Gregory A. Stoddard, D.Min, on mutual learning and exploration

Individual Supervision in Clinical Pastoral Education

At its best, CPE supervision is a mutual exploration of pastoral care dilemmas brought by the student to the supervisory hour. The keys to this brief description are the words “mutual exploration,” “pastoral care dilemmas,” and “brought by the student.” A “mutual exploration” means that the supervisor and student hold their conversation in a spirit of mutual learning and exploration. This means that the supervisor is as much a student as a teacher; and the student is as much a teacher as a student. They are mutually dependent on the other to openly enter the exploration, learn from it, and teach the other what they know about the experience.

By “pastoral care dilemmas,” I mean the predicaments met when responding to people encountering life situations, both routine and complex, that raise questions of ultimate meaning and purpose. These dilemmas are the core subject matter for supervision. They become the jumping off point for exploring the student’s experience of the event and the dilemmas posed; how it intersects with their own values, attitudes and assumptions, and the challenge of constructing a meaningful response.

Optimally, students bring these dilemmas to supervision. Alternatively, the supervisor asks, “What shall we discuss today?” The quality of exploration that follows is a function of growing trust in the supervisory relationship. The student increasingly trusts the supervisor as a non-judgmental partner capable of understanding the dilemma and connecting empathetically with the student in the experience. The supervisor increasingly trusts the student to bring up important issues and to enter the dialogue openly, not holding back what may embarrass or reflect badly on the student.

The supervisor uses a framework of inquiry to guide the exploration. Though held by the supervisor, this framework gradually, over time, is incorporated by the student as a framework for reflecting on their pastoral care. The framework at minimum consists of three lenses through which the supervisor views the exploration. These are the event as an “experience;” “theory” that may inform an understanding of the event; and “theology,” a perspective on the big questions surfacing in the event.

The supervisory conversation begins with the student’s experience of the dilemma (this frequently involves some discussion of the dilemma’s antecedents in the student’s personal experience). Here, the supervisor depends on the students to teach about their experience of the event. This is not simply recounting events, or telling a story. Early in supervision (when students are invested in demonstrating competence, avoiding their experience, or the supervisor’s judgment) students may seem stuck in the story. Persistent storytelling may be an avoidance of the supervisor’s inquiry into their experience. Student and supervisor may even collude in avoiding difficult experiences by staying in the story. The challenge is to enter the experience together, fresh.

One weakness of beginning supervisors may be a lack of theoretical perspective. We (supervisors) often start supervisory education fresh out of our own clinical education, loving the educational process, even finding it life-giving, but lacking seasoning in our own practice. The theoretical lens required in CPE is not about explaining or reducing experience to a set of principles. Rather, theory in CPE supervision serves the purpose of deepening understanding and suggesting creative alternatives to help us get unstuck when caught on shaky ground. What is typically untenable in pastoral care is mistaking our limited personal perspective for truth. That is, in the absence of a good theory we tend to believe ourselves implicitly. A good theory can help us question our experience and look at it in completely different ways.

The third lens of the framework looks at theological questions rooted in the dilemma. The exploration through the lens of theology means paying attention the “big questions” arising from the experience. This third lens differentiates good clinical pastoral supervision from good clinical supervision. The student’s experience of the pastoral dilemma explicitly and implicitly raises questions, “Where is God in this?” “Who am I to help the person?” Why do we suffer so?” Supervision as mutual exploration, held in the lens of theology, means the student and supervisor might together experience something new and powerful of the divine through the event or find creative ways to think of the divine in relation to the dilemma. They may feel greater latitude and flexibility relating to the event and, unexpectedly, see something new and alive rather than rote and well worn.

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