Associate vs. Ordained Members
OUR DIRECTION
We are a Special Interest Group within the structure of the NGH who support common concerns and interests between religion, spirituality and hypnosis.
We meet in person annually at the NGH Conference and connect monthly during the year.
MEMBER EXPERIENCE
The standardisation of clergy training is no longer as it was.
Consider a military missing a noticeable number of candidates going their own way to become soldiers as marching, saluting and doing everything by rote no longer appeals.
Similarly, fewer and fewer men and women have been entering formal seminary toward a Masters degree before taking up the cudgel of public service through a ministry.
In fact, many of our clergy over the past two decades are people who led a business life for some years and upon being confronted by a life changing event that put into question their ambitions, beliefs and personal worth, decided to change their lives to service.
However, with a background in business and tested leadership skills, these clergy haven’t been satisfied by “putting in their time” the old way to become a cog in a another bureaucratic wheel.
Instead, they have looked for a faster track to service outside the formal seminary route.
Similarly, established clergy became more obviously discontented with the expectation they climb the ladder at a glacier pace. They instead formed churches and ministries of their own to serve niche areas quicker and more effectively.
Governments too, in order to meet their stated policies of openness, facilitated these groups and the formation of their ministries.
While some are described as “marrying Sam” groups, others serve a more focused area of service, i.e., end of life counselling.
When President of CSIG, I was in touch with seminaries and universities offering to visit and give talks to students following the theological track on the advantages of expanding their personal skill sets but to no avail.
As soon as I mentioned the word hypnosis, although everyone’s attention is peaked, educators and clergy managers become suddenly less interested, worried that their flocks will rebel if they knew their pastors were being trained in mesmerism.
They ignore the fact that the sermon, and indeed prayer itself, is exactly that, hypnosis … mesmerism … focused attention.
So, established clergy may pursue a CH privately but never tell anyone, however the ones indentured in smaller service ministries have no such resistance.
As a side-note, there’s a perfusion of people calling themselves Reverend nowadays, which can be confusing.
PRE-NOMINALS
I’ve asked myself many times, are the less formally educated entitled to call themselves Reverend?
Strict adherents to the (OT) bible believe only God should be called Reverend.
In my home province of Ontario, in response to public complaints of not enough ministers to marry people, the government opened up the flood gates twenty years ago to “marrying Sam” outfits.
Although they’re officially entitled marriage “officiants”, they still call themselves Reverend, a confusing practice that waters down the brand and isn’t realistic.
However, education goes one of two ways we’ve found … either the individual has an advanced degree in a specialty area in which they’re serving (i.e., end of life) but haven’t pursued a theology degree; or, they have substantial experience in the area in which they are serving and back that up with self-study and independent course work.
THE PERCEPTION
The public has a perception of clergy, and we can all relate times when someone has asked what we do for a living and we answer we’re a pastor, or a reverend, or a minister, and all of a sudden people feel they should be on their best behaviour, or they suddenly remember they have something to do elsewhere.
Funnily enough, I was in Cuba a couple of years ago to marry a Canadian couple. The groom was Canadian and he and his wedding party were military and I had acted for a time as what the Canadian Military call a COC, a Civilian Officiating Chaplain, so the groom and his wedding party knew me.
One day the wedding party and I were standing at the pool swim-up bar swapping stories and one of the other guests, not initially seeing me, came up to join in but upon seeing me with a beer in my hand, blanched and said, “Oh, look at the time, I promised my wife I’d meet her in the gift shop.”
He looked at me funny for the rest of the trip and I still get a chuckle out of it. He obviously doesn’t know military chaplains go to where the soldiers are.
All in all though, when assessing someone’s qualifications, the Rev. Scot Giles, NGH’s Legislative Officer and former President or CSIG, said it best some years ago that although a lot of us are also involved in counselling, he expected applicants to the Ordained side of CSIG to list their primary occupation as pastor, or minister, etc., on their income tax forms.
And what does that mean … applicants to the “ordained side” of CSIG?
ASSOCIATE MEMBERS
In order to more fully expand our group to represent an accurate cross-section of our work, Spirituality and Hypnosis, there are a lot of educated people out there who’ve rejected religion proper due to church disagreements but who haven't lost their faith in a Universal Power.
Church alienation could’ve occurred due to Sexism and Patriarchy, Christian Nationalism, Gender and Sexual Diversity or Religious Trauma and Spiritual Abuse.
They instead list their faith leanings as Spirituality and along with hypnosis, they do a lot of great work in service.
To more comfortably envelop this particular group, we’ve realigned the Board of CSIG to include a Vice-President, who is Rev. Christian Skoorsmith (BCH - Seattle) on the Ordained side, who will transition into the President’s position in August of 2024, switching places with me who’ll move into the VP spot.
Rev. William Mitchell (M.Div. CI - Springfield, Illinois) - I don’t know how he even breathes he does so much - is still our Treasurer with a tight grip on our crazy big war chest … um, is that the sound of crickets I hear?
Additionally, emulating NGH’s own structure, we’ve appointed an Associate VP to assist the President in catering to the Associate (non-ordained) members, who is Timothy Horn, O.B., (Nokesville, Virginia) to help develop the group.
WEB PAGE
We had an internet presence pre-Covid and have reconstructed that. We intend for it to be web-based so any authorised member can go in and edit it.
When will the web presence be finished? Any web designer will tell you that a web page is never finished.
ANNUAL AWARD
We have instituted an award … The Spirituality and Hypnosis Award … one for the Ordained and one for the Associate side.
Nothing says we have to issue two a year though, as the incoming President intends on instituting scroll awards CSIG will send out during the year to recognise significant effort.
As always though, we look forward to your input.
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Article Researched/Written by Rev. Timothy Jones, OB,
and Published in NGH’s JOURNAL OF HYPNOTISM
In CSIG’s “DEEPENINGS” column
(Updated 2024)
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