[16] Ibid., 22.
[17] Paget and McCormack, The Work of the Chaplain, 19-20. If more
than 4-6 counselling sessions are needed then referral to a clinician is
needed.
[18] Ibid., 23.
[19] Ibid., 24.
[20] Ibid., 27.
[21] Ibid., 27-32.
[22] Ibid., 47.
[23] Ibid., 48-50.
[24] Ibid., 51.
[25] Ibid., 52.
[26] Paget and McCormack, The Work of the Chaplain, 53.
[27] Ibid., 52-54.
[28] Ibid., 96.
[29] Ibid., 101-111.
[30] Ibid., 112-114.
[31] Ibid., 116.
[32] Wendy Cadge, Paging
God: Religion in the Halls of Medicine (London: University of Chicago Press,
2013), 247.
[33] Margaret E. Mohrmann,
“Ethical Grounding for a Profession of Hospital Chaplaincy,” Hastings Center Report 38 (2008): 19.
[34] Christopher Swift, Hospital chaplaincy in the twenty-first
century: the crisis of spiritual care on the NHS (Farnham: Ashgate, 2014),
58, 131.
[35] George W. Barger, et al.
“The institutional chaplain: constructing a role definition,” The Journal of Pastoral Care 38 (1984):
182-183.
[36] J.W. Woodward, A Study of the Role of the Acute Health Care
Chaplain in England (Open University: School of Health and Social Welfare,
1998), 229.
Swift, Hospital
chaplaincy, 155.
[37] Elaine Wittenberg-Lyles,
et al. “Communication Dynamics in Hospice Teams: Understanding the Role of the
Chaplain in Interdisciplinary Team Collaboration,” Journal of Palliative Medicine 11 (2008): 1332.
[38] Mohrmann, “Ethical
Grounding for a Profession of Hospital Chaplaincy,” 18.
[39] De Vries, et al. “Lost in
Translation,” 25.
[40] Kathleen Galek, et al.
“Referrals to chaplains: The role of religion and spirituality in healthcare
settings,” Mental Health, Religion &
Culture 10 (2007): 370; Steve Nolan, “Chaplain as 'hopeful presence':
working with dying people,” Practical
Theology 4 (2011): 165; Swift, Hospital
chaplaincy, 183.
[41] Swift, Hospital chaplaincy, 184.
[42] Helen Orchard, Hospital Chaplaincy: Modern, Dependable?
(Sheffield: Lincoln Theological Institute for the Study of Religion and Society,
2000), 151.
[43] De Vries, et al. “Lost in
Translation,” 24.
[44] Swift, Hospital chaplaincy, 69.
[45] Paul Goodliff, Care in a Confused Climate: Pastoral Care
and Postmodern Culture (London:
Darton Longman and Todd, 1998), 18.
[46] Mohrmann, “Ethical
Grounding for a Profession of Hospital Chaplaincy,” 18, 22.
[47] South Yorkshire Workforce
Development Confederation, Caring for the
Spirit: A Strategy for the Chaplaincy and Spiritual Healthcare Workforce
(Sheffield, 2003), paragraph 33.
[48] Iain Macritchie, “The
Chaplain as Translator,” Journal of
Religion and Health 40 (2001): 206, 210.
[49] De Vries, et al. “Lost in
Translation,” 24.
[50] Ellen L. Idler, et al.
“Practical Matters and Ultimate Concerns, 'Doing,' and 'Being': A Diary Study
of the Chaplain's Role in the Care of the Seriously Ill in an Urban Acute Care
Hospital,” Journal for the Scientific
Study of Religion 54 (2015): 735; Charles J. Lopez Jr., “Hospice Chaplains:
Presence and Listening at the End of Life,” Currents
in Theology and Mission 45 (2018): 46-47; George Fitchett, et al. Spiritual Care in Practice: Case Studies in
Healthcare Chaplaincy (London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2015), 18; David
Ward Miller and James Dennis LoRusso, “Faith at work,” U.S. Catholic 83 (2018): 21; Emily R. Brault, “Pastoral care and
counseling in prison: what works?” The
Journal of Pastoral Care & Counseling 68 (2014): 1. Miranda Threlfall-Holmes
and Mark Newitt. Being a Chaplain (London:
SPCK, 2011), xvi.
[51] E. Williams, “Spiritual
agenda for doctors?” Scottish Journal of
Health Care Chaplaincy 11 (2008): 2–8; Mark Newitt, “The role and skills of
a hospital chaplain: reflections based on a case study,” Practical Theology 3 (2010): 163; Lopez Jr., “Hospice Chaplains,”
49; Miller and LoRusso, “Faith at work,” 20; Swift, Hospital chaplaincy, 134.
[52] Williams, “Spiritual
agenda for doctors?” 2–8.
[53] Swift, Hospital chaplaincy, 150.
[54] Newitt, “The role and
skills of a hospital chaplain,” 163; Nolan, “Chaplain as 'hopeful presence',” 177.
[55] Fitchett, et al. “The
Role of Professional Chaplains on Pediatric Palliative Care Teams,” 706.
[56] “WHO-ICD-10-AM
Spiritual-Care Intervention Codings,” Carey, Lindsay Brian and Barbara Gleeson,
accessed December 7, 2018,
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/322113563_Spiritual-Care_Intervention_Codings_-_Summary_Table_WHO-ICD-10-AM
[57] Threlfall-Holmes and
Newitt. Being a Chaplain; Australian
Broadcasting Corporation, Hospital
Chaplains, episodes 1-8 (Sydney: ABC, 2012). Threslfall-Holmes and Newitt’s
book, “Being a chaplain,” which takes the approach of having different
chaplains describing their experience in narrative forms, can be read to
complement Paget and McCormack’s book. Watching video recordings on the day of
a chaplain also helps. Books or videos on communication and counselling skills
also help.
