Chaplair - The Official Newsletter of the AEHC

Communications Officer Report - Fall 99

Razz Waff+

First of all, there has been quite a bit of activity since our meeting in KC. I will for simplicity divide this report between the written word and the cyber word.

First, the cyber word and this will be very brief. Marshall Scott has done a remarkable job in pulling things together for the web site. He has a very full report that does justice to all of what he has done, so I'll let him speak for himself.

As to the written word- quite a bit that I will report on. One concern that I've had for sometime is the way we are presented to "the Church". This concern comes from the way that we had been presented- or not presented- on the monthly CDO vacancy report. For years the only specialized ministry at 815 was military chaplaincy. I raised this issue with Bp. Keyser and the new reports are reflective of the change. On the first page all three of his specialized ministries are listed- corrections, healthcare and the military. Then, on the second page they appear again under a different heading. This is a small, but I believe, significant step. Examples of past and present examples are, I pray, present at the meeting for your review.

Next, some not so good news in the world of the written word. Our venerable newsletter, Chaplair, is going to have to get some retooling. Our distinguished editor, publisher, distributor and senior columnist Rod Pierce has to take a break from this. For one thing he has had it longer than anyone that I can recall and has done a great job in improving it's presentation, style and quality. However Rod deserves a well deserved break. The second issue is that budget cutbacks are effecting us all and St. Luke's/Houston has been printing and mailing this at no cost to us. This has been a wonderful gift but it appears the ride is over. One good piece of news on the horizon is that the survey(more on that in a bit) has indicated a few folks that want to volunteer for leadership positions and one in particular is Don Hill of Western New York who has 16 years experience in two dioceses as a diocesan newspaper publisher. As we move more toward timely articles for the website, the Chaplair can be a compilation of the "best of the best", with the most recent, for publication. So this should be a more "do-able" endeavor for all involved.

Lest we end a depressing note, some good news of the written word- the survey results. I have forwarded the surveys to Daniel for his insight and they are available to the ExCom for review as well. We had 34 surveys returned, 30 from the Chaplair inserts and 4 from the website. As is often the case, the numbers don't always add up to 34 due to some questions being answered in different ways. Some cursory reflections:

There were no anonymous returns, although some did ask that we respect their confidentiality.
Responders were in a wide variety of settings, with only 12 exclusively in a traditional acute care setting.
19 priests, 9 deacons and 3 lay professional ministers identified what order of ministry they belong to.
Of the clergy, 5 are listed in their diocese as specialized ministry, 5 are listed as parochial, 9 in our "favorite" category- non-parochial and 1 as retired.
12 are directors of pastoral care, 12 are staff chaplains, 1 is a vice president and 5 are ACPE supervisors.
12 listed their specialties as being in ethics, 5 in aging/gerontology and 3 in mental health with a mix of others.
Service specialties include 7 as generalists, 6 in aging and 3 in oncology.
13 folks had MDivs, 5 have DMins and 6 PhDs.
CPE experience went from a low of no CPE to folks with 13 quarters.
Years of experience went from 1 year to 43 years, including a retired USAF chaplain who did not delineate healthcare from military chaplaincy.
Cognate groups included 17 in APC(15 certified), 2 in NAVAC(both certified), 5 in ACPE(4 supervisors) and 5 in AAMFT(4 as Fellows).
24 are full-time, 3 at .75 and 6 less than .5
Folks tended to feel very in touch with parishes they were at and then a wide variety of connectedness for the diocese, OBAF and AEHC.
22 folks were aware that OBAF handled endorsements(actually pretty good)
Most folks felt that AEHC had done a good job in meeting the vision of Advocacy, Communication and Education.
The biggest draw for CE programming was ethics with 19, followed by the future shape of pastoral care at 16 and a tie for patient confidentiality/area clergy notification and charting with 10.
4 folks were fully funded for annual meetings, 5 split the costs and 8 paid completely out of pocket.
5 folks listed themselves as being available for leadership positions.

I will leave if to your collective wisdom to divine any trends that the tea leaves may point to.

It continues to be a pleasure to serve you as the Communications Officer. Should you have any questions during the meeting in New York, my pager will be on and active. I will be involved with a computer simulations exercise for the weekend with the Army Reserve but I will be at my headquarters in Chicago rather than Brainard, MN and available by pager, 414-576-6808.

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