Chaplain Certification: Meeting Association of
Professional Chaplain Requirements

A Board Certified Chaplain (BCC in Association Of Professional Chaplain lingo) has completed the following requirements on the way to chaplain employment:

• demonstrated professional excellence as a chaplain,
• has completed eligibility requirements,
• has been recommended for chaplain certification by a State Certification Committee,
• approved by the Commission on Certification,
• and ratified by the APC Board of Directors.

The following description of the standards and competencies for Board Certified Chaplain provides a brief summary of important initial information to guide you in understanding the requirements.

Timeliness of the Chaplain Certification Application

How serious? I believe that my failure to make sure everything was properly submitted actually postponed being board certified for a year.

Therefore, they mean it when they say "please note that the application for Board Certified Chaplain changes each calendar year and you must submit the application for the current year by the posted deadline." You should definitely take it to heart.

General Standards for Chaplain Certification

That means a Bachelor’s Degree plus a theological education at the graduate professional level. This chaplain education requirement involves a minimum of three years (amounting to 72 semester hours or 108 quarter hours of credit) taken at a school accredited by the Association of Theological Schools or one of the regional Association of Colleges and Schools or its equivalent.

2. Chaplain certification requires clinical hours involving on the job training:

Clinical Education to function as a competent pastoral care provider. The required education for being board certified is four (4) units (1600 hours) of Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) as accredited by one of the following faith group chaplain associations

• the Association for Clinical Pastoral Education (ACPE),
• the United States Catholic Conference/National Association of Catholic Chaplains (NACC)
• or the Canadian Association for Pastoral Practice and Education (CAPPE).

3. Certification for chaplains requires you to prove yourself by securing chaplain employment:

Documentation of one year (2,000 hours) of full-time chaplaincy experience after completion of residency

4. Chaplain certification requires the candidate to be recognized as one in a God-called pastoral role:

Current ordination or commission to function in a ministry of pastoral care, granted by an appropriate religious authority according to the standard practice and policy of that authority.

5. Becoming a chaplain requires a sponsoring church or ministry group to approve the candidate as one of their own:

Ecclesiastical Endorsement by a recognized faith group for ministry in a specialized setting, which must be in place before applying to the APC.

I believe that this requirement for ecclesiastical endorsement should be secured as early as possible, especially for those whose ministerial designation is unique. Some problems I have seen friends experience in seeking church endorsement are these:

• belonging to a faith group whose ordination requirements do not include women;
• Another challenge is independent or non-denominational groups whose ministerial designations may need to be "reframed" in order to be granted an equivalency of ordination.

6. A Chaplain being certified requires supportive evidence of good character:

Three additional recommendation letters are a must. This is the area that delayed my certification. One of the letters was to be from a certified chaplain.

The problem was that somehow APC did not have this specific letter categorized as being from a board certified chaplain.

So call and make sure you have all information in and correctly designated by the Association of Professional Chaplain staff.

7. Certification requires the candidate to show documentation of his or her work, writing up a pastoral intervention in what is called a "verbatim" Submit two (2) dated verbatims (or similar clinical materials), at least one of which is recent and from your current work experience, which demonstrates your current level of professional functioning.

8: Chaplain certification requires the candidate to be authentic and transparent by telling their own personal story:

Write and submit an autobiographical sketch of not less than five (5) pages and not more than ten (10) pages, which describes how your family, spiritual journey, and life history have influenced your vocational choices, goals and practice of ministry.

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