Projects
We are hoping to get a few informal ‘projects’ off the ground over the next couple of years. The inspiration for this was crystallised during our January 2008 Steering Group Vision Day, generously facilitated by Mike Clargo of Tesseract Management Systems (thank you Mike for a very inspiring day). We realised that there was a lot of expertise within BACIP and we could probably be putting this at the service of the church as well as the NHS etc! Most of these projects are still merely dreams, but some of them have already attracted a small network of interested individuals. If you think you could contribute to any of them, or are already working in these areas, we would like to hear from you. For now we will just be talking, probably just by email, but we hope that it will turn into something more in time. Please contact the administrator.
- Psychological Apologetics – this would involve a loose network of qualified psychologists who have experience speaking in different settings about apologetic issues, such as the psychology of belief, neurotheology, atheism, cognitive & evolutionary psychology of religion, etc, in a way that is designed both to get people asking questions and to gently put across the alternative arguments to those of prominent anti-religious speakers such as Richard Dawkins. One or two BACIP members are already stepping out in this direction, offering seminars/talks to colleges, universities and suchlike, and the response so far has been exciting.
- Psychological Supervision for Church Leadership and Pastoral Teams – BACIP is keen to see effective supervision made available to church leadership teams and pastoral teams who are often just as involved with complex mental health problems as clinicians in the NHS. Churches, rightly, attract people with mental health needs, who often need special care and can bring significant challenges for inexperienced church staff/volunteers. Psychologists are in a key position to offer supervision, both regarding team/leadership issues and clinical issues. We hope to offer basic documents outlining what a supervision arrangement might look like, resources to tap into, pitfalls to avoid, etc. But we will need people to do this! If you have experience in this area and would like to join a ‘working group’ please email the administrator.
There already exists a helpful BACIP document on this site which could act as a springboard for initial discussion of the issues: Guidelines on the involvement of Christian psychologists in the provision of psychotherapy and counselling to local church communities
- Training for Church Pastoral Teams – this would involve a loose network of qualified psychologists who have experience in delivering training in common psychological problems, basic approaches to psychological treatment, etc, that might be useful to pastoral teams, leadership teams, Christian counselling courses, and suchlike. There are already a number of BACIP members who participate in this kind of activity (eg training at pastoral conferences on topics such as depression, anger, forgiveness). It would be useful to group such people together simply in order to share resources, support each other, and perhaps offer a more organised and effective service to churches and other organisations that want training but don’t know where to get it.
- Consultation to Church Leadership Teams – this would involve a loose network of qualified psychologists who have experience in leading team development days, conflict resolution workshops, crisis consultancy, or profiling of psychological type / working style / etc. Again, a number of BACIP members are doing this informally or formally already, particularly at the Cambridge project (email them – it is only mentioned briefly on the website). Eventually we might be able to maintain a list of competent practitioners who could perhaps offer their services in teams to church groups that were seeking consultation. It would be good if this could draw together Occupational, Clinical, and other psychologist categories.