The Blessings of Breadth and Variety

Abstract

From time to time many full articles offered in any one issue of JPC&C focus on a similar theme, at other times they do not do so. This issue contains articles that reflect a theme about one of JPC&C’s core missions to reflect the breadth of field that pastoral/spiritual care encompasses. The breadth of this mission is not characterized simply by themes or theories; it includes cultural and geographical diversity. Theo Pleizier and Carmen Schuhmann’s How the Military Context shapes Spiritual Care Interventions by Military Chaplains identifies professional realities that often do not receive the deserved attention in the field’s extant literature. Jolanda van Dijke, Joachim Duyndam, Inge van Nistelrooij, and Pien Bos, We need to talk about empathy, offer insights about humanist chaplains in the Netherlands that can be informative about the spiritual context of a growing number spiritual care providers in the 21 century. Jane Kuepfer, Angela Schmidt, Thomas St. James O’Connor, and Melanie Jame, spiritual Care in Ontario Long term Care, consider structural concerns within western Canada that are faced by local practitioners and have potential implications for the field at large. Csaba Szilagyl, Alexander Tartaglia, Patricia Palmer, David Fleenor, Elizabeth Jackson-Jordan, Sara Sweeney, and James Slaven, COVID-19 and Clinical Pastoral Education, opine on the structural shifts in training generated by the current pandemic and what these shifts suggest going forward. Leanne Frost and Dianne Gardner, Maintaing balance for Christian Counselors..., consider the stresses experienced by some pastoral/spiritual counselors and models for coping with them. And Csaba Szilagyl, Anne Maria Vandenhoec, Megan Best, Cate Desjardins, David Drummond, George Fichett, Simon Harrison, Trace Haythorn, Cheryl Holmes, Hanneke Muthert, Daniel Nuzum, Joost Verhoef, and Erika Willander, offer an international panel’s consideration of Chaplain Leadership During COVID-19, and provide a broad assessment the roles that chaplains assumed in the context of the pandemic. Such breadth of themes, perspective, and experiences are also represented in the Personal Reflections an Media offering in this issue. Finally, in addition to the content depth and breadth these articles represent, they also exhibit an increasing professional reality by the complement of their authorship. Professional collaboration in research, vision, and practice represents the increasing reality that pastoral and spiritual care professionals are currently working and conducting research collaboratively as well as with colleagues and peers from other clinical disciplines. This shift represents the profession’s health and the increasing status it has acquired with other providers. It fulfills one of The Journal of Pastoral Care Publications’ core goals. Editorial