“Without exaggeration the SJ CPE unit has been the most transformative experience of my life...This unit has been life changing because you get labeled with one story. There’s more to me. When I update that story I have love, healing, growth, and redemption.”
Our program combines hands-on spiritual care with qualified supervision and peer group reflection, preparing people for specialized chaplaincies, and enhancing faith leaders’ ministries/serving in communities.
The ACPE Certified Educator uses community programs and congregational settings to teach narrative counseling theory to faith leaders, lay ministers and seminarians. Individually designed learning contracts focus on pastoral reflection, spiritual care competence and specialization.
Together we strive to build a continuum of care between communities of faith and those in greatest need... and to further develop our ability to respond to the needs of individuals through direct service and crisis care.
Our educator, Rev. Dr. Sue Allers-Hatlie was given the Emerging Leader Award from ACPE for her Innovation and Prophetic approach to Theological Education — in which narrative therapy is used as a foundation to spiritual care practice and those usually barred from graduate education are invited in.
Our Vision:
Inspiring spiritual care to generate healing, justice, and restoration in the world.
Our Mission:
We provide justice-centered liberative spiritual care education for faith leaders who desire to expand their capacity to walk with individuals and communities through stories of pain, healing, and transformation.
History
Social Justice Clinical Pastoral Education (SJ CPE) was founded in 2018 as a 501c3 non-profit. Initially, SJ CPE was placing student chaplains in “non-traditional” settings, homeless shelters, re-entry sites for long term incarcerated people, mental health facilities and correctional facilities. SJ CPE began an additional direction when Sue was invited to take her units into the Stillwater State prison to receive a six-week training in Restorative Justice taught by inmates. Over a couple of years this blossomed into SJ CPE, in conjunction with the Chaplain department at the Stillwater Prison and a generous gift from the Koch Family Foundation, providing CPE training for inmates. This training helps those inmates provide spiritual care to their peers in the prison and when released they take this this training into their communities.
Today, SJ CPE has three units per year (Winter, Summer and Fall) along with one MDivX unit. SJ CPE has trained men in prison to provide spiritual care, along with training seminary students and faith leaders. SJ CPE has been recognized for its innovative approach to chaplaincy training.
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