CHAPLAINCY

CHAPLAINCY

1.     Chaplaincy is a profession seeking to reduce the suffering of people to the barest minimum acceptable level. If you are in chaplaincy or chaplain who is not interested in helping to reduce people’s suffering, you are a misfit.

2.     Chaplaincy is a profession seeking to make life better and meaningful to people, if you are however, in chaplaincy and not interested in making life meaningful and better for people, you are already on your way out of the profession.

3.     Chaplaincy is a profession that seeks to render the needed support and care to the traumatized, victimized, afflicted and abandoned, helping them to navigate through turbulence and challenging situations until victory is granted them, if you are not committed to this, you are not a chaplain.

4.     Chaplaincy is a profession seeking to provide the needed care-giving services to people of all ages, culture, ethnicity, religions and status who are in need of such services, be it spiritual, psychological, emotional, physical or environmental. If you are in chaplaincy, offering none of such care, you better have a rethink.

5.     Chaplaincy is a profession that seeks to build resilience in people who are victims of violence, terrorist attacks, natural and man-made disasters and have become strangers and refugees in their own land, helping to restore them to normalcy; that they may begin a new live in earnest. If you are called a chaplain and you remain invisible to offer such resilience to destabilized people, you must be a fake.

6.     Chaplaincy is a profession that seeks to attend to numerous mental problems of humanity, which attempts to render humans impotent in life, by offering the needed solutions to such problems that people may free and be at liberty to operate at optimal potentials. If you are in chaplaincy, and you are not able to offer such solutions, you must be an amateur or naïve.

7.     Chaplaincy is a profession that seeks to offer conflict resolution to parties in conflict and help in bringing people to live together in peaceful co-existence and harmony. If you are in chaplaincy causing conflict among people, groups, tribes etc; you have found yourself in a wrong profession.

8.     Chaplaincy is a profession that seeks to offer help and assistance in emergency situations, helping to save lives and properties. If you are in chaplaincy and you are not offering or rendering any beneficial service to people in difficult situations, you are a none starter.

9.     Chaplaincy is a profession that seeks to provide the needed care and concern to the whole man, be they in good health or not and to the dead, given them their rights of place. If you are in chaplaincy and have no ministry to the living as well as the dead, you are yet to start.

10.Chaplaincy is a profession that seeks to eradicate and prevent suicidal thoughts and suicidal actions as her professionals promptly attend to people suffering from such. If you are in chaplaincy and you are not committed to this course, you must be a misfit.

NB: It is becoming increasing difficult for quacks to have their ways in chaplaincy; as people are beginning to ask questions, querying our actions and assessing our performances professionally.

It is expedient for us all who are practicing professional chaplains to known the profession we belong to very well, knowing what our profession mandates us to provide or offer the general public; discover what we are doing in the profession to enable us find our bearings.

People are patiently waiting; wanting to see us do what we claim we are able to do and looking to see us on duty in our various duty posts, offering beneficial services to people.

People are becoming more and more disappointed and dissatisfied that we remain invisible in various duty posts, where we are expected to be found present and offering the needed services.

Professional chaplains must be seen practicing chaplaincy. People must feel the impacts of their beneficial services.

Join the moving train of professional chaplains blazing through the horizon of Nigeria and Africa.

By

Chap. Prof. David Mike-Jacobs JP.

Certified Chaplaincy Educator