Chaplain helps develop Liberty University healthcare chaplaincy program

James Wright, director of pastoral care at Baptist Health Paducah, has been working with Liberty University School of Divinity in Lynchburg, Va., to develop a new healthcare chaplaincy program.

 April 8, 2016 — James Wright, director of pastoral care at Baptist Health Paducah, has been working with Liberty University School of Divinity in Lynchburg, Va., to develop a new healthcare chaplaincy program.

The university contacted Wright at the suggestion of the chaplaincy department of the Southern Baptist Convention’s North American Mission Board.

Dr. Steven Keith, director of Liberty’s Center for Chaplaincy, said the university has become a leading educator of military chaplains around the world, but they’ve recently expanded the program to include healthcare chaplaincy.

“To this endeavor, Dr. Wright is bringing an amazing level of knowledge, expertise and experience to Liberty’s healthcare chaplaincy program,” Keith wrote in a letter to the hospital. “He developed the curriculum for a world-class healthcare chaplaincy program that will launch this fall.”

Wright said he helped develop an online Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) class for Liberty modeled after the the CPE program at Baptist Health Paducah. Baptist has a long history of pastoral care development and chaplaincy training for chaplains to be board certified with the Association of Professional Chaplains.   

 Wright has been supervising the CPE program at Baptist since 2005. Since that time, the program has completed almost 100 semesters with an average of four chaplain interns per semester.