Whether you are a seminary student seeking to fulfill degree requirements, a prospective hospital chaplain or a pastor desiring additional training, Covenant Counseling’s Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) program offers a unique blend of opportunities to meet your needs. Click here to download the Application & Instructions for Clinical Pastoral Education and Admission and Finance Policy.
ACPE Clinical Pastoral Education is a program of theological and professional training that offers the challenge of actually working with people in various stages of life and varying emotional, physical and spiritual conditions, while receiving pastoral supervision. Covenant Counseling’s CPE program is accredited by the Association for Clinical Pastoral Education (ACPE).
Based in Snellville, Georgia, an eastern suburb of Atlanta, Covenant Counseling & Family Resource Center (CC&FRC) is a free-standing, non-profit organization, whose mission is to actively promote healing and wholeness in the community by extending the outreach and ministry of the Church through pastoral counseling, psychotherapy, education and consultation.
Covenant Counseling believes in a holistic approach, which includes a belief in the close relationship and delicate balance of body, mind and spirit. From this perspective we foster an appreciation of and reliance upon the medical, psychological and theological disciplines in a team approach to pastoral care and counseling. One of the most important ways that CC&FRC lives up to its mission is through its CPE program, which is designed to enable and empower pastors to minister more effectively and compassionately to persons in the myriad phases and conditions of life. A part of the training process includes an exploration of the personhood of the pastor. In learning more about one’s own issues and struggles, as well as those of hurting persons, pastors find that they are better able to facilitate healing and wholeness in others.
Our CPE program features supervised, experiential training in two different settings. The first setting is at Abbey Hospice, located in Social Circle, GA. In this context interns serve as chaplains to patients, who are in the terminal stages of life, as well as their families. In addition, the chaplain works with an interdisciplinary staff in providing hospice care, thus facilitating a clarification process regarding one’s pastoral identity. (Interns selected for a position in hospice are generally paid a stipend.) The second setting is the parish. In order to participate in this parish-based setting, pastors must be employed in a church position or be able to enter into an agreement with a church through which sufficient pastoral contacts can be made.
Covenant Counseling is accredited to offer both Level I and Level II CPE. Extended unit schedules are available for those needing to do CPE on a part-time basis. For additional information about application procedures, tuition, stipends, placement or other details about our CPE program, contact the CC&FRC at (770) 985-0837 or cpe@covenantcounseling.org
What Sets Us Apart
Unlike most, our CPE program is not primarily hospital based. Both of our placement sites provide ample opportunity to experience ministry in its many shapes. Students in the parish setting experience all of the many pastoral concerns that are apt to arise in the church. The hospice setting is similar to the parish in that students actually go into the homes of the terminally ill. However, in both the hospice in-patient unit and in home visits with the terminally ill and their families, students are confronted with issues that emerge in the midst of death and dying.
Our CPE supervisors provide clinical supervision of the students work in addition to the administrative supervision offered by on-site staff chaplains and/or pastoral supervisors in the church setting. In addition, the diversity of training sites provides students with a rich variety of pastoral experiences from which to learn. Students may start any quarter during the year beginning September, January, March, or June. Three stipend positions are currently in place at Abbey Hospice.
Clinical Supervisors
Joseph Whitwell, Th.D.
Kerry Duncan, D.Min.
John Patton, Th.D
