5.
Guidelines for Effective Team Ministry in the Chaplaincy.
The following suggestions and guidelines will enable you to be an effective
team member in the chaplaincy:
Know and accept your responsibility. By both regulation and doctrine
chaplains
are
mandated,
as
members
of
a
multifaith/multi-
denominational framework, to act responsibly as a team member.
Develop and expand your knowledge, through study and dialogue, of such
items as:
-
The basic principles and practices of other faith groups.
-
The basic principles and practices of team member chaplains.
How
can you plug into a resource you do not know exists?
-
The needs of those to whom the chaplain is ministering. Develop
a strategy for discovering the multifaith needs of those in your
unit.
Realize the importance of your attitude.
-
Recognize the diversity within the American religious life.
-
Recognize the uniqueness of the diversity within the military.
-
Recognize your own value system and the potential for value
conflict with others' systems and how you might resolve such
conflict.
Appreciate what others have to offer.
The chaplain:
-
Needs to respect the individual soldier and the person's beliefs
without making value judgments.
-
Must recognize what other chaplains can do in ministering to
individuals.
What can others do that you cannot do because of
training, time, doctrinal restraints, etc.?
-
Develops the art of tolerance. This does not mean an acceptance
into your own belief/value system of something that you are
personally against.
Rather, it is recognizing that each person
is entitled to his/her own beliefs and accepting that person as a
person without necessarily accepting the other's beliefs as one's
own.
Thus cooperation without compromise is possible.
This
requires honesty with oneself and others.
Apply effective communication skills. Perhaps there is no other place
where communication can more readily break down than when there are
great differences in religious beliefs and values (except maybe with
politics).
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