1. Executive Director’s reflection
2. NACC Educational Advisory Panel
3. NACC Membership Task Force
4. NACC Website Task Force
5. CHA/NACC Survey until January 31
6. SCC to meet in Chicago
7. Be a part of NACC’s first-ever silent auction!
8. Book your flights for April Conference
9. Conference Early Bird deadline is March 7
10. Application deadline for Red Cross training
11. World Day of the Sick prayer cards available
12. Supervisors invited to contribute to journal
13. David Lewellen takes new position

First of all, thank you for your feedback to the December 31st NACC Now! Wow! So many of you responded positively to the 2008 priorities, especially working on local/regional gatherings, and volunteering to help! We will use your assistance! Secondly, as you will read below, David Lewellen, our Vision editor, has taken an editorial position with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, returning to his first professional passion. We valued the professional expertise he brought. However, we are committed to continue Vision’s quality and ongoing improvement. We are very grateful to Vision’s Editorial Advisory Panel — Linda Piotrowski, Michele Sakurai, Michelle Lemiesz, Rev. Fred Washington, CSSP, Paul Buche, and Sr. Norma Gutierrez, MCDP — for their direction in this transition time. The next three issues are already being planned. The Editorial Board looks forward to meeting at the 2008 Conference to thoroughly re-examine Vision, including its effectiveness, content, frequency, and format. We welcome your comments about Vision. Send them to me, dlichter@nacc.org, or any of the above editorial board members. Contact information is here. Thirdly, in this newsletter you will also see requests for your involvement in areas of education, membership, and the website. We need your insights and guidance as we look to improve our educational offerings, membership categories, and website. Please consider offering your wisdom. As I mentioned in my prior column, part of my wish for 2008 is “That every member has found a way to create value for and receive value from fellow members because of their being part of NACC.”

As you know, our Strategic Plan’s top priority is education. We are grateful that many members are working with us to assist with local/regional gatherings for 2008. However, Susanne Chawszczewski, our Director of Education and Professional Practice, and I want to establish an Educational Advisory Panel that would convene quarterly by conference call to provide member feedback and guidance to the NACC staff, as we review our current work and put together and implement a comprehensive educational strategy. We will review the names of those interested and form an initial panel. Please see more details here, and consider being involved.

We continue to find that our current membership categories, established many years ago, are not serving a new diversity of roles that our members have within their respective organizations. We need to examine current practices and make recommendations to the NACC Board at its April 2008 meeting. Please consider being part of this task force, or provide us your thoughts about our current membership categories, and offer other options for our consideration. For more details, go here.

Many of you praise the usefulness of the NACC website. Phil Paradowski, NACC’s Administrative Specialist/Special Projects/IT, has done a good job overseeing it and adding features as needed. However, we want to optimize it as a resource for members. In the next couple months we want to take a close look at its contents, what is or is not there, how it is organized and accessed, and what the website can be. We need task force members who can help us think this through from the members’ perspective. Please consider being involved or, again, send us your ideas on what you want the website to offer. Click here to learn more.

The CHA/Pastoral Care survey was made available last Monday, Jan. 7. You have until Jan. 31 to complete it. So far participation by NACC members has been good. It can be accessed at www.chausa.org/pcsurvey, where you will be linked to an overview page with a series of detailed instructions. Please participate!

The representatives of the cognate groups of the Spiritual Care Collaborative will be meeting Jan. 23-24 in Chicago. This face-to-face meeting will provide us with much-needed time and focus to identify and organize around the key issues and initiatives we want to address together. If any of you have items you believe we need to address in common, please let David Lichter know.

Share your talents (or your connections with area artisans) by donating to our first-ever silent auction, to be held at the upcoming NACC conference in Indianapolis, IN. We’re looking for items worth at least $50 that showcase your creativity or unusual products from the area in which you serve. Handmade pottery, prayer shawls, books, artwork, nonperishable regional foods, and other, yet-to-be-discovered items all are welcome. If you have an item in mind, please e-mail the following information to auction coordinator Linda Piotrowski at linda.f.piotrowski@hitchcock.org: name, item, approximate retail value, minimum bid (if desired), address, phone, e-mail address, and the donor’s contact information, if different. (We will want to thank him or her.) Then bring your item to the conference or e-mail Linda for information about special arrangements. Thank you in advance, and see you at the auction!

Our national conference in Indianapolis is scheduled for April 5-8, and we have set March 7 as the postmark deadline for the Early Bird registration rate. March 13 is the last guaranteed date to reserve a room at the Sheraton Indianapolis Hotel and Suites (located at Keystone Crossing) at the special NACC conference rate.

The deadline to apply for the Spiritual Care Response Team training, taking place on April 4-5 in Indianapolis is today, January 14th. If you have questions, please contact Susanne Chawszczewski and remember to get your applications in!

World Day of the Sick will be celebrated Feb. 11, and as in past years, we have specially written and produced prayer cards available to share with your patients and staff. To download an order form or view samples of the Prayer for the Sick and Prayer for the Caregiver, visit this page. Please note that although the cards are available throughout the year, orders must be received in our office by Feb. 1 for delivery by Feb. 11.

Reflective Practice: Supervision and Formation in Ministry, the journal for CPE supervisors, is seeking contributors for Volume 28. The theme is “Formation and Supervision in the Presence of Fear.” The journal has developed a regular feature called the “Forum” with short responses to specific questions related to the theme. The questions for this inaugural forum are: What qualities of the helping person are needed in order to exercise care in the context of fear? Are the strategies of care different when fear is all around us? Responses can be 700-900 words and can be sent to Herbert Anderson, editor, at handerson@plts.edu by Feb. 1, 2008.

Vision editor David Lewellen has taken a position as a night copy editor at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. During David’s three-plus years with NACC, his professional editorial expertise has upgraded the quality and content of Vision. As I have mentioned in past NACC Nows, many of you have commented on the professional value of the recent issues. Thank you, David, and Godspeed to you, your wife, Darcy Hamlin, and your newborn, Benjamin Neal Lewellen.