At no time in my life have I felt more palpable anxiety than at the beginning of my experience of clinical pastoral education in seminary. My first visit with a hospital patient went something like this: I said, \u201cHi. I\u2019m the chaplain on the floor today. What\u2019s your name?\u201d\u009d The patient said: \u201cOh\u201d\u201dwell, nice to meet you. I hope you have a wonderful day.\u201d\u009d And then I hightailed it out of the room.<\/p>\n
Thanks to clinical pastoral education, I did get better at this ministry. I learned how to sit in silence when necessary, how to offer prayers, how to be part of difficult conversations in fruitful ways.<\/p>\n
Core to my learning was writing up and discussing verbatims\u201d\u201dwritten records of conversations in the clinical setting that approximated the verbal back and forth of visits with patients. In reviewing verbatims, pastoral interns learn how to share and invite people into more meaningful conversations.<\/p>\n
The helpfulness of that experience has inspired the idea of another sort of clinical endeavor. The type of conversation that frequently terrifies me now is a little different, but I am no less awkward and no less in need of something like a verbatim to help me with it. Call the course I need CEE: clinical evangelistic education.<\/p>\n