Your offering supports the ministry of our chaplains.
Chaplaincy and Care Ministry has a blessed history. The chaplains who served in World War Two and those in our Christian Healthcare Centers expanded the ministry horizons of our church and cast a vision of ministry to children of God in special settings. Chaplains struggled with doing ministry outside the comfortable walls of the church and the ordered and structured life of familiar institutional patterns. They were in the unfamiliar territory of another’s institution. God blessed their ministry and many became experts in pastoral care.
We are rejoicing that God continues to work in congregations to call men and women to this ministry. Chaplains, who now make up about 10% of our ordained ministry workers, carry the love of Christ to people who are on battlefields, in hospitals, in prisons, in distress and pain, and in the shadow of death. We continue to thank God that the spiritual or religious dimension of human life is recognized by secular institutions as vital to a person’s life and health, which needs attending to by chaplains who are specially trained in pastoral ministry. God has given us the blessing of being a keeper of sacred things.
Chaplains are required to obtain special training over and above the normal Seminary education. This training is usually referred to as Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) and entails from two to four units (800 – 1600 additional hours) of focused exposure to the unique realities of pastoral care in crisis environments. These can cost up to several thousand dollars per unit. Several years ago a fund was created to help offset the cost of this training for up and coming chaplains, and the costs of an annual training conference or continued education for existing Chaplains. Please consider making a donation to, or taking an offering for, this Chaplains Development Fund.
Your gifts will be tax deductable, greatly appreciated, and multiplied by many years of ministry in the name of Christ to individuals in crisis.
Thank you for your support.
Ron Klimp
Director of Chaplaincy and Care Ministry
616-295-8686
rklimp@crcna.org
