Creating Space: Story, Reflection and Practice in Healthcare Chaplaincy

Creating Space tells a professional and personal story of healthcare chaplaincy and models the way in which practice development emerges from reflecting on our story. This book reveals to healthcare, the Church and the community, the unique role of the chaplain's experiences as a resource to others.

It is written for professional practitioners, prompting their own contextual learning and development, whether as chaplains, pastoral carers, parish clergy, lay ministers, volunteers in any caring context, those who work in listening therapies, those who provide care and support to others of any kind, or those who use or teach reflective practice. We connect in a straightforward way our view of healthcare chaplaincy as a model of practical theology, based on key practical theologians who see the human story as a source of learning. We outline our own reflective practice tool for learning, and we share the way in which we see each pastoral encounter as a reflective source of learning. We discover how our experiences have developed the discernment process for chaplaincy vocation, urging the Church to see beyond the parish model in today's world.