Lay Spiritual Care Training

Companioning one another spiritually is one of the most important ministries of a faith community. It’s often referred to as “Pastoral Care,” which might imply that the Pastor should do all of the care. But ministry in congregations is meant to be shared between ordained and lay leaders.

This robust training has been created for non-ordained congregational leaders (usually lay leader and/or paid staff) who have been endorsed by other leaders in the congregation (the minister, or the board in lay-led congregations). It may also be used as a part of professional credentialing for non-ordained staff such as religious education or music professionals. Ordained ministers may want to take the training with their lay associates, or as a refresher. There are many topics that were not covered in CPE. The time commitment is between 24-30 hours for the coursework plus another 8 hours in your study group.

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Spiritual Care Training Part 1: Discernment

This free training is the pre-requisite for The Art of Spiritual Care: Spiritual Care Training for Congregational Leaders Part 2. It is designed to be part of your discernment process.

In order to successfully complete this prerequisite training, you will need to:

  • go through the course materials
  • agree to the code of ethics
  • upload an endorsement (pdf of an email is fine) from your minister, board president, supervisor, mentor, or other person or body to whom you will be accountable as a lay spiritual care provider. Please do not email this separately — you will be able to do this as part of the training. 

Take the Training (Note: You will redirected to a separate website, UU Institute, which is managed by the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA).

colorful handprints in the shape of a heart

Spiritual Care Training Part 2: The Art of Spiritual Care

This training has been created for non-ordained congregational leaders (usually lay leaders and/or paid staff) who have been endorsed by other leaders in the congregation (the minister, or the board in lay-led congregations). It may also be used as a part of professional credentialing for non-ordained staff such as religious education or music professionals.

Training fee: $30 per participant

Take This Training (Note: You will redirected to a separate website, UU Institute, which is managed by the UUA.

How To Take Trainings from the UU Leadership Institute

Register for trainings at UU Institute. Once you register you will get an email with a confirmation link that you need to click to activate the account. (You may need to check your spam folder. Please add uuinstitute.org to your safe senders list.)

You can then go back to the site and go to the electives option in the trainings menu and scroll down until you find the class and click on it. You must take part 1 first (which is free), then once approved, you can proceed to part 2 (which costs $30).

There is a a full video tutorial on how register for the site, purchase a training and how to navigate the trainings.