Rev. Dr. Martha R. Jacobs

Looking Back and Moving Forward

It is hard to believe that we are beginning our seventh year of e-publishing PlainViews. It has been an amazing opportunity for me to get to know (via the internet) so many wonderfully talented and passionate chaplains who want to share what they are learning or have learned. It has also been a joy to meet people face to face at conferences, even if you end up with a look of terror on your face when I ask you to consider submitting an article to PV, especially after you tell me what you have been doing at your workplace. Many of these innovative programs have appeared in PV, and sadly, some have not.

Fortunately for all of us, many chaplains took that request to heart. 151 issues of PlainViews have gone out since 2004. We have published 711 articles (including LongView and MyPractice) of which only 14 were written by other than Chaplains, Supervisors or CPE students! My plea that we write more about what we do and how we do it has not gone unheard! Congratulations to those who have submitted articles for whom this was your first publishing experience! May it not be your last! And, to those who write with regularity for other journals, I am grateful that you too have written for PV. Nowhere else is there the on-going “conversation” that captures our profession as it has been growing. We have also published 81 book reviews, of which all but 4 were written by chaplains!

From the responses that I receive to PV from around the world, it has been clear that we have brought the world of pastoral care to a new level of awareness of how and where professional chaplaincy is provided. It has also brought chaplains who work by themselves a sense of community; PV has helped them to feel like they are part of something greater. And, from the emails I receive, PV has helped to bolster the education of CPE students and administrators and doctors and others who are part of the multidisciplinary teams on which we serve. How awesome is that!!!!

On February 5 you will be receiving a request to help us select the 50 Best Professional Practice articles that appeared in the first five years of PV, so that we can offer them in a bound volume, as has been requested by so many of our readers. I hope that you will take this opportunity to help us to honor those chaplains who have submitted the “best” of their work.

And, in keeping with our desire to hear from our readers both the positive and the "needs improvement" comments, we will be sending out our bi-annual reader survey so that we can continue to grow and offer a publication that will provide our profession with a place to come together, share our knowledge, and dialogue about our growing profession and our growing edges. So watch for the notice that will arrive in your email on February 15! Your opinion does make a difference!

I asked members of our Advisory Board to reflect on our past six years. Below are some of their responses. I pray that you will continue to write about your work and how you “do what you do.”

From Rev. Walter J. Smith, S.J., Ph.D.:

There is something valuable to be celebrated as HealthCare Chaplaincy begins the seventh year of its service to other professional chaplains through its publication of PlainViews. Religious traditions find meaning and significance in the number seven. At the completion of God’s creative initiative of six days—as the Book of Genesis 2:3 reminds us—God “blessed the seventh day and sanctified it.”

In establishing PlainViews, HealthCare Chaplaincy recognized a need to provide the profession of chaplaincy with an accessible and reliable forum through which it might discover its voice and regularly share its experience. Through more than 150 issues during the past six years, chaplains and student chaplains have authored 99% of the articles that have been published. For chaplains. By chaplains.

For this creative work, we pause and give grateful thanks. And in that same sabbath spirit, we also humbly recognize the vocation to holiness to which professional chaplains respond with good and generous hearts. The work of PlainViews is sanctified by your witness, your words, and by the living and dying of those for whom you care. Thank you.

From Rev. Peter Barnes, D.Min.:

Our professions of chaplaincy and pastoral counselling are moving forward with the interest in spirituality as a significant segment of care and personal and community development. The skill of spiritual assessment and the formulation of spiritual care plans gives spiritual care professionals a framework to better explain and promote the value of the work we do and the benefit we provide to people in need. The idea of being able to delve into the deeper meaning of a person's spiritual distress has provided a context for informed spiritual care practice that was previously referred to in a variety of vague terms.

In association with these developments in the explanation of the spiritual care practice there has been the identification of professional competencies. These competencies inform the curriculum that has been deemed necessary to adequately equip spiritual care professionals with the required skill set to provide effective compassionate and empathetic care to our clients. Consequently the changes that are being made to our training programs including supervised pastoral education are made because of the gaps that have been identified in the required competencies. This valuable framework has aligned our training with other training programs which has made it easier for other professions to understand and appreciate and may lead to the training being sought after by other professions because of its effectiveness in terms of the integration of relational skills. PlainViews has been one of the publications that has moved this effort forward.

From Rev. Martha Dimmers:

There are so many ways that PlainViews has impacted our profession. To name some of the more important, here are the top of the list:

• creating a worldwide chaplaincy network through PlainViews
• chaplaincy care in disasters
• research and writing on spirituality, religion, and health
• the work on and creation of standards of practice for our profession, and PlainViews publishing the initial draft and receiving feedback
• the electronic format for journals
• cognate collaboration around common standards

All in all a great 7 years!

From Rev. Dr. Will Kinnaird:

I think that the most significant issues that have surfaced in the last few years deal with endorsement and with the shift perceived by many chaplains as the movement toward a secular or non-religiously based chaplaincy. It is also very interesting to me that some of our major chaplain organizations seem to be struggling with mission and identity. PlainViews has helped to bring that struggle to the forefront and will hopefully continue to bring to its readers the issues that emerge as we move forward as a profession.

From Chaplain Jane Mather:

PlainViews has provided an opportunity for on-going, focused, critical, diverse dialogue that enhances our professional work without robbing it of inordinate time. In addition to it being the place where the most number of chaplains could review the Standards of Practice and discuss them, PV has been a place to constructively debrief experiences, to tell our own stories. It has been a safe place to expose growing edges for peer review – a little like a large, healthy CPE group! It has also provided a way to invite other disciplines into our “space” – our sphere of understanding, our arena – outside of the rush and intensity of medical arena.

From Chaplain Rozann Shackleton:

PlainViews is a trendsetter with respect to electronic delivery and served as a model in the transition of Chaplaincy Today to an e-journal. It has provided a vehicle for "cross pollination" between the North American cognate groups and over the years has become international in scope. I see this interconnection as vital to furthering the profession of chaplaincy.

As we encourage chaplains to advocate for the profession, PV serves as a motivating force for them to “tell their stories” via the written word. The fact that most of the pieces are short makes this process less intimidating. One hopes that having put a toe in the water, so to speak, individuals will be encouraged to pursue topics in greater detail. In addition, the TalkBack feature provides for immediacy of response and sharing of disparate views. In all respects, PV provides ongoing professional development for chaplains throughout the world.

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