#2
JOB DESCRIPTION?
What is your job description?
You encounter that question in one form or another throughout much of your life. If your boss asks you to do something that you don’t think that you should be doing, you may consider whether or not that is in your job description. That might be doubly true if you work in a union shop! Your contract is your job description.
When you write a resume, or fill out some job applications, you are asked to describe your work or your responsibilities. That is a job description.
When you have annual evaluations, your job description should be the standard against which you are judged. But some jobs do not have easy to write job descriptions. For example, chaplains.
Part of the process of becoming a chaplain involves a process called CPE, Clinical Pastoral Education. It combines various elements, including education, supervised job experience, weekly individual guidance sessions with your supervisor, and weekly group sessions in which a lot of different kinds of things occur.
One day in a group session the Assistant Chaplain of the hospital asked a thought provoking question: What is the primary role of a chaplain? He could have asked equally well: What is the basic job description of a chaplain?
In my employment I have a job description. But how do you encapsulate in written form all that a chaplain does? I have had various supervisors at work who summed it up this way: We hire you for the religious things. But how do you define “religious things?” My contract includes counseling employees, detainees, and detainees’ families. It even includes helping make phone calls – without saying what kind of phone calls. But, back to the Assistant Chaplain’s question.
What is the primary role of a chaplain? Each of us thought, and several of us hazarded a guess. But none of us hit what he had in mind.
Every attorney who goes into court knows that you never ask a question to which you do not know the answer. The Assistant Chaplain had followed this principle; he had an answer ready: He said, the primary role of a chaplain is to be the presence of God.
Think about that. As a Chaplain in the hospital and as a chaplain in a detention center (or a jail or a prison) you must deal with every possible expression of religion. I must guard and guarantee equal access to facility space and time for every religious expression. I must provide for Muslim and Jew, Rastafarian and Buddhist, Hindu and Christian equally and fairly. I have been called upon to pray for, and with, Muslims and Jews – just as I have been called upon to pray for Christians (both Protestants and Catholics). I have had to deal with news of a death or serious illness in the family of a detainee without regard to his religious stand, or lack of one.
How do you become “the presence of God” for someone who does not believe in your God, or who believes in no God? How do you become the presence of God just walking down the hallway or when you enter a dormitory? How do you live as the presence of God?
However, dear reader, have you realized that if you are a Christian, a follower of Jesus Christ, that you have the same job description? You, also, are called upon by Jesus Himself to be the presence of God to those whom you encounter.
The good news in this is that you are not able to do this on your own. Nor are you asked to do that. As a follower of Jesus Christ you have the Spirit of God within you. It is Christ in you that will meet that job description.
Listen for His voice in your ear. Listen and wait for His guidance in your spirit. Follow Him, let the Spirit of God within you be the presence of God to those around you. You might fail if you to do it on your own. He, however, has never been known to fail.
You have punched in. Now, it’s time to report for duty. Go to it!
