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On Monday, January 13, 2025, the COMISS Network held its Annual Forum: “Celebrating 100 years in Clinical Pastoral Education and Training: Pastoral, Present, and the Future”, in Silver Spring, MD. The Seventh-Day Adventist community hosted this gathering at their world headquarters there, complete with a hybrid room, allowing full physical and virtual attendance. Archpriest Steven Voytovich, the current COMISS National Leadership Teach Chair, noted this was a high water mark for him as his final function as team chair.
The COMISS Network is a national common roundtable for pastoral care and counseling, founded in 1979-1980. Religious endorsers, credentialing bodies for chaplaincy (such as APC, ACPE, CPSP and others), those who employ chaplains, and theological schools are included as member organization categories. In addition to this annual forum, COMISS oversees Pastoral/Spiritual Care Week, celebrated in caregiving institutions in October each year, and the COMISS Commission for Accrediting Pastoral Care Services (CCAPS) that accredits institutions for the delivery of pastoral services. Fr. Steven served as Chair-Elect for two years, responsible for planning this annual forum, followed by serving the past two years as Chair of the Leadership Team.
Dr. Robert Charles Powell is a trained Medical Historian and Psychiatrist, who has been actively following the clinical training movement since it’s 50th anniversary in 1975, regularly presenting on the works of the movement’s founders: Anton Boisen, Helen Flander Dunbar, and others. Dr. Powell offered the keynote address: “Crisis as a Means of Meaningful Growth.” In the past, he also served as a CCAPS Commissioner.
Fr. Steven offered a presentation at this forum entitled: “Toward a White Paper on Clinical Training and Formation.” This included introductory comments by Dr. Robert Cooke, a Pastoral Psychotherapist who has assisted in forming an open discussion group for this discipline through the COMISS Network roundtable. Fr. Steven has met with this group monthly for more than the past year, in his role as chair, seeking to dialogue about the future of this discipline.
Dr. Robert G. Anderson, who served as Father Steven’s CPE Residency Supervisor at Bridgeport Hospital in Bridgeport, CT, during 1992-93, was among the attendees. It was during this residency that Dr. Anderson introduced Fr. Steven to the existence of the COMISS Network, planting the seeds that one day the Orthodox Church in America would sit at this roundtable. This was realized in 2005-06, thanks in large part to the dedicated efforts of then-Father David Brum, who served as Secretary at the Orthodox Church in America’s Chancery and is now His Eminence Archbishop Daniel of Chicago and the Midwest.
Fr. Steven also expressed heartfelt congratulations to his former supervisor-in-training, Dr. Denise Parker Lawrence, who played an important role in organizing this first in-person COMISS Network forum since the pandemic. Now serving as Chair-Elect of the Leadership Team, Dr. Lawrence will assume the role of Chair at the conclusion of this forum. Please watch for presentation materials on the COMISS Network website, in the coming days!
Archpriest Steven Voytovich serves as the founding Director of the Office of Institutional Chaplains for the Orthodox Church in America, providing endorsements for Orthodox Church in America chaplains serving in non-military settings. He has previously served as Chair of the nation-wide Association of Religious Endorsing Bodies (AREB), and has just completed four years, in leadership roles of the COMISS Network Leadership Team.
He has both attended and served as a leadership team member and plenary presenter of the International Congress for Pastoral Care and Counseling (ICPPC). This congress meets every four years at various locations around the globe. Fr. Steven was often the only Orthodox representative at these congresses held in Ghana Africa (1999), India, East Germany/Poland, and New Zealand (2011). All of this participation has grown out of his efforts to realize the dream of the Orthodox Church’s participation in these greater roundtables.
