Chaplaincy centre offers top notch training in pastoral care
WOLFVILLE, NS - "Acadia Divinity College in Nova Scotia's Annapolis Valley is hoping that its new Charles J. Taylor Centre for Chaplaincy and Spiritual Care will become the go-to place in Canada for anyone - "be they pastor, professional or volunteer" - involved in Christian counselling and ministering to the marginalized and the institutionalized.
“We intend for this centre to be kind of an umbrella to all the courses in this area that we'll be doing and have been doing," says Acadia president Harry Gardner. “There will be all kinds of opportunities for students, depending on their own interest level."
The centre's namesake taught at Acadia for 50 years, gaining an international reputation as a pioneer in sharing the love of Christ with prison inmates. In 2004, just weeks before he died, he was invested with the Order of Canada.
Naming the centre in Taylor's honour is “a great start and suggests a rich tradition and heritage," says Rod Wilson, president of Vancouver's Regent College, where he also teaches psychology and counseling. He spoke at the centre's official opening.
“Charlie Taylor has been very influential in Canada in clinical pastoral education. He's one of the founders, if not the founder, of that whole area," Wilson says. “The ripple effect of what he's done over the years has really impacted a lot of people."
One of the centre's goals is to ensure that Taylor's legacy lives on. In 2007, a consultation group headed by Christian education professor Carol Anne Janzen recommended the college move beyond the diploma in prison ministries that Taylor had started and offer training in other areas as well. And so the Taylor Centre was born.
“When we went into this," says Gardner, “we had to ask ourselves, did we want to simply do chaplaincy as it related to the prison system? Or were we interested in health care, or the military or the marketplace - "that kind of thing? We determined that we wanted to offer degrees that would be across the board."
Beginning in September, students will be able to specialize in prison chaplaincy or healthcare chaplaincy and spiritual care. There will also be several MA programs for pastors who feel called to a specialized chaplaincy, and students who want to move directly from an undergraduate degree into a specific area of spiritual care-giving.
Janzen, who is also now the centre's interim director - "while founding director Tracy Demmons recovers from surgery - "says given the specialized nature of these programs, she does not anticipate “a flood of applicants all at once."
But Gardner is confident that word of the program will spread quickly. “There are definitely places where there's a huge need for training and there's an appetite for this," he says. “So we see our 'market' beyond Atlantic Canada - and Canada, actually - into the international setting."
“I've seen a lot of students here at Regent," says Wilson, “who really don't see themselves as preachers or liturgical leaders. They see themselves as people who will be pastoral in the context of the so-called secular world. So in that sense the centre really does meet a need for a lot of the current generation."
Nor would Acadia discourage non-Christians from enrolling in the centre. “We would want people coming in to know that our approach is very Christ-centred," Gardner says. “But at the same time, we're sensitive to the pluralistic and multi-faith reality that exists in Canada. We recognize that's a balance, but we believe we can do that."
Beyond actual instruction, the centre also plans to offer retreats and continuing education for all spiritual care providers, including lay volunteers.
Janzen says the centre even “allows us to speak into the public arena as an advocate for chaplaincy. It's been quite surprising that schools that have a different theological bent from us have spoken out in great support of this program. They say we need a voice to speak in favour of publicly-supported chaplaincy."
For Wilson, the greatest blessing the Taylor Centre will have to offer are people who “really embody the gospel in hospitals or prisons or different communities."
“Anything that's going to bring an embodying of the gospel, where truth is lived and incarnated," he says, “is a way to draw people alongside the gospel that maybe would not have come in other ways."
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