’ve even heard there is a chaplain assigned to a NASCAR track,” reports Dr. Jackson Kytle. He is illustrating the eclectic outreach of the profession of pastoral care, while emphasizing that the overwhelming majority of chaplains work in the more demanding environments of hospitals, hospices, schools, or factories. Kytle, as vice president for academic affairs at the HealthCare Chaplaincy, is in charge of the program “Partnerships for Change: Transforming the Profession of Pastoral Care.”
Theirs is an ambitious project, assisted by a $1.1 million grant from the Templeton Foundation, to transform the curriculum and the whole approach to the graduate education of pastoral faculty. The expression “pastoral faculty” is, itself, part of the innovative process, replacing the previous terminology that might equally have applied to a store manager. “Supervisor is not a distinguished term,” observes Kytle. He hopes that eventually an academic ranking system will be introduced, to accord more dignity and recognition to the profession of chaplaincy.
The HealthCare Chaplaincy is well placed to act as the agent of this program of transformation. Incorporated in 1961 and based in the heart of New York, it is one of the largest and most influential multi-faith, not-for-profit comprehensive centers for pastoral research, education, and care in the world. Each year it trains over 150 post-graduate students from more than 20 faith groups and it deploys around 35 professional chaplains serving 17 partner medical facilities.
“We see ourselves as an advocacy organization in the sense that we are trying to advance the profession. That’s our goal. We focus on integrative healthcare and the interactions between spirituality and health,” says Kytle. He feels that the new program has taken more time than was initially estimated to get up and running, but it is now gaining momentum. “We’ve hired key faculty and I’m pleased with the way an academic culture is being created.”
In Kytle’s view, the entire chaplaincy profession, while attracting dedicated and gifted people, has not kept apace with contemporary theory and practice. He thinks there is a widespread recognition of this deficiency among his colleagues and an emerging consensus on the need for updating. “We have been going about it in a Templeton-humble way but, at the same time, pushing hard. The response to our efforts has been exciting and gratifying.”
The challenge of innovation in the education of chaplains is to import the most contemporary insights from the social and behavioral sciences into chaplaincy studies. “I’m drawing on current work in cognitive social psychology and advances in neurobiology that point to the ways in which pastoral interactions are going to be very dynamic.”
He realizes that it is an audacious concept to set out to catalyze the transformation of an entire profession, no matter how receptive its members may be to change. The biggest question in the field of pastoral care is how best to assess the effectiveness of the professional work of chaplains. The objectives of their work are spiritual enrichment and integration, but they operate in a healthcare environment that is financially constrained and necessarily preoccupied with cost-cutting. So, an almost econometric approach is often the norm in assessing the work of a chaplain who may have to spend many hours assisting a family that is coping with a member who is undergoing an organ transplant, or has been involved in a serious automobile accident.
Whatever the assessment may be, it is certain that the chaplain will be able to provide a better service if his or her own education has been appropriately focused. “We’re training a new generation of pastoral faculty so that they can provide better support for healthcare chaplains who provide the direct spiritual care,” says Kytle. “We hope that will be reflected in better services to patients, loved ones, and hospital staff because those are the three constituencies for chaplains, probably in that order.”
He believes that the challenge with which the Templeton grant confronted his team has actually increased its capability. “It meant that we had to reach for a big vision. I think a lot of the potential for change came out of the requirement that we reach high and formulate a bold agenda. Will we achieve every part of that? Time will tell. But I think the profession is going to benefit more if we follow the philosophy of the Victorian poet and playwright, Robert Browning, that “Man’s grasp should exceed his reach—How else shall he heaven meet.”