- International conference on education in meaning-making and spirituality on the occasion of 100 years of clinical pastoral education worldwide.
Out of the Depths is a title famously associated with the biography of Anton Boisen, a pioneer of the Pastoral Education Movement that began a century ago. Today, this movement has expanded to centres across the globe, where professionals in pastoral and spiritual care are trained and guided. These individuals are encouraged to explore their inner worlds, enabling them to provide meaningful spiritual support to patients and clients in diverse care and faith-based settings. As we mark this centennial, it is a fitting moment to reflect on the essence of their work: the themes and issues faced by the individuals they support, the counselling methods they employ, and the practices shaping their training, formation, and supervision. Like those they care for, pastors, healthcare chaplains, and spiritual counsellors navigate a “wounded world.” Their mission is to address the existential and religious challenges arising from the conflicts, exclusion, and poverty that impact personal stories, communities, and the world we share.
At the upcoming conference, spirituality will serve as a guiding framework to explore the identity and future of the pastoral and spiritual education movement. Spirituality, rooted in the interpretation of religious texts and practices, shapes both individual faith and collective worldviews. The humanities discipline of hermeneutics delves into spiritual sources, interpreting their significance for personal and shared human concerns. This hermeneutical approach—balancing individual and universal perspectives—has long been a cornerstone of the pastoral education movement. It now provides a framework to inspire contributions to the conference, whether through lectures, workshops, or research presentations
Focus points of the Conference
Challenges
What are the challenges that spiritual care now faces in the various pastoral care and broader spiritual care contexts all over the world? How is the ‘wounded world’ represented in spiritual care and what are the means to address these wounds, at the micro-level of the care relationship, the meso-level of care-settings, or the macro-level of the pain of globally wounded people? We want to explore these challenges in CPE training (benchmarks: case study, self-reflection and group dynamic development), and try to find out what remains to be developed.
Sources
Which texts and rituals taken from our spiritual heritages do we consider belonging to the core of spiritual care and ministry? What are the strengths and limitations of these heritages in effective care within the challenges of emerging care needs? How can historical and cultural distances that dislocate us from spiritual sources be bridged? When are spiritual beliefs, texts, and practices conducive to meet challenges, and when are they dysfunctional? How do secularizing contexts, in which spirituality increasingly is becoming a matter of individual choice, inhibit use of religious imagery? In the light of worldview diversity, how can spiritual care, counselling and supervision take on a more interreligious character? What are the sources of humanistic forms and methods of spiritual care?
Metaphors
According to what techniques or procedures can we improve our understanding of the lived spirituality of the patient? What use of imagery in communicating with patients serves the quality of the care contact? What dispositions and qualifications are necessary and sufficient to define and develop spiritual care and counseling? What metaphors are helpful in clarifying the self-image and -presentation of the pastoral and hospital chaplain/spiritual caregiver and improve role-interactions with the patient?
Cases
What ‘critical incidents’ in patients come to mind as typical for pastoral/spiritual care and counselling? Which CPE methods are established to successfully ‘read’ patients as ‘living human documents’ within the ‘human web’ situation and what techniques require improvement? How are the patients’ problems, emotions, values, practices and beliefs experienced and what is their impact on well-being, healing, and happiness? What ‘state-of-the-art’ concepts and theories for interpreting cases may replace (or support) the psycho-analytical and humanistic frameworks of the past?