Transition to Chaplaincy

A chaplain is a minister serving in a specialized context.

Whether that context is in a hospital, in hospice care, within a corporate setting, as part of a sports team, in the military, in prisons or educational settings, a chaplain brings spiritual care to the places where it’s needed most: where people are suffering, stressed and asking the questions that help them make meaning in their lives in the context where “life” is taking place. Chaplains minister within diverse contexts and to all walks of life, providing spiritual care for people of all faiths and for those of none.

Distinct from the ministry of a congregational pastor, a chaplain goes to the people where they live and work and have experienced a sense of spiritual calling to work in interfaith, intercultural contexts where the church cannot always go.

Chaplaincy is a calling, not a job. It is a religious vocation. It is meaningful work through which God utilizes our acquired skills and our individual calling to develop who we are, making it more than what we do. Chaplains do all sorts of things in service to their calling to serve and care for others and their spiritual and emotional needs.

In one lifetime, a person may have a series of jobs or positions that constitutes a career. When one is called to chaplaincy ministry, regardless of which job they may hold, they are a chaplain, a minister in a specialized context or role.

Remember, every chaplain is a minister, but not every minister is a chaplain.

No day in the ministry of a chaplain is like the day before. In addition to providing spiritual care to the people and system within which a chaplain serves, they also provide emotional care, grief care and support.

Chaplains seek to facilitate meaningful connections in an individual’s faith, meeting them wherever they are on their spiritual journey. They ease meaning-making amidst crisis and tragedy, through losses of all kinds. Chaplains also assist with religious rituals that are meaningful to those in their care. This may mean performing rituals and ordinances from their own faith, collaborating with religious leaders from other faiths or working creatively with those they serve to create new and meaningful rituals of healing and wholeness.

In health care settings, chaplains participate in discussions surrounding ethics and ethical practices, respond to emergencies, assist people with processing advance directives and advocate on behalf of patients and care team members.

In addition to a graduate theological degree, professional chaplains have four units of CPE (equivalent to one and a half years of residency).

CPE at AdventHealth University (AHU) is in the context of hospital chaplaincy, but the ACPE objectives and outcomes that guide the CPE programs at AHU are there to help students learn and grow so that the competencies they develop while in CPE are transferable to any context in ministry.

Chaplains are professionally certified by the Association of Professional Chaplains (APC). After completion of the academic and CPE units, chaplains are required to complete 2,000 professional practice hours of chaplaincy work, in any context, before applying for certification. The certification process is outlined on the APC website.

The outcomes and objectives of CPE focus on four primary areas: spiritual formation and integration, awareness of self and others, relational dynamics and spiritual care interventions. These areas develop the minister’s sense of self, their skills in the practice of spiritual care and their ability to reflect on their ministry, their theology and their knowledge of behavioral sciences.

These skills and reflections integrate the human called to spiritual care ministry, what they have studied and learned about theology, what they understand about what it means to be human, what they have learned from the people they are ministering to and to help inform how ministry is offered to the people and in the context in which they are called to serve.