By Rev. Obadias Mahirwa (EAR) and Rev. Paluku Muhingi (CBCA)

1. Introduction

The last session of the CPE training programme, which brought together seven participants including five men and two women, took place in Jakarta, Indonesia. The participants came mainly from Indonesia – 5 out of 7 – but also from Rwanda and Congo. The training took ten weeks, from 27January to 5 April 2008, at RS PGI Cikini Hospital under the supervision of Rev. Esther M. Gelloagan.

2. Historical Background of CPE

Clinical Pastoral Education was conceived by Rev. Anton Boisen. While he was admitted at the Boston Hospital, he felt the need to have someone to talk to. Thus, he realised that health is an inner harmony of numerous vitalities. It cannot be attained by medical materials alone. On the contrary, it demands
a combined effort of spiritual or psychological instruments such as sacraments, scripture, guidance and counselling. It is in the holistic approach of healing a person that medical science, religious faith, and other allied discipline join forces
and share their vast knowledge and resources to form a healing team.
Here many specialists work together in constant cooperation for the health and wholeness of the person in need. In the past, it was assumed that a pastor after being ordained becomes automatically competent to deal with any pastoral situation that might arise. But experience has proved that for some cases, the pastor needs some training in Clinical pastoral Education. That is
why in other Seminaries it has been a branch up to Master’s level.

3. Importance of CPE

Learning by Experience looking at verbal & non-verbal communication
of a patient. Listening to the feeling of someone looking at his/her situation in order to offer adequate help.

4. Various activities of the program in ten weeks.

1. Morning Devotion: It consists of fifteen minutes of meditation of the word of God. It takes place everyday by the COD (Chaplain of that day). Only the preacher or the one to give meditation makes comments. It is also time to worship God by singing and praying for requests from the participants.

2. COD (Chaplain of the day): The COD is the person who leads every
common activity of that day: to keep key of classroom, to photocopy the daily documents to present because each person receives a copy of presentation. He reminds those who are on duty so that all the activities run properly.

3. Chaplain on Call (COC): This is the person who is ready to respond to the patients’ call at night in the rooms where patients are in critical condition. He works with a chaplain according to the Program previously elaborated. Sometimes he spends the whole night visiting patients when a critical incident appears. Otherwise he spends the night in the Chaplaincy waiting for eventual phone calls from the wards. The COC gives the Holy Communion to dying patients and leads them to pass away gracefully. In the morning s/he will the report to the whole group about all the patients she/he has visited, the
ministry she/he rendered to them, the critical incident she/he might have encountered and how she/he was able to handle the difficult
situation.

4. Verbatim: This is the written work of the chaplain that s/he will present to the participants and the Supervisor about the visit and the ministry rendered to people visited. And then questions will be asked in order to understand more the situation and make the chaplain improve on the method of his/her ministry. This report is helpful also to the chaplain because it raises some personal problems. For instance there is a time when the chaplain becomes more sympathetic instead of being empathetic. Or she/he may come across a case that corresponds to his own life history and fail to minister to the person in need. S/He will be found wounded while trying to be a healer. So in presenting this verbatim she/he is helped by his/her classmates and the Supervisor. We have also a self verbatim where a participant analyzes him/herself his/her feelings about certain issues like relationship, professional challenges and the like. So s/he is at the same time chaplain and a person in need, s/he writes on him/herself and presents that verbatim to the class for the better understanding about one self. The participants give him/her some feedback to identify his/her strengths or limitations in order to be more confident or improve here the need occurs. Every week we had to write two verbatim, one for presentation another one for submission.

5. Case study: This is a presentation that every participant does about some one s/he has been given by the Supervisor. This time the Chaplain will interview his/her colleague from his/her conception up to now. The chaplain will ask him/
her the family background, his/her childhood or infancy, education, relationships with his/her own family if the interviewee is married, his/her property, big and small events in his/her life history, his/her professional, defence mechanisms, hobbies, food, etc. By this the chaplain will be able to analyze his/her interviewee in order to know the person well and do exposition about his/her
subject in the class. This helps both the chaplain and the interviewee to know themselves and to understand why they act the way they do. CPE is first to know oneself more before you know others.

6. Biblical Identification: The chaplain chooses his own favourite character from the Bible, someone whom your Character has connection. When he presents s/he will specify where s/he relates him/herself. S/he will consider the character’s background and why s/he chose him/her. Thus will be able to draw lessons through the participants and the Supervisor’s guiding questions. Here also every one will be asked why he chose that character and what s/he did learn from him/her. This will help him to discover him/herself more in relation
to his/her belief in God and how God uses him/her in the ministry.

7. Individual Conference: Every participant tries to present his/her difficulty about the feedback given to the Supervisor who will give advice according to the situation she observes during session and which can cause hindrance in the
participant’s involvement in the training or his ministry. It is a time
to share whatever concerns, the way the CPE Program is running so as to be more effective. This is more confidential than the rest of the activities.

8. Interpersonal Relations: It is a time in the class where the Participants share whatever concern is helpful to the group or to them as individuals. It may be a prayer request, information about the family, a country, a Church back home. Sometimes the class enjoys sharing together. For instance if someone shows personal issues such as sympathy, prejudices, etc., the issues will be brought to the group and analyzed in order to help each other

9. Visit to the patients: The chaplaincy office is in charge of welcoming the newly admitted patients in the hospital. It elaborates the list of all of them. The following names will be distributed to the CPE participants to visit them. These will report back to the chaplaincy office how many visited and the ministry
rendered to every patient. This feedback will enable the mentioned office to minister to all people who have been admitted effectively. The visit is for two times a day. Morning and afternoon and there is consideration of religious barriers. Every one is attended to with no discrimination which is sound in Indonesia where 75% is Muslim. This activity has enabled us to see our strengths and weaknesses in pastoral ministry where visit is very
crucial. Visits help people to trust the pastor and open themselves up
in order to be helped. On the other hand, the pastor also is encouraged
to minister to him/her. Patients, on this note made confessions of their faiths;
others who were dying and needed Holy Communion were served
accordingly. Some patients confessed their sins and they were prayed for.
Even some Muslims accepted Jesus Christ as their personal Lord and Savior, etc.

10. Inputs: Anger, Conflict Management, Communication, Listening, Psychology

• Anger is a powerful energy whichcan lead to negative facts. It is not
• always negative. It can be positive when it is against sin such as: stealing, corruption, rape, adultery etc.
• Communication: To be a good communicator, one needs to be
  a good listener so as to be able to perceive the feelings of the patient, including the non verbal language.
• Psychology: Behavioural Psychology where we asked ourselves why people act the way they do, in different manner. It was found out that behaviour depends on family, educational environmental backgrounds.
• Listening: to the feelings and fears, the chaplain has to be friendly
  and cheerful.

11. Evaluation: We make comments on how the programme was run, the interactions with the fellow participants, the training session, the ministry rendered to the patients and make suggestions on ways to improve the programme how useful the programme has been and how we plan to use it
afterwards.

12. Recommendations: Having realized its importance in our Great lakes region due to many untouched wounds and the feelings which are not expressed and hence not dealt with especially due to the consequences of wars in our region,
we tried to contextualize the CPE program to tackle these issues in order to help the victims. The CPE has provided the techniques to help a person discover himself in order to solve his own problem through the help of the Counsellor. Therefore we recommend that:

• This program should continue and eventually be started in Africa
• Church leaders should be given the opportunity to take part in the CPE programme.
• The former participants to this programme should be given the
  opportunity to meet and discuss possible ways of implementing the programme in Africa.
• Start the chaplaincy in all the church schools and hospitals of UEM
  member churches where they are not and improve on the chaplaincy work where there are chaplaincy offices. And these chaplains should be trained in CPE for effective ministry.

We thank the UEM for giving us this chance and our respective churches for appointing us.