Chaplain Plain and Tall

“It’s not the horse you ride that matters it’s how well you stay in the saddle!” Teddy Roosevelt knew a thing or two about developing new programs while selling wild ideas. So, too, the professional chaplain seeking to create a pastoral care program or department in a community hospital must sell ideas that may seem initially to be “wild” to both managers and volunteers.

If you’ve spent any time around hospital managers, you may have noticed that they hold in common a general suspicion of “creativity” and “innovation;” they can smell out these words as “more work” and “potentially irritating to others.” The astute employee must bare in mind that apprehension of potential change is an important evolutionary trait in good managers. They are cautious by nature, frequently a life-saving adaptation in organizational management.

Working with community volunteers requires some understanding of that animal as well. The staff chaplain must be skilled at coaxing diverse personalities into doing more than they thought for longer than they wanted for free and virtual rewards. As a social species, the volunteer has an independent and mercurial nature. Try to introduce standards of practice and you’re just as likely to find a plate of cookies on your desk as a completed report. And introducing new paper work can elicit multiple examples of artful origami.

So, somewhere in between the cautious nature of managers and the free spirit of volunteers, the one-horse staff chaplain must sheriff the small-town frontier of the community hospital. Be aware that staking one’s claim in the development of a professionally directed pastoral care program can alter the roles of others. Some will welcome a pioneering effort; some will resent having territories redrawn. Still others will wait until you prove that what you have to offer is anything more than snake oil.

I was invited to work as the Pastoral Care Coordinator for Island Hospital when I flashed the White Paper on professional chaplaincy as though it were a large badge. But the paper was a map to unexplored territory for some managers. They said, “You’re asking us to go on faith” – as though that were a bad thing.

So, I conducted surveys in every facet of the organization and g-r-a-d-u-a-l-l-y made improvements over the next two years. Eventually, I was invited to attend a management meeting in order to share the improvements being made in Pastoral Care Services. The Quality Assurance Officer quickly branded Pastoral Care Services as “prime beef” to the CEO. Consequently, this past April Island Hospital received a regional Qualis Award for Outstanding Quality Improvements in Healthcare.

Whether your resources are few or many, never underestimate the traits of creativity and innovation. They are the wellspring of the human spirit. In part, professional chaplaincy is the action of ministering at that well. In the frontier of the community hospital, the chaplain must patiently guide the cautious and the wild to new pasture and common ground, toward the watering hole where everyone gathers – sooner or later.

Do you have thoughts about advocacy you’d like to share with your colleagues? Send an e-mail to info@PlainViews.org.