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1. Executive Director’s Reflection
2. Revised Standards and Procedures
3. Educational Resources
4. Pastoral Care Week 2008: October 20-26
5. New items and features on the NACC website
6. Candidates for at-large position for the NACC Board of Directors named
7. Are you deciding about the 2009 Spiritual Care Collaborative Summit?
8. Healing Tree: A request for prayers
9. Recent job postings
10. Please go to the NACC website for info on these local gatherings

When did you know you wanted to be a chaplain? What was your career(s) prior to becoming a chaplain? These are a couple questions I ask when I meet our members individually or in a group. What remarkable and rich responses are given!

Do you remember Jesus' first question in John's Gospel? In John, Jesus just keeps asking questions. In John 1:37 we find two disciples following Jesus after John the Baptist had said, "Look! There is the Lamb of God!" In John 1:38 Jesus turns around and noticed them following him, and asks them, "What are you looking for?" They answer with another question, "Rabbi, where do you stay?" Of course, we know how rich the word "stay" is in John's Gospel, connoting "dwell with" and "remain in".

Your responses reflect beautifully this exchange as your ministries have drawn you to where Jesus dwells in the sick, suffering, and all those in need of healing. Where you came from, however, helps us know where the future chaplains will be found. Your backgrounds are so diverse! Yet, we have some general areas, such as health care services, education, social services. One thing we know for sure is we want to make people aware of chaplaincy when they are pondering Jesus' question, "What are you looking for?"

We are taking steps to get you resources you can use when you sense this question being asked in your settings, or when you are asked to speak about chaplaincy. You can go to this page to find Frequently Asked Questions, Chaplain Stories, and a PowerPoint Outline for a Presentation. We will have a brochure in a couple weeks.

In June we will be contacting academic institutions where women and men are studying for ministry and are still thinking about a future professional service. We are alerting the leaders of these programs about chaplaincy, and in August will send them materials to help them advise students on chaplaincy and direct them to NACC for more help. We want any student in the country to be able in contact a chaplain near him or her. Many of you have already volunteered to speak about chaplaincy. If any of you are open to be a local contact, please email Cindy at cbridges@nacc.org.

In the meantime, we continue to welcome your chaplain stories to post on the website!

The NACC Revised Standards and Procedures can be found on the NACC website. It is important to note that there are three separate documents. These three documents include the NACC Standards, the Ethics Procedures Manual, and the Certification Procedures Manual. All members should review these three documents to familiarize themselves with updated standards and procedures. It is especially important that those seeking certification follow the Standards and Procedures in place at the time of application. The next due date for certification materials is September 15, 2008. All materials must be submitted according to the revised Standards and Procedures.

Do you have educational resources, either written or electronic, that you can share with us? In the next several months, we will be amassing updated resources for the website and would love to hear from you. These resources can be books, articles, websites, etc. about various topics for professional development (spirituality, ethics, spiritual assessment, etc.). Please send your resources to Susanne at schaw@nacc.org.

The theme for this year is Pastoral Care: Listening Presence. Resources including logo artwork, merchandise, and ideas for celebrating the week are now available at the official website: www.pastoralcareweek.org. Start planning now to celebrate this week at your institution. There are plenty of ideas on the PCW website to get you started. Note that as in the past few years, all posters and merchandise are available in either “Pastoral Care Week” or “Spiritual Care Week” style.

Our website continues to grow and develop. We know that exploring, navigating, and keeping up to date on such a large collection of information can be daunting. In the coming weeks we will be auditing and improving the options for navigating the site, including adding a sitemap and revamping the buttons and menus. In addition to this, it’s been suggested that highlighting new features and resources will help our busy members to keep on top of online developments. Here’s a quick list of additions to the site you may have missed this Spring…

Local events calendar – to highlight the local gatherings that both the NACC office and individual members are organizing and hosting, we’ve added a calendar just for those events.

NACC Now archive – you can read every issue of NACC Now up to and including this one at this page.

State Liaisons – we are very grateful for the many members who have volunteered to act as State Liaisons to help us connect with our membership at the local level. See who the contact person is in your neck of the woods and learn about the Liaison role here. Note that we are still seeking Liaisons for Alaska and Maine!

The Episcopal Advisory Council for the NACC is a very important part of the organization. While you may be aware of this, you may not know who the current members are.

Chaplain’s stories – if you haven’t yet read through the wonderful stories being submitted by our members, don’t put it off any longer. The intent of these stories is to help those who are considering a career in chaplaincy, but the inspiration and insight will resonate for those already in the profession, too. Note that those who aren’t big fans of the .pdf format can now view the stories one by one on the website. As always we invite those who haven’t submitted a story to send it to cbridges@nacc.org.

Volunteers – Regular readers of Vision already know about the Volunteer of the Month program wherein we showcase an NACC member who has donated their time and energy to helping our mission. There is a new page on the website highlighting each of those honorees, as well as providing a jumping-off point for other volunteer opportunities and resources: click here to visit.

Certification update mirrors the Vision feature of the same name. Go here to get all the latest and most important news and information about Certification and Renewal of Certification.

2008 Conference materials – If you attended, you have probably already visited the repository of workshop handouts, prayers and homilies, and plenary speaker’s presentations. If not, or if you weren’t able to make it to the conference, be sure to visit and have a good look around. Photographs and audio recordings are also available through links to the vendor’s websites.

Google search – This is not a new feature (it was added over three years ago!) but the NACC WebMaster was reminded recently that members seem to either pass it by or may be unaware of its existence. It’s extremely useful – next time you can’t quite locate the page or document you need, try it out. It appears in the lower left of almost every page on our site!

RSS feed – RSS is becoming the smartest and fastest way to keep up to date on your favorite and most-visited website, and nacc.org is no exception. If you already use a news/feed reader such as Feedburner or Google Reader, you’ll need no introduction to this technology. Others will want to start with the basics here. Moving forward, we will be using this feature as an additional way to keep our members up to date.

We are very grateful to the following NACC members for being candidates for the at-large position for the NACC Board of Directors: James Castello, Vicki Farley, Blair Holtey, Fr. Dean Marek, Marie Polhamus, and Fr. Baaju Izuchi, CSSp. Their statements, photos, and bios will be available in the next NACC Now. Their background and NACC voting procedures will appear in the July-August Vision. What a generous gift to NACC!

You should have gotten a special e-mail announcement with information about the SCC Summit 2009, February 1-4, 2009 in Orlando, Florida. Remember that Sunday, February 1, 2009 the Super Bowl is in Tampa. Early booking of flights to Orlando will keep your airfares more reasonable. For more information, go to the SCC website.

Please continue to keep in prayer Sr. Paula Jacobs, SSM (terminal cancer), Dennis Eldridge (Kathy’s husband for cancer treatment), Jeanne Childs (surgery on May 13), Sr. Nancy Flaig, OSB (chemo treatment for cancer), Sr. Mary Skopal, SSJ (recovering from back surgery), Sr. Mary Anna Euring, OP (bout with Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma), and Sr. Alice Smitherman, OSB (recovering from heart surgery).

The following positions have been posted in the last two weeks. Please go to our Positions Available page for more information about them.

COORDINATOR CHAPLAIN
     Hoffman Estates, IL - The Behavioral Health Hospital
CHAPLAIN
     Bakersfield, CA - Mercy Hospitals of Bakersfield
CHAPLAIN/SPIRITUAL CARE COORDINATOR
     Oshkosh, WI - Heartland Hospice
MANAGER OF SPIRITUAL CARE
     Chicago, IL - Mercy Hospital and Medical Center
CHAPLAIN
     Baton Rouge, LA - Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Center

Our local gathering list is growing. Therefore, we ask you to use our local/NACC events calendar for more information on:

• Irvine, CA: June 20, 2008
• San Francisco, CA: June 25, 2008
• Omaha, NE: July 17, 2008
• Portland, OR, September 19-20, 2008
• Alexandria, MN, September 25-26, 2008
• Green Lake, WI, October 26-28, 2008
• St. Louis, MO, November 5, 2008
• Baltimore, MD, November 12, 2008