Author: Pastoral Thinking

I wish to suggest that soul care, either specifically religious care or more general spiritual care, is a supportive scaffold accompanying a person through a difficult situation rather than intervening with a mortar mix that becomes integrated into the structure.

Soul carers have been hampered by the inability to give a clear account of the skills they bring to their role, and it has become tempting to turn to clinical interventionist language. There are, however, inherent dangers in speaking of intervention when ministering to people in complex and multilayered constructs where many factors are obscured from us, and we have no way of predicting the myriad possibilities of future unfoldings. While it is true that the term intervention is used in the sense of becoming involved in a difficult situation and providing facilitation, empowerment, resources, support or mediation, it is equally true that the semantic range of ‘intervention’ also includes instruction, direction and involvement right through to intrusion, imposition and interference.

An attractive aspect of the term “intervention” may be that it captures something of the disruptive nature of certain events in a person’s life; yet, on closer inspection, the disruptive aspect more closely corresponds with the actual events rather than granting permission for interuptive actions of care for the person. It is this care that I think is more properly conceived as a scaffold, providing a framework and support around a person while they make the necessary adjustment to a new reality or realisation.

…good scaffolding must be from a trustworthy source, safe, and consist of high-quality and well-integrated components that can bear considerably more weight than is required. Scaffolding is also diagonally braced to provide strength and stability, designed to resist both tension and compression forces.

In the construction industry, good scaffolding must be from a trustworthy source, be safe, and consist of high-quality, well-integrated components that can bear considerably more weight than is required. Scaffolding is also diagonally braced to provide strength and stability and is designed to resist both tension and compression forces. This provides an apt metaphor for soul care. Soul care must be trustworthy, safe, fit for purpose, and internally well-integrated, maintaining separation while being intimately connected and able to withstand pressure and tension.

Soul carers, not unlike the scaffold around Notre Dame, provide external support where and while it is specifically needed and then at the appropriate time is dismantled. Scaffolding provides support during times of repair and change. Soul care accompanies, supports and holds people (while maintaining critical distance) through their process of sense-making and finding their way into their new reality. Such scaffolding is both an art and a skill.

Scaffolding creates a framework that is robust enough to hold space for another when they are struggling to bear the weight of their own burdens.  This is not to imply that a person’s healing comes from within or only from their own resources, any more than a building builds or repairs itself, but scaffolding provides support, safety, and space while repair is undertaken. Nor do I mean that to scaffold is not to speak, but rather, it is a type of speech that helps the other find their lost words and voice. The scaffolded space is a transformative space where reassessment, realignment, restorative work, and replacement of elements can happen. Scaffolding, while holding space and providing structure and security, remains separate, allowing for restorative work to happen and all the emergent possibilities that arise from the scaffolded time.

As the soul carer quietly and safely externally scaffolds, internally, they are drawing on all their training – their theological and philosophical frameworks, reflective practices, deep listening skills, trauma-informed care, cross-cultural and diversity competencies, mental health first aid and patterns of grief and loss. As they scaffold, they bear witness to the circumstances of the other and bear witness to the wisdom and skill entrusted to them, and begin to locate the focus of the patient’s concerns and listen for the soundings of spiritual distress.

When someone is comfortable, they are more likely to open up about themselves and their beliefs. This type of dynamic two-way communication is predicated on the listener being a good listener and valuing the other person and their beliefs, which in turn leaves the other person feeling like they have been understood. Soul carers can be trusted to work safely with others’ exploration of meaning, belonging, and purpose, or even their faith, hope, and love, without becoming mortar by inserting themselves into the other’s life. The soul carer scaffolds through listening and reflective questioning, creating space for deeper narrative integration on both the horizontal and vertical domains.

^{The metaphorical phrase ‘Scaffolding, not mortar’ has been borrowed from a daily lectionary reflection by theologian, Alistair Roberts
Photo credit: Cathedral of Notre Dame, Paris, by Melinda Young Stuart (edited slightly)
https://www.flickr.com/photos/melystu/49128335038/in/photostream/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/}

Arndt Büssing describes spirituality as a complex and multi-layered construct (Büssing 2021). Each spiritual care encounter presents the chaplain with unknowns. The encounter is shaped by whatever it is that the patient or client presents and requires the chaplain to be both grounded, flexible, and creative simultaneously as they respond.

The complexity of the situations of the people requiring care is only part of the complexity of the chaplaincy role, and this may be the least ambiguous part of the role. There are two aspects to role clarity: first, the SCP’s own understanding of their role, and second, the organisation’s understanding of their role. This second point for clarification highlights the need to navigate highly complex organisational matrices with multilayered constructs of possibilities and limitations that come with the role, many of which are not within their individual control.

Much has been written on the place of liminality in the chaplain’s work, and the place of mystery and presence when working with spirituality, but in focusing on these implicit aspects, little attention has been paid to that which can be understood more explicitly, and to those things which can be done to reduce some of the ambivalence and uncertainty around the role. 

Role clarity is essential to mitigate role confusion, conflicts of interest, power imbalances, and unclear limits and permissions and enable emergent possibilities to open. Key factors around role clarity in spiritual care include understanding the reason and purpose of the role, acknowledging levels of training and experience that define the scope of practice, and recognizing possibilities and limits. A further factor in role clarity is differentiating between broad spiritual care and more narrow and specific religious care, as well as being willing to critically assess and evaluate the spiritual care provided. To this list, we could add the ability to identify requests for complex spiritual care encounters from the many other claims made during a SCP’s time.

Most encounters begin momentarily in a confused space as we gather our initial impressions and information and decide where to go next. For this reason, I find the Cynefin sense-making framework invaluable. 

Most spiritual care encounters begin with a phone call or a referral, or when someone comes into the office or attends a worship service, we encounter them in their space: a workspace, residential home, hospital ward, exercise yard, or tea room. Initially, we are listening for the ‘edge,’ the inquiry, the unresolved dilemma, or whatever is frontmost in a person’s mind at this time. Most encounters begin momentarily in a confused space as we gather our initial impressions and information and decide where to go next. For this reason, I find the Cynefin sense-making framework invaluable (pronounced ku-nev-in). 

The Cynefin framework was developed to assist strategic and organisational decision-making (Mark and Snowden, 2006). The framework has been successfully employed in a number of other situations and used to help with medical triaging. The genius of the Cynefin framework is the key insight that different types of problems or situations presenting as such require different and non-interchangeable approaches and responses.

The four categories of the framework are clear, complicated, complex, and chaotic, each of which requires a distinct response:

• Clear (straightforward as cause and effect are clear)—sense -> categorise -> respond;
• Complicated (requires expertise, but cause and effect are related)—sense -> analyse -> respond;
• Complex (co-creative, working with patterns and correlations)—probe -> sense -> respond;
• Chaotic (first aid as there are no discernible patterns)—act -> sense -> respond. (Mark and Snowden 2006)

An example of a clear spiritual need (sense, categorise and respond) occurs when the staff or patients know what they need and simply request it, such as an inquiry regarding the use of the quiet room, a service time, or a request for a Bible, prayer beads, or something similar. If departmental procedures are in place with these everyday items or information on hand, requests are easily addressed. 

A complicated spiritual need (sense, analyze, and respond) may be a request for Holy Communion, end-of-life prayers, or rituals. After hearing the request, it is essential to understand or analyze it in order to provide an appropriate response and refer to the person with the precise expertise to conduct the service or ritual. These requests are directed to the chaplaincy or spiritual care department for them to make the necessary phone calls and set up the visit. Such requests are highly specific and can only be met by a representative of a particular faith.

The heart of spiritual care and chaplaincy lies within the complex and multilayered constructs described by Büssing and should be referred to the specialist SCP or chaplain for further assessment. The approach for complex requests is to probe, sense, and respond, leading to a conversation that often continues with “Are you able to say more about that?” or “It sounds like…” or “did I catch that correctly?” There is no clear answer or solution to these needs, as there is no simple cause-and-effect relationship between events and possible solutions because the needs are interrelated and interleaved with other people, events, histories, and possibilities. There is a need to work slowly and at slant, carefully separating layers of need from other things and being willing to refer on to others when needed.

Chaotic cases, as described in the Cynefin framework, are often emergencies, requiring multiple interventions by many interdisciplinary professionals to arrest the descent into further chaos. The response to chaotic situations is to act, sense, and respond. For example, recently, I heard a man and woman arguing in an escalating manner about their child. Although I considered talking with them, sensing that there was a spiritual need, I acted. I called security and waited for them to arrive before assessing the spiritual need or distress that needed addressing for either person. Once a chaotic situation settles, spiritual care needs will default to one of the three categories clear, complicated, or complex.

Spirituality includes a person’s wider relational network; because of this, it includes caregivers and family, who may be experiencing even greater complicated, complex, and chaotic needs. Furthermore, as each person experiences events from differing perspectives and timelines, it is possible across a relational network to have clear, complicated, complex, and chaotic needs presenting simultaneously, in which case it is important for the SCP or chaplain to notice whose needs are coming into focus and being addressed, and whose ongoing needs recede into the distance and remain unaddressed.

The Cynefin sense-making framework helps SCPs and chaplains reduce some of the ambiguity and confusion around their role in order to conserve capacity for the truly complex spiritual care they provide. If this is possible – then it is surely worth considering.

Being present with people and bearing witness to the needs of their soul is a profound privilege. We have the honour of providing spiritual care to anyone who needs or desires a space to explore their religious and spiritual needs.

I greeted Isabel; even lying down she seemed a a tall upright woman. She was in her late eighties and spoke in short staccato sentences delivered in a soft raspy voice. Her wiry hair was unkempt and the paper thin skin on her arms showed signs of years of life in the sun.  Isabel was waiting for a blood result to come back and we chatted for a short time about life on the farm.

Isabel seemed to be tiring and thanked me for coming. As I was placing the chair back against the wall, I was caught by surprise as she spoke again, “You know, I’m not afraid of dying, but I feel so sad I won’t see my great-grandchildren grow up…. so full of life; I wonder what they will do.” Isabel drew a breath, “Will they follow the way?”  

I was unsure if Isabel was really speaking to me, or was I hearing a breath prayer? I asked Isabel if there was anything I could do for her. She said at home, her husband usually read Bible to her because her eyesight was poor, but he had just handed in his driver’s licence, and now it was hard for him to come to the hospital. I offered to read for her if she would like, and she motioned toward a worn black leather Bible with a booklet of daily Bible readings tucked into it on the bedside table. She said, just read the page where the notes up to.

The notes directed me to Psalm 42,  

⁸By day the Lord directs his love,
    at night his song is with me—
    A prayer to the God of my life.

⁹ I say to God my Rock,
    “Why have you forgotten me?
Why must I go about mourning,
    oppressed by the enemy?”
¹⁰ My bones suffer mortal agony
    as my foes taunt me,
saying to me all day long,
    “Where is your God?”

¹¹ Why, my soul, are you downcast?
    Why so disturbed within me?
Put your hope in God,
    for I will yet praise him,
    my Savior and my God. (NIVUK)

We prayed for her grandchildren. Isabel wept, wiped a tear from her eye, smiled and thanked me.

Bearing witness works with the real, not the ideal, with fragments and shards, frailty and fallenness

Bearing witness is a deeply embodied and active ministry; it comes from the word marturein in Greek, from which also comes our word martyr matureo. Witness is experiential, embodied and ensouled. It concerns what we have seen with our eyes, and what we know in our heart, it directs our conscience, and shapes our character. Bearing witness is an activity of remembering and anticipating, of word and deed, giving and receiving. Bearing witness is the capacity to speak of what is seen and known of this situation and to weave these strands of stories together, with other older stories, catching deeper meanings – forging newer links. Jesus becomes tangibly visible in the room, his Spirit groans and prayer is given voice. He promised that when two or three gather in his name he is present – eternity enters time. Bearing witness works with the real, not the ideal, with fragments, shards, and the frailty and fallenness of life yet it draws evermore forward into deeper reality ushering in new dawns evens as night falls.

Bearing witness responds, rather than directs, opens rather than closes, flows rather than programs, attunes rather than affects. There is an unpremeditated aspect of bearing witness that is always somewhat serendipitous.

Photo by Jon Eric Marababol on Unsplash

A general manager asked one of my chaplaincy colleagues about her vision for integrating pastoral care into their facility.  This inquiry is such a brilliant, open-ended question that opens up so many avenues.  Where might we begin?

In healthcare, it has been a long-standing tradition for the chaplain to take care of the spiritual and eternal needs of the patient’s soul while the doctor took care of the patient’s physical needs.  During the twentieth century, there was a complete separation of the roles of faith and medicine.   Physician Paul Tournier challenged this view of separation.  In his private practice, he forged a new type of medicine, which he called “the medicine of the person. ” The medicine of the person integrated both physical and spiritual health.  In the 1960s, palliative care was developed, and with it came a new idea of spiritual care or general pastoral care in medicine. This was an alternative to the traditional model of religious care, which was based solely on a person’s faith and denomination.

Tournier’s influence made its way into the medical systems through various avenues, of which palliative care was at the forefront.  Cicely Saunders, the doctor who founded the modern concept of palliative care, talked about the idea of “total pain” and the need to address a patient’s medical, psychological, social, and spiritual needs all at once.  Saunders herself was an evangelical Christian who recognised that everyone has a spiritual nature – each patient and every member of staff.  In her hospital, a chapel for Christian worship, was available for quite reflection for all, and spiritual care of a general nature was the role of every staff member and no patient should have their spiritual needs go unmet.

Fig 1. Generalist-Specialist x Broad-Narrow Spiritual Care Matrix

Saunders’ biopsychosocial-spiritual framework gave rise to the current generalist–specialist spiritual care model.  In this model, all staff are responsible for spiritual care at a general level which is expressed through holistic care, and concern for aspects of the patient’s well-being including their spiritual/religious dimension which is usually expressed through compassionate presence.  Compassionate presence is the ability of all staff members to be deeply present to the patients in their whole being with a concern about their whole life –­ family, faith, losses, griefs, hopes and cares.

In Saunders’ model spiritual care is integrated into the facility.  All staff receive training in primary spiritual care which includes training in understanding what might be necessary to the patients beyond their medical care, being a safe self-aware person, who is comfortable in their own skin and religious and spiritual beliefs who is able to create space for other to speak about the things pressing most closely on their heart.  Such a system might also include volunteers and pastoral carers who have been trained in general spiritual care and who have time to visit with patients hearing their perspectives.

In the generalist–specialist model, there are also specialist spiritual care practitioners who may be trained narrowly within one religious tradition and others who have been trained more broadly in aspects of personal formation, within which there are levels of expertise: foundational, advanced and expert.  The spiritual care practitioners who work to help scaffold people through times of change and spiritual adjustment have trained to a professional level.  Various training pathways exist in fields of spiritual direction, pastoral counselling, clinical pastoral education, and philosophical therapies that work with people’s reality.  These spiritual care practitioners provide spiritual care to a wide range of patients across the service, including patients who might describe themselves as spiritual but not religious and others who consider themselves to be neither religious nor spiritual.  In this system, there are also specific religious visitors who visit people of their own denomination or religion, who visit and pray, conduct rituals, offer blessings, or read sacred texts.  The distinctions here, are often described as ward-based visiting and faith-based visiting.  A comprehensive spiritual care service provides both.

The research team stressed the importance of adequate spiritual care training for all staff (including any volunteers and pastoral carers in a facility who have contact with patients with serious and life-limiting illnesses), as well as referral channels and access to specialist-level trained religious and spiritual care practitioners.

A multidisciplinary team of medical and spiritual care researchers recently conducted a meta-analysis scanning thousands of academic papers that focused on spirituality and medicine.  They then focused in on 371 papers concerning spirituality in serious illness and health and identified implications for patient care and health outcomes.  The team made three significant findings: (1) spiritual care needs to be incorporated into care for patients with serious illness; (2) spiritual care education needs to be integrated into the training of interdisciplinary teams caring for persons with serious illness; and (3) include speciality spiritual care practitioners in the care of patients with serious illness.

The research team stressed the importance of adequate spiritual care training for all staff (including any volunteers and pastoral carers in a facility who have contact with patients with serious and life-limiting illnesses), as well as referral channels and access to specialist-level trained religious and spiritual care practitioners.

In order to more fully appreciate the finding of this review, it might help to think of spiritual care in its broadest sense, as a 2×2 matrix where spiritual care is offered both at generalist and specialist levels through both broad and narrow expressions of spiritual and religious care, where all quadrants are needed to meet the ongoing spiritual needs of patients.  There is also overlap where narrow religious care often incorporates broad general spiritual care, and many specialist religious practitioners are also certified in broad specialist spiritual care. It is also possible that people hold different positions in the matrix depending on the role a carer is performing at a particular time for example, a nurse who may also be trained in a specific religious tradition who might also provided narrow-generalist care if needed.  

A vital function of an integrated matrix for a health facility would be to describe the scope of spiritual practice for each section, which clearly outlines the skills and capabilities, as well as the limitations of practice for each quadrant of the matrix.

Fig 1. Generalist-Specialist x Broad-Narrow Spiritual Care Matrix is drawn from my research in The Nature of Religious and Spiritual Needs in Palliative Care Patients, Carers, and Families and How They Can Be Addressed from a Specialist Spiritual Care Perspective

Have you ever wondered how the language of soul care and spiritual care relate to each other? The soul is a concept that arises from Scripture. Spiritual care and spirituality have been described as travelling terms, around which over the last fifty years has grown a consensus definition related to a person’s meaning, beliefs, purpose, belonging and rituals. As is common in most chaplaincies, there is a need to be bi-lingual, across different domains as has its own lexicon of terms and areas of interest. However, while overlapping, as shown in the following figure, the terms soul and spirit are not synonymous.

From a Biblical perspective, all people not only have souls but are souls, each being a mysterious combination of dust and breath first described in the book of Genesis (Gen 2:7). Perhaps the most confusing aspect of the soul is around the word breath or spirit. The confusion has arisen because breath (or spirit or wind) which is used in a general or universal sense as above, is a ‘small s‘ spirit as distinct from the more specific ‘capital S‘ Spirit which refers to the redemptive work of the person work and indwelling of the Holy Spirit, which relates quite specifically to Christian faith.   

In Scripture, the term soul is not a particularly religious word but rather speaks to the unity or totality of the human person, as in the way the marriage ceremony speaks of “all that I am and all that I have”. At its simplest, the soul is dust of the earth animated by the inspiration (or inbreathing) of the breath of God and reminds us that people, like all of creation, are enlivened, animated and sustained by the Creator God. However, it is only human souls, or beings, that are said to bear the image of God, which makes the all encompassing created nature of each soul even more valuable.

The biopsychosocial-spiritual model seeks to describe parts of the unity and totality that make up a person and seeks to honour the dignity of each person.

From a health perspective, working with the biopsychosocial-spiritual model, all people are said to have physical, mental, social and spiritual aspects of personhood or existence. In this regard, we can see that the biopsychosocial-spiritual model of the human person seeks to describe parts of the unity and totality that make up a person and seeks to honour the dignity of each person and tends toward to the Biblical concept of the soul.

In the medical model, the biological aspect of a person refers to their physical health; the psychological aspect refers to emotional and mental health; the social aspect refers to the larger social and cultural systems within which a person is embedded. The spiritual health refers to a person’s non-material aspects of being – including their relationships, values, beliefs, hopes and possibilities. It is this non-material aspect which corresponds most closely to the breath or animating or inspiring aspects of the soul.  

From a soul care perspective, in Christian ministry, we are expressing a holistic concern for people through radical hospitality, compassion, love and care. From a health and spiritual care perspective, there is particular concern for a person’s non-material needs, especially the way in which a person is making sense of their reality and the changes happening about them; this includes people’s religious and spiritual beliefs. This is crucial because a patient for whom religion is important, their faith may well be providing the interpretive grid over all that is happening. For example a Christians patient may well be viewing every aspect of their physicality, psychology and social relationships through the lens of their personal beliefs and the interactive presence of indwelling of the Holy Spirit in their lives.  

From a spiritual care perspective, all staff are expected to provide general spiritual care as they care holistically for their patients. They are encouraged to provide a compassionate presence expressing concern for their health, social and emotional well-being as well as those less tangible things such as their deep beliefs, motivations and the way in which they envision their future. Staff are encouraged to identify patients who are expressing needs in any of these areas and refer on to specialists, psychologists, social workers or spiritual care practitioners or chaplains.

Staff who feel comfortable with their own spirituality have been shown to be those most at ease when talking with patients about what really matters to them in the areas of religion or spirituality. If the patient’s spiritual care needs are connected to a particular faith or religion, it is important to connect that patient to a chaplain who can most closely meet that person’s needs.

Philosopher Michael Polanyi said we know more than we can tell; others have observed an analogy that we say more than we know. This saying perhaps applies nowhere more accurately than when it comes to soul care. When chaplains, pastoral and spiritual care practitioners describe their ministry or role, they might say they provide pastoral care or spiritual care. When pressed to expand upon this, they might explain they provide presence or ‘just’ being there or creating space for another, offering prayer, or accompanying others through grief or crisis. Polanyi was speaking about tacit knowledge; there are things we know and understand well, yet at the same time, we struggle to find the right words to explain and describe them. We also use words like presence, space, and accompaniment, which seem precisely right, yet we might also struggle to ‘show our workings’ to explain how these words capture whole worlds of meaning for us and the people we care for.

There is a lack of words attached to soul care disciplines. There is an inability of religious and spiritual care providers to give a clear account of the interventions they bring to their role. This lack leads to increasingly reductionistic descriptions of soul care, described as non-proselytising, a listening ear, presence, and non-directive counselling. Such lists, as any soul care provider knows, represent minimum competencies rather than the full range and extent of the art of religious and spiritual soul care. One prestigious medical journal described professional chaplains as using “many interventions, such as empathic listening, religious rituals, and prayer.” If chaplains and other soul carers cannot tell their stories and make explicit what is implicit, others will write their stories for them and determine their role.

In contrast to implicit understandings, explicit knowledge is fully revealed or clearly expressed, carefully developed, and avoids vagueness and ambiguity. Explicit knowledge explained meanings and intent and leaves nothing implied. What can be missed is that explicit does not mean complicated, There can be a stripped-down simplicity if we know the central core ideas. Einstein suggested that everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler – could this be true too of soul care which lies beneath much of chaplaincy, religious, pastoral and spiritual care?

The focus of all soul care is the human soul. At its simplest, the human soul comprises the dust of the material earth and the relational breath of God in a single unity, the person. The soul (dust and breath) facilitates a person’s relationships within themselves, with others, their environment, history and their creator. The soul is intimately connected with health, well-being, flourishing, meaning and purpose and belonging. How a person engages with reality, ultimate meaning, the transcendentals of truth, beauty and goodness and the darker sides of life, including sin, suffering, death and evil are facilitated by the soul.

Soul care works across explicit beliefs and values, experiences and implicit understandings, different perspectives and most importantly, their relationships and connections.

Soul care is concerned with people within themselves and their spiritual web of relationships. Soul care works across explicit beliefs, deep values, experiences, implicit understandings and different perspectives. Most importantly, the care focuses on their relationships and connections. Following this, soul care’s attention is on possibilities and how people can adjust to changing realities through various interventions and modalities. These work with a person’s vertical and horizontal web of relationships, both in the religious and the everyday spheres. Soul care is not an isolated task but works in community with other services including religious congregations, psychologists and social workers, who attend to mental and emotional illness and social needs, as well as legal and judicial services.

Soul care focuses on the person and the things in their heart and mind. The tasks of soul care perhaps could be most simply described as interventions that help people adjust to new realities employing a range of theories and practices from religious and secular wisdom traditions.

In Australia, we have traditionally had a high level of volunteerism demonstrated through sporting clubs, service clubs, parents and friends’ associations, hospital auxiliaries, conservation societies, churches and faith-based organisations. There have always been people who have generously visited people in hospitals, and prisons and provided support to people before the courts, offering what has been traditionally called pastoral care or volunteer chaplaincy. While few would challenge the generosity of the people who offer to these ministries, there remains a need to closely review the correlation between the needs of the recipients and the personal attributes, skills, knowledge and experience of the volunteer both to honour the gift of the volunteer and the needs and the expectations of the recipients.

We know from studies in the UK, that patients value chaplaincy that allows them to speak about what is really on their mind. In fact, when asked to list what they value, the patients values being able to speak of what was on their mind ahead of the chaplain being a good listener or valuing their religious or spiritual beliefs, because listening and valuing the patient for themselves are prerequisites for creating the type of space and trust necessary to allow one to share the things that a deep within their soul. A study from Victoria showed that patients believe the faith affiliation of the spiritual care team member is important but not as important as other attributes such as kindness, listening skills and a nonjudgmental attitude. This leads us to conclude that a listening presence that enables to other to speak what is on their soul, is the minimum requirement for anyone, whether, employed or volunteering in the chaplaincy or soul care sector.

We also know that transformative listening provides a space for reflection that transcends polite or social levels of conversation. Conversations which help people transcend their current circumstances happen only in a space of deep trust, connection and attunement. We also need to add to this the extenuating circumstances which lead people to be speaking with a chaplaincy or spiritual care volunteer. Such circumstances, as the need to be in residential care, hospitals, prisons, before the courts, living with a disability, or having experienced a natural disaster will include at the very least, loss and grief. We need to be mindful as well that this loss and grief is often combined with shock, trauma, or ongoing disability giving rise to suffering at multiple levels of reality, physical, emotional, social and spiritual.

I wish to ask, what are the minimum standards that would equip a person to safely ministry in this space? There are several short courses offered that aim to train a person for volunteer chaplaincy, companions or listeners in various roles in residential care, hospital, and disaster settings. Some organisations assume theological, social work or counselling qualifications have met the basic requirements and require no additional training for spiritual care. Some courses for volunteers are a week-long intensive, others are ten weeks of 2–3-hour long seminars. Others have a learn-on-the-job approach. I wish to suggest that none of these approaches provides adequate training for guiding a spiritual conversation, safety for working one-to-one with vulnerable individuals, or adequate supervision and follow-up once the volunteer has been placed.

Telephone counselling services work with many of the same sensibilities as volunteer chaplains. Both services are working with vulnerable people to provide an opportunity to speak about what is worrying them or uppermost in their minds. In both services, there is a need for self-aware people to have the ability to self-reflect and are settled and stable within themselves. Secondly, the person needs to have the ability to connect and attune in a safe and bounded way, and thirdly, they need to have the necessary skills and knowledge to minister within the limits of their role.

It could be that we seriously underestimate the extent to which a good conversation represents a lifeline to those we listen to.

It might be that some may say that chaplaincy or spiritual care volunteers are just there for a friendly chat or to provide a listening ear, but such an attitude belies the point that like so many activities that appear effortless, good listeners are formed arriving at a state of unconscious competence through training and practice. It could be that we seriously underestimate the extent to which a good conversation represents a lifeline to those we listen to. There are some who temperamentally and spiritually are good listeners, but why would we not seek to extend their gifts for their sake and the people they listen to?

For these reasons, I wish to suggest that we look towards the training of telephone counsellors to provide a minimum framework for training and supervising volunteer chaplains or spiritual carers. Below is a modified version of one such telephone counselling service, Lifeline, who train volunteers in three stages:

Stage one: 3 months

Initial training takes place over 12 weeks, including 12 consecutive face-to-face group training sessions once per week for 3 hours; in addition, there are approximately 1–3 hours per week of independent e-learning to be completed.

Stage two: 2 months

Supervised visiting includes visiting with a chaplain and then being observed by a chaplain. The 3-hour face-to-face sessions during this time are Value-Based Reflective Practice Groups (VBRP), which allow participants to reflect on their individual progress. It provides opportunities for learners to practice new skills and gain constructive feedback. Successful completion of this stage leads to an invitation to stage three.

Stage three: 6–12 months

The probationary period consists of visiting one-half day (3.5 hours) per week, supervision and mandatory professional development. On the successful completion of this final stage, the volunteer is a trained volunteer of the ministry, who should continue to receive supervision and continuing education.

This training model has flexibility where the initial three months could be conducted on or off-site, allowing for resource sharing between sites. The e-learning material should include both general approaches to soul care and spiritual care (transformative listening, limits, boundaries, cross-cultural competencies, trauma informed care etc.) and context specific training (dementia, men’s sheds, hospitals etc.). Stage two involves a closely supervised volunteer placement with further group supervision and stage three is a closely supervised probationary period.

Photo by Antoine Barrès on Unsplash

I was recently asked what guidelines we used in selecting Christian literature that was suitable for hospital patients. My ideas have been shaped by Christian patients who told us what they liked or had found helpful. We also knew what literature patients and families had selected themselves, and there was a high degree of agreement. It was one of those situations where I had to give words to implicitly held ideas.

The most commonly requested and chosen Christian literature are booklets containing a single Gospel, New Testaments containing Psalms and Proverbs, and complete Bibles. Many people take pocket copies with small print, but many others request large or giant print or easy English translations. There is also a need for a simple handbook to the Bible to assist new Bible readers.

Begin where the person is, not where we would like them to be – working from the real, not the ideal.

In addition, to Bibles, many patients choose other literature, and based on the patients’ selections, below are some considerations we attend to when selecting printed material for patients. A further crucial concern is that illness affects people’s ability to concentrate and form new abstract concepts but often opens people to deeper affective and emotional perspectives on realities.

Literature that speaks to patients and their families:

• Places them in conversation with God through thoughtful words – allows them to notice, wonder and discover things about the triune God.
• Begins where the person is, not where we would like them to be – working from the real, not the ideal.
• Uses easy English, good sized font and pictures or illustrations designed for adults rather than teens or children.
• Holds to Christian/scriptural theological perspectives that are agreed upon by most denominations.
• Uses the first and second person I-Thou rather than third-person and addresses the reader as you rather than them, they, this person or that.
• When speaking about God, talks to God, or of God, as if he is standing right next to a person longing that they might come to him, rather than distantly about God.
• Because of the heightened affective state around illness, uses the psalms, prayers, Christian poetry, and metaphorical language help communicate directly into the soul in this affective space.
• Uses gentle and gracious language that can accommodate the depth of suffering, helplessness, meaninglessness, pain and angst of a severe illness, leaving a door open for God’s transforming life in the situation.  
• Avoids offering answers without hearing the questions – this is particularly the danger with evangelist tracts – they are written for a general audience. They are not designed to attend to the specific needs of the other, attune to their situation and accompany them on their journey through suffering and death.
• Seeks to build up, not to tear down – connect people to God’s love rather than trying to convince them of their sinfulness and or for forgiveness. Offers of God’s forgiveness make little sense if someone has no concept of the triune God, and this requires a scaffold to build between a person’s understanding and the obstacle between them and knowing God, which is highly individual.
• Locate sin and redemption within the broader category of God’s good but broken creation.
• In Christ, there is forgiveness that takes sin as far away as the east is from the west.
• Bears witness to the faithful presence of God and his desire that all who are heavily laden might come to him.

Photo by Rod Long on Unsplash

One of the significant challenges with ministries such as chaplaincy, pastoral care, spiritual care is defining what soul care is and explaining what it looks like. A colleague and I were talking about this a few days ago, and he asked, “Well, for example, what would spiritual care look like if you were visiting a man who was a victim of a shark attack and had lost both feet?”

As a chaplain, I would meet such a patient on a regular ward round as I regularly visit some intensive care units and several surgical wards. I usually choose not to know the patient’s medical diagnosis before I visit for the first time as it tells you very little about the person or the relationship they have with their diagnosis. I also meet patients following a referral or a specific request for a visit from a chaplain. If the medical staff requests the visit, usually, the request is accompanied by a brief description of the patient’s medical condition.

All soul care begins with an offer to listen or attend to the other and be willing to attune to the matters on their soul and accompany them into their story, initially asking only questions that help the other clarify their thoughts or feelings. As we listen deeply to another, we also listen to ourselves while subconsciously being held within our more extensive webs of meaning. The sensitivity and stability of a more comprehensive web of meaning allow us to enter another person’s story and help bear the weight of their griefs and sorrows without merging them with our own or dissolving ours into theirs.

The carer’s attitude is crucial; it is not enough to be a safe person but to have the ability to engender a feeling of safety within the other that enables enough trust to share what is uppermost on their mind or troubling them in their heart. The skills to connect and listen deeply needs to be developed and honed. Deep listening helps bring forth the metaphors and words of feeling necessary to communicate that which is on the heart or mind.

In the background, a chaplain or soul carer carries many narrative patterns: encoded variously in melody and harmony, themes and variations, rhythms, textures tones and timbre. These narrative threads, in turn, resonate with themes from theology, philosophy, psychology, sociology, literature. They present as accounts of trauma, PTSD, grief and loss, abandonment, isolation, enmeshed or well-differentiated relationships, supportive community, physical, mental and emotional states and spirituality. Spirituality is also seen in feelings and beliefs around justice, guilt, shame and forgiveness, and existential experiences often beyond our control. Narrative threads of spirituality appear through all these themes, expressed through religious observance, practices, habits and the things in which they find peace.

As a chaplain listens with an open-handed curiosity to a person’s story, some aspects will resonate with one or more of the patterns mentioned above. These inklings cause us to notice certain things and wonder if the other is also aware of a link in their story. A point comes where we might respond to ask how something felt or how it seemed to them as we help them form connections from the things they have shared.

To place these carefully chosen reflections, we need to understand what we are hearing and our sense-making frameworks for linking and locating the expressed ideas and impressions.

I wish to return to the hospitalised patient suffering from a shark bite. If the patient had requested a chaplain to visit him, and after greetings, I enquire how I could help him. If I had met him in a surgical ward, I would have explained I was a chaplain doing a ward round and wondering how his hospital stay was going and if anything was on his mind or troubling him or he would like to chat?

A conversation with the patient could go as many different ways as there are people. But suppose I merged this patient who was bitten by a shark with a patient Joshua (identifying details changed for privacy). He was a road cyclist training for an international event when hit by a truck and suffered extensive damage to his legs, requiring amputation of one. In that case, I think it may provide a plausible possible encounter.

I met Joshua two and half weeks after his accident. He began speaking about his accident. He viewed himself as a survivor rather than a victim despite the truck driver being in the wrong. He expressed that he was looking forward to beginning rehab and moving some muscles again. Yet, as he spoke, it became more evident that the loses and griefs he was facing were huge. He was a schoolteacher and was grateful that the school understood and provided him with a leave of absence for an extended period and was eligible for third party insurance to cover many of his costs. As he continued, he then mentioned that he had been married for two years to his childhood girlfriend, and she was also an elite athlete. While she was amazing with the whole accident thing, he had gnawing insecurity voicing a fear that she might not want to live the rest of her life with a disabled person.

Joshua was not religious. He had a philosophical approach to life where he didn’t have a special pass to avoid tragedy. Joshua could not see anything he would have or could have done differently on the day of the accident as he followed his regular training routine.

I commented that he seemed to be carrying a very heavy load and was bearing many losses. He nodded and wiped away a tear with the heel of his hand. After a bit, he said, yeah, some days it’s all too much, then smiled and thanked me for listening. I replied, thank you for sharing; you certainly are going through a lot. I will keep you in my thoughts and prayers.

Following a chaplaincy visit, a chaplain reviews the visit through a spiritual assessment tool. One such tool is a simple and effective assessment developed by two nurses, Highfield and Cassons. It reviews the patient’s meaning and belief, their need to give love and receive love and their hopes and creativity which broadly corresponds to a description of a person’s faith, loves and hopes.
I prefer to review the conversation using a framework of religious, moral, spiritual and existential concerns and the web of relationships in each domain. After listening to Joshua and reflecting on the conversation, my initial spiritual assessment was this.

Joshua was not religious, but his accident disrupted his patterns and habits and separated him from his training and work community. Morally, Joshua was not asking questions of justice around the accident but seemed to be attempting to absorb the impact within himself through the frame of ‘life happens.’ At this early stage, he was not dwelling on the deep wrong that had been committed against him, nor the severe assault against his person and body.

Spiritually, Joshua was experiencing disruption to all areas of his life that filled him up, his relationship with his wife, body, sport, and training teams expressed through absence and grief. Existentially, in an instant, he had lost his leg, his health, his work, his sport, yet he demonstrates a genuine desire to transcend his current sufferings.

As a chaplain, I was in internal prayer for Joshua and prayed that my visit would be helpful to him at this time. I endeavoured to accompany him, staying with his story and going at the same speed he was going. I drew on the stable and secure framework I have around me, working out of the depth of my faith, skills, and training to accompany and scaffold Joshua in his experiences.

Prayer is tangible and hopeful. Desires expressed in prayer give voice to the hopes and longings of the future.

Thurneysen, a Chrisitan pastor, viewed his ministry of visiting with parishioners as an act of hospitality. His soul so extended into listening that it assumed the form of intercessory prayer. He drew upon Philippians 1:3-6: “Whenever I think of you, I offer to God my prayer and thanksgiving for you.”¹ He describes a “full listening… without a single word passing our lips.” The type of hospitality that he spoke of accepts the speaker as they are and draws them into a kind of solidarity – neighbourly love – flowing out of the spiritual life in Christ back towards God-given life.

Thurneysen’s understanding of prayer in soul care had three aspects. Firstly, “it is a prayer for myself as a pastor, for purification and illumination of my spirit, a prayer that I may become the true instrument of the Spirit of God.” Secondly, it is a “prayer for my neighbour; it is intercession.” The third form is prayer with the other.²  Thurneysen noted that wisdom was required as to whether or not this third act of common or shared prayer was appropriate. Thurneysen explained that for God to be at work in this context was a work of his own free grace. In a sense, it is an act of daring on the pastoral carer’s part even to take initiative in the process of prayer. In Thurneysen’s words, “The circumstances will decide from case to case whether I may and ought to pray with another person.”³

Caring for another involves being wisely attuned to what might be taking place for themselves, the other, and the working of the Holy Spirit through the soul care process. “Prayer is therefore always a step that leads beyond all boundaries into the realm of eternity. For it is actually talking with God, really God, really being heard by God and listening to God. Hence prayer is the final destination of every way, the deliverance from every distress, the fulfilment of every petition.”⁴ From a human perspective, the carer facilitates a conversation between the other and the Heavenly Father in prayer, depending upon the Holy Spirit, in the name of Christ Jesus.⁵

Through prayer and faith, the soul carer foresees hope and a possible future through love and forgiveness through the power of a love that bears all things, suffers all things, believes all things. Thurneysen felt strongly that neither prayer nor hope were practices to be employed simply for therapeutic ends. Instead, these arise from the Christian faith and are anchored deeply in Christ within the soul of the carer.  Prayer in this context is not a therapeutic practice but a radical act of hospitality whereby the horizons of the present have been opened out and are inviting the inbreaking work of the Heavenly Father.

For this reason, prayer must not be forced, manipulated or coerced by the soul carer. There is a complexity in the offering of prayer in soul care practice, and the practitioner must be alert to the possiblity of overreach when taking an initiative that may only belongs to God. Yet, prayer might be the very means to shift ordinary conversation beyond the breach into a truly divine-inspired soul conversation. 

The soul carer is an agent of hope; there is no hope left even when humanly speaking. Such longings and prayers present the other with a glimpse of the eternal horizon of significance from which the soul carer ministers. Thurneysen believed, therefore, these qualities of wisdom, hope and prayer and needed to be cultivated. No matter how effective listening is, it can never “replace the decisive act of prayer.”⁶  Prayerfulness of the soul carer for the other is of such importance that it could almost be equated with soul care. In fact, as Thureysen expressed it, “The practice of soul care and prayer are actually one and the same. Soul care is prayer.”⁷

The attitude of prayer can move a conversation from the horizontal plane of human concerns to the vertical dimension of the inbreaking of the Word.

¹ Eduard Thurneysen, (1946) Theology of Pastoral Care, 128, 197
² Ibid, 195.
³ Ibid, 198
⁴ Ibid, 197
⁵ Ibid, 197
⁶ Ibid, 190
⁷ Ibid, 190
Image by Couleur Pixabay