Volume 45  2025

NEXT ISSUE’S THEME:

EDUCATIONAL CORNERSTONES AND ADAPTATION 

IN CHANGING LANDSCAPES OF PRACTICE[1]

VOLUME 45, 2025

"The more things change, the more they remain the same."

As editors we’ve been comparing notes about adaptation and change in CPE environments and in Theological Field Education. Clearly there are challenges being confronted in the new permutations of CPE and Theological Field Education environments. Adaptations are being made while the cornerstones of our educational process: action—reflection—action remains a constant.

In M.A./MDiv programs, Theological Field Education is conducted completely online, in various hybrid formats, or in traditional residential settings. In each, Theological Field Education provides places to practice and spaces to reflect (peer reflection group, with supervisor-mentor, and individually) under quality supervision committed to mentoring. Adaptation has been critical to delivering a rich formational experience.

In CPE, our cornerstone has long been educating and creating spiritual care leaders who embrace their unique and insightful pastoral identity and pastoral competence alongside their ability to engage in pastoral reflection. While this cornerstone remains the needed and necessary brick of CPE, new bricks of adaption are on the horizon all around us. The new adaptations on the horizon center on the question of where pastoral identity, pastoral competence, and pastoral reflection are developed. How do we redefine “the clinic” in Clinical Pastoral Education? Maybe the clinic is technically not a clinic at all but just as viable a teaching and learning space -the homeless shelter, the domestic violence safe haven, the airport, or the college dorm. They are some of the new bricks that are calling us to adapt in CPE…. if we are open.

What is your experience? Can you reflect on the adaptations you’ve made within your program in this changing landscape of practice? How has the value of the cornerstones been affirmed or been challenged—or maybe been challenging to maintain? When you found adaptation necessary, what provided the firm place from which to pivot?

Editors, Matthew Floding and Danie J. Buhuro

        [1] Etienne Wenger, Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and Identity, (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 118ff.

For more information, or to express interest in contributing to volume 45, please contact co-editors Danielle Buhuro, Danielle.Buhuro@acpe.edu, or Matthew Floding, mdfloding@gmail.com. The deadline for submissions is October 1, 2024.

 Matthew Floding and Danielle Buhuro Co-Editors

ISSN 2325-2855

© Copyright 2024 Reflective Practice:

Formation and Supervision in Ministry

All rights reserved.

ISSN 2325-2847 - print

ISSN 2325-2855 - online

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     We anticipated that some people would like to have a copy of volume 42 for the library. A limited number of printed copies have been made. If you would like a printed copy please go to our Contact Us page. There you will find a contact form that is to be filled out and emailed to us.  The person who coordinates the distribution of Reflective Practice will be in contact with you. You may also order back issues as well. You may also use the Contact Us form with any others questions you may have. 

Thank you for your interest in The Journal and have a wonderful day!

•Because this Journal is now available electronically across the globe, we hope that people will write about formation and supervision from their context in order that we may all be enriched by a diversity of perspectives. Proposals are welcome any time. Articles should be submitted electronically to Matthew Floding, or Danielle Buhuro, Co-Editors mfloding@div.duke.edu or Danielle.Buhuro@ACPE.edu by October 1, 2024 for inclusion in Volume 45.