Chaplaincy Ministry and the Mission of the Church

Victoria Slater

• Publisher: SCM Press
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9780334053156
• eBook ISBN: 9780334053170
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Ministry

In Chaplaincy Ministry and the Mission of the Church, Victoria Slater explores the significance of chaplaincy for the mission and ministry of the contemporary Church. She discusses the reasons for the recent growth in new chaplaincy roles in the contemporary cultural and church context and provides a theological rationale for chaplaincy along with practical suggestions for the development and support of chaplaincy practice. The book provides conceptual clarity about what chaplaincy actually is and will move beyond the common polarisation of chaplaincy and Church to position chaplaincy as a distinctive form of ministry with its own identity and integrity that, together with other forms of ministry, makes a significant contribution to the mission of the Church.

2

Chaplaincy Development in a Changing World

Introduction

At a recent conference I found myself talking over coffee with a parish priest who worked in the centre of a major city. After telling me about his work, he asked me about my interests. When I said that I was interested in chaplaincy, he told me that he had several chaplaincy roles, as he found that this was the most effective way to engage with people in local communities. This kind of pragmatic development of chaplaincy as a way of enabling missional engagement is typical of the way in which many such roles develop in ministerial contexts. As previously discussed, the problem is that there has been little, if any, reflection and research into why so many roles have been developed over the past decade and what the significance of this trend might be for the mission and ministry of the Church. Why is it that people like this parish priest find that taking on chaplaincy roles is a particularly effective way to engage with people in the public square?

In order to address these questions, I undertook three qualitative case studies of the development of chaplaincy roles in community contexts. This chapter presents the stories of these case studies which represent the core empirical research that anchors the book in practice. In view of the fact that the voice of chaplaincy seemed to be absent from the central ministerial and missiological discourses of the Church, this qualitative research privileged the voices of chaplains by listening to and representing their experience and insights. The case studies enabled me to describe and understand what was happening, how the people involved understood what was happening and the processes involved. Because I wanted to understand the significance of this phenomenon for the mission and ministry of the Church, I investigated the practice of Christian chaplains whose roles had emerged in ministerial contexts. Although one of the studies has an ecumenical context, the research focus was Anglican ministry, because this was the primary context of my research practice at the time. However, the findings indicate that these particular stories have a wider resonance that is relevant to the story of contemporary chaplaincy as a whole. For readers who have a research interest or are thinking of undertaking a case study, an account of the research approach and methodology is provided as a prologue to the stories. If you prefer to go straight to the stories, then please feel free to skip the initial section on the research approach. It is the case study stories that provide the basis for the subsequent exploration of the relationship in practice between chaplaincy development and theologies of mission.

The qualitative research approach

The basic elements of qualitative inquiry used in this study include a variety of methods of data collection with people in their natural setting. It is an interpretive approach in which the researcher attempts to make sense of phenomena in terms of the meanings people bring to them. It adopts an inductive approach to data collection and analysis which enables the researcher to describe, interpret and construct meaning and to identify patterns or themes from the data (Cresswell 2007). Because this kind of qualitative research seeks to elicit, identify and develop understandings of the meanings that participants bring to an issue, it is also able to represent the voices of participants and therefore holds the potential to be transformative in enabling certain voices to be heard that otherwise may not have a conduit. In the light of the need there seems to be to find ways for the voices of chaplains to be represented and heard within the Church, this capacity is particularly valuable here. The character of qualitative inquiry that I have briefly described implies a particular view of the world and particular perspectives on truth and knowledge and how they are perceived. Put very simply, in the positivist tradition of the natural sciences traditionally there has been a dominant assumption that there is an objec­tive truth that can be accessed by scientific methods within which the researcher is detached from the object of the research. In contrast, qualitative inquiry takes a constructivist approach assuming that there are multiple realities that are individually and socially constructed and in which we all participate. The researcher is therefore inevitably involved in the research process as a participant and can never be a detached, objective observer. As Swinton (2001, p. 97) points out, this perspective proposes that ‘all meaning emerges from the shared interaction of individuals within human society’.

In this view, human beings are constantly engaged in the process of constructing and interpreting their experience, and the meaning of any given reality is open to negotiation. This implies that it is valid to listen to different narratives of human experience, each of which will be the fruit of a particular process of construction and interpretation influenced by inter- and intra-personal, cultural and social factors. This epistemological assumption is particularly apt to this study with its focus on gathering multiple perspectives and narratives in relation to chaplaincy and its acknowledgement of the important influences of personal, social and cultural contexts to the shaping of understandings and practice.

It is important to say at this point that while it would be possible within this paradigm to adopt the view that all reality is constructed and all truth is relative, this study, located as it is within Practical Theology, takes a less purely interpretive epistemological stance. Practical Theology is concerned with the discernment of ‘truth’, and as a practical theologian I take into account the claim of the Christian tradition to have received revelation, a claim that posits a fundamental reality as given and accessible. As a researcher, I took the view that while there may be many different perceptions of a particular reality and truth may be subject-oriented rather than researcher-defined, nevertheless there is a reality that can be accessed, albeit one which is constructed and interpreted in different ways. As the ensuing case studies will show, different narratives reveal different perspectives on the phenomenon called chaplaincy. The assumption in attending to these multiple perceptions is that, taken as a whole, they will bring us closer to an understanding of what reality might look like (Swinton & Mowat 2006, p. 36).

The importance of reflexivity

Within this approach the researcher is unable to stand outside the field of inquiry; he or she is enmeshed in the human process of seeking to make meaning out of experience. There is a recognition that the world-views, values and pre-existing theories of the researcher inevitably influence and shape the research, and the research in turn influences the researcher. A reflexive approach which seeks to make this reciprocal relationship explicit is therefore important in establishing the trustworthiness of the research. This acknowledges the researcher as the primary tool enabling access to the meanings of the issue being explored. She is understood as being integral to the process, bringing unique insights, experience and understandings to the development of knowledge. Reflexivity requires of the researcher constant critical self-reflection ‘that enables her to monitor and respond to her contribution to the proceedings’ (Swinton & Mowat 2006, p. 59). I am aware that given my own experience, throughout this study I played an integral role as researcher in the generation of knowledge about chaplaincy. For this reason, it was important to be explicit about my own knowledge, experience and understandings of chaplaincy. Openness about this knowledge and experience also enabled me to establish trust and a rapport with participants, the majority of whom were thereby willing to give full accounts of their work experience. I might have got a very different response if I had no experience of chaplaincy and/or held a negative view of the value of chaplaincy within the mission and ministry of the Church.

What is ‘case study’? Choosing the case study approach

The use of ‘case study’ has a long history across disciplines such as medicine, law, psychology and the social sciences. It is often used to refer to descriptions of a phenomenon or situation that is of particular interest or one that holds implications for the development of future practice, a prime example being the development of case law. However, within this current research context it is important to clarify that qualitative case study is something much more complex and methodologically rigorous than the presentation of interesting examples from practice. There is a substantive body of literature about case study by, for example, Stake (1995; 2008), Yin (2009) and Thomas (2011), all of whom identify slightly different kinds and taxonomies of case studies and have slightly different ways of describing what they understand to be the essence of case study. At its simplest, case study can be said to involve the study of a particular issue ‘explored through one or more cases within a bounded system’ (Cresswell 2007, p. 73). In Case Study Research in Practice, Simons’s definition captures both the research focus and the action-oriented purpose of case study that is pertinent to this study. This is therefore the understanding that I use:

Case study is an in-depth exploration from multiple perspectives of the complexity and uniqueness of a particular project, policy, institution, programme or system in a ‘real-life’ context. It is research-based, inclusive of different methods and is evidence-­led. The primary purpose is to generate in-depth understanding of a specific topic . . . programme, policy, institution or system to generate knowledge and/or inform policy development, professional practice and civil or community action. (Simons 2009, p. 21)

By choosing to use a case study approach I have been able to address the two main difficulties encountered in the study of this type of chaplaincy, difficulties which I suspect in some measure account for the dearth of empirical research. The first is that the diversity of context and models of chaplaincy practice mean that it is hard to find a focus of inquiry: on what basis might participants be selected when every chaplaincy looks different according to context? The second difficulty is the related temptation to gather interesting and informative accounts of diverse practice without then taking the necessary step of interpretive analysis in order to inform both theory and practice. This approach enabled me to address the first difficulty by providing a bounded focus for the research. I selected three geographically defined studies that provided contrasting ministerial contexts within which chaplaincy roles had been developed. The choice was geographically based rather than being based on a particular chaplaincy context such as a nursing home or workplace, because the distinctive focus of the research was the development of roles in community contexts which required me to begin with a particular location. The three ministerial contexts were:

1 An Anglican multi-parish rural benefice.

2 A large Anglican team ministry in an urban town centre.

3 An Anglican–Methodist ecumenical project in a semi-urban market town.

The case study approach enabled me to address the second difficulty of moving beyond descriptions of practice to interpretive analysis by enabling me to use a variety of methods of data collection to elicit the different understandings participants brought to the situation. This enabled me to build up a multi-layered description of the complexities of the development of chaplaincy practices in their real-life setting. As well as describing practice, I could capture the processes and relationships involved in the emergence of chaplaincy roles. These were the data that were then available for analysis and interpretation. The methods of data collection that I used allowed both the unique voices of participants to be heard and a set of themes to be developed from a cross-case analysis of the data. The mixture of methods comprised: semi-structured in-depth interviews, the analysis of documents and the collection of information in the public domain, informal observation at meetings, and visits to the contexts. I also kept a reflexive research journal, noting my own thoughts, feelings and insights throughout the process, along with field notes to capture immediate observations, thoughts and impressions after each encounter or interview. The themes that were developed from the analysis are discussed in the next three chapters. They were subsequently explored in critical dialogue with a variety of theoretical perspectives from theology and other disciplines, and with my own understandings and insights as a researcher and practitioner in order to suggest the significance of chaplaincy for the mission and ministry of the wider Church and to develop the implications of the research for practice.

Ethical issues

I have already stated that one of the main issues that this research sought to address was the absence within central church discourses of a chaplaincy voice commensurate with the extent and potential significance of the Church’s engagement in this form of ministry. A central purpose of these qualitative studies was therefore to allow the voices of chaplains to be heard. As Denzin & Lincoln (2000, p. 23) note, the interpretive practice of making sense of one’s findings has an inbuilt political dimension given that practice-oriented qualitative researchers can ‘create spaces for participants (the other) to speak. The evaluator becomes the conduit through which such voices can be heard.’ Being transparent about this was part of my commitment to a reflexive research practice. I was aware of this dimension of the role from the start. Both participants and I recognized that the research would be shared with a wider audience within the Church. This meant that the main ethical issues with which I had to deal were consent, confidentiality and anonymity, and participation with its implications about who controls knowledge. One of the difficulties of undertaking empirical research in a church context is that, however much care is taken, it is impossible to guarantee anonymity as someone in church circles is likely to recognize the context. This is particularly difficult given the descriptive nature of case study.

A key ethical dimension of the research was therefore the development of open ongoing relationships with participants. This emphasis on relational ethics (Simons 2009) meant that any issues that arose could be addressed co-operatively through dialogue (Etherington 2007). With this ethical stance I sought to ensure that participants felt able to contact me at any time if they had concerns about the project. Although I made every effort to anonymize the studies and to maintain as great a degree of confidentiality as possible, I made it clear as part of the consent process that I could not guarantee that people would not be identified given that the descriptive nature of case studies may render the location identifiable. None of the participants raised this as an issue. In fact, the majority of participants were eager to tell their story, warts and all. In part, I suggest that this was due to the relational ethical stance of the study. It was important to me that the research process was democratic and that people could participate in the research process. Participants were sent their interview transcripts to check for accuracy and to confirm that they were happy for the information they had provided to be in the public domain. The written case studies were later sent to give people the opportunity to see and to respond to how they were portrayed in the interpreted study. Minor emendations, such as a change of someone’s title, were made in response to participant feedback but there were no major difficulties. This then was an iterative process based on relational trust and, as Simons remarks:

It is only in and through relationships in the field, supported by procedures and negotiations over what is fair, relevant and just in the precise socio-political context, that we can know if we have acted ethically in relation to those who are part of our case. (2009, p. 110)

A large amount of data was collected across the three studies which provided the material for a thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke 2006), a method for identifying, analysing and reporting patterns or themes within the data in relation to the main theoretical concerns of the research. The propositions and arguments that I will go on to make about chaplaincy are made in relation to the themes I identified through this inductive thematic analysis. The three themes identified were:

1 The role of theologies of mission in the emergence of chaplaincy roles.

2 The identity and integrity of chaplaincy as a genre of ministry.

3 The relationship between chaplaincy and parish-based ministry.

The stories narrated in the rest of this chapter were written following the thematic analysis.

Before I narrate the case study stories, one final issue concerning case study needs to be addressed; this relates to how the value of this type of qualitative research is understood. The primary purpose for undertaking a case study is to effect an in-depth exploration of the particular characteristics of that unique case. This means that the approach rests on the production of idiographic knowledge; that is, knowledge discovered in unique, non-replicable experiences that is nevertheless presumed to hold meaning and value. This kind of knowledge is fundamental to both qualitative research and practical theology (Swinton & Mowat 2006, p. 42). Idiographic knowledge contrasts with nomothetic knowledge in the positivist tradition which is replicable, for example in clinical trials in medicine, so that findings can be transferred from one context to another. Because case study findings relate to unique situations, the question of whether and how findings in one situation can be used in relation to different situations has to be addressed. However, while the findings in one context are not directly transferable to other contexts, they can resonate with the experiences of others in similar contexts, offer insights and raise issues that have significance beyond the particularities of the case. In this research, I have therefore been able to use an interpretive hermeneutic to develop theoretical propositions based on the findings that can be tested in different chaplaincy contexts. The cross-case analysis that I undertook has enabled me to suggest a theory about the significance of the growth in chaplaincy roles which can be tested beyond these initial studies and therefore, potentially, holds a wider significance. I hope that this testing out will be done. I have recently...

Table of contents

• Chaplaincy Ministry and the Mission of the Church
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• I Chaplaincy in a Changing World
• 2 Chaplaincy Development in a Changing World
• 3 Chaplaincy Within the Mission of the Contemporary Church
• 4 What Makes Chaplaincy ‘Chaplaincy’? The Identity and Integrity of Chaplaincy as a Genre of Ministry
• 5 The Challenges of Chaplaincy: The Relationship Between Chaplaincy and Church-Based Ministry
• 6 Doing Chaplaincy: The Development and Support of Chaplaincy Practice
• Conclusion: Questions and Challenges for the Future
• Bibliography