Pagan Leadership Skills Conference
This morning I agree to co-lead the Pastoral Care track of the Pagan Leadership Skills Conference this July in Richmond, VA. For those of you who don’t know about this conference, it is a professional intensive training opportunity for Pagan clergy to beef-up their skills. Past years have had tracks on counseling, finances, marketing & PR, group facilitation, and more. If your Pagan organization is growing and you didn’t get to go to seminary and business school (and who did?), then please consider attending the conference.
I’m delighted to be co-teaching with Judy Harrow — a mental health counselor, present (or past?) President of the New Jersey chapter of ASERVIC (Association for Spiritual and Religious Values in Counseling), and Pagan elder. She is also Chair of the Pastoral Counseling Department at Cherry Hill Seminary.
Here is the current generic write-up on the planned class:
More and more today, Pagan groups are being called on to guide the personal and spiritual growth of their individual members, minister to their needs, and counsel them through life changes. The Pagan community is a unique context for this ministry, and the PLSC Pastoral Care track will give you a base knowledge of common counseling techniques and tools to help you do so. The track will address the foundations and basic techniques of pastoral care, active listening, unconditional positive regard, reflective and additive empathy, appropriate confrontation, spiritual assessment, confidentiality and its limits, and specialized tools and techniques such as what to listen for and questions to ask. This track will equip you to develop a personalized action plan for pastoral care to bring back to your organization or group.