From Hospital Wards to Container Ships: What Excellent Chaplaincy Requires

Spiritual care is only as good as our clarity about what it actually requires. That conviction has shaped much of my professional life, and a recent research project has given me an opportunity to explore it in a setting far removed from where I began.

Chaplains offering spiritual support: one in a hospital comforting a patient, the other engaging with a seafarer aboard a ship.

In healthcare, I spent my doctoral research trying to answer a deceptively simple question: What does a chaplain actually need to know and be able to do? The premise was that good chaplaincy is not a matter of disposition alone. It rests on identifiable competencies, the knowledge, skills, and attitudes that enable chaplains to serve effectively. When those competencies remain implicit, training drifts and practitioners are prepared by chance rather than design. When they are made explicit, education can be built around them, assessed, strengthened, and improved.

It is important to be clear about what "competencies" means here because the concept is sometimes misunderstood. The point is not that every setting requires an entirely separate skill set. Rather, chaplaincy rests on a shared core of competencies common to all chaplains: empathetic presence, ethical accountability, spiritual assessment, cultural humility, and the capacity to accompany people through loss and uncertainty. Alongside that common foundation are context-specific competencies shaped by the particular environments in which chaplains serve.

A useful recent example comes from the work of Callid Keefe-Perry and Zachary Moon, who synthesized competency frameworks from across the profession and tested them through a national survey of practicing chaplains. Their research found that some competencies are valued across virtually every setting, while others vary according to context. Clinical documentation, for example, is central in healthcare but far less important on a university campus. Their work reinforces an important insight: chaplaincy is neither a collection of entirely separate professions nor a single generic role. It is a common foundation expressed through the distinctive demands of particular settings.

That distinction is exactly why maritime chaplaincy is worth studying on its own terms. Mariners live and work under conditions most of us never encounter. They may spend months away from family, work alongside crew members from a dozen nations and religious traditions, face chronic fatigue, navigate economic pressures, and experience profound isolation despite being surrounded by others. A chaplain visiting a vessel may have only a brief opportunity to establish trust with someone who has been at sea for months. While maritime chaplains draw upon the same core competencies that all chaplaincy requires, they also need knowledge and skills shaped by the unique realities of life at sea. Until recently, however, no one had systematically asked what those context-specific competencies should be.

A maritime chaplain offers support and guidance to a seafarer on a cargo ship, nurturing connection and care amid the expanse of the open sea.

That question led to a mixed-methods study supported by a grant from the United Thank Offering and conducted in partnership with the Seamen's Church Institute. The goal was to identify the essential competencies required for effective maritime chaplaincy. Although the full results are still moving through the publication process, the findings point toward a set of competencies spanning intercultural engagement, relationship-building, trauma-informed care, practical assistance, and an understanding of the maritime environment itself. In many respects, the study reinforces what competency research in other settings has already suggested: effective spiritual care requires both a strong common foundation and thoughtful preparation for the unique demands of a particular context.

The deeper insight for me is the continuity. A hospital ward and a container ship could hardly be more different, yet both draw upon the same foundation of chaplaincy competence, and both ask for something specific on top of it. Naming competencies is not a way of reducing chaplaincy to a checklist. Rather, it is a way of taking seriously both what all chaplains share and what a particular context demands. It is a way of making excellence teachable rather than accidental.

This conviction forms the thread running through all of my work, whether in Clinical Pastoral Education, consulting, coaching, or research. I am interested in helping individuals and organizations develop spiritual care that is thoughtful, evidence-informed, and genuinely prepared for the people they serve. The maritime study is simply the newest expression of that commitment, not a departure from it. Whether the setting is a hospital room, a university campus, a prison, a congregation, or the deck of a cargo vessel, the challenge remains the same: preparing chaplains to meet people well. That preparation begins by being clear about what the work actually requires.

A journal article reporting the study has been submitted to Health and Social Care Chaplaincy and is currently under peer review. I will also be presenting the research this summer at the 2026 North American Maritime Ministry Association (NAMMA) Conference, Windows to the World, held August 4–6 in Philadelphia. I look forward to sharing more about the findings in the months ahead and will post updates here as they become available.