Pastoral Care at Riverside: The Cast of Characters

So now that you know what I'm doing, I thought I'd give you a snapshot of who I work with:



Doug is the Director of Pastoral Care and our CPE Supervisor. He's been at Riverside for as long as I've been alive, but he was probably younger than I am when he started. Doug is one of those people who is always surprising you; just yesterday I found out that he drives a Mustang convertible. Anyway, he is the primary reason why I applied to Riverside. He has a reputation as a great supervisor. Plus, he's United Methodist and went to this GREAT college in southwest Virginia. Teeny little place called Emory & Henry...



Judy is the staff chaplain and basically does all the morning and early afternoon work so that the residents and interns can be in seminars and supervision. She gets here at 5:30 a.m., prays with all of the people going into surgery, and then does rounds of the ER and ICU, and takes any pages until noon. She usually goes home around 2:30 p.m. Judy is very thoughtful; she's the sort of person who remembers birthdays (she even got mine!) and provides "survival kits" for us

Helen is the Office Coordinator, and as she put it, "I'm your Mom." She knows a lot about chaplaincy, the hospital, and how the department works. She's pursuing a call to vocational ministry, and plans to take seminary classes eventually. Helen is very cool and is much more than an adminstrative professional. In fact, if a disaster were to happen, she would be leading one of the three chaplain teams!

The other two residents are:

M is in her late twenties, is single (and very attractive, if any of my single male readers are interested), and originally from Dallas (although, thank goodness, she is not a Cowboys fan). She was in the Air Force for several years after college. M is very down-to-earth, thoughtful, and puts people at ease quickly. However, she's also the kind of person you'd love to hate, if it weren't for the previous qualities. She always looks put-together and stylish, even after 13 hours on-call. I'd kill for her wardrobe, but she's about five sizes smaller than me, so it wouldn't do any good. :) She's Baptist, and will finish seminary in May.

S is in his late thirties, is married with a toddler, and originally from Cincinatti. He's a very friendly and welcoming person and currently pastors a church part-time (yes, both my co-residents are masochists). S graduated from seminary a couple years ago and is also Baptist. He's also a Bengals fan, but I'm trying not to hold that against him.

We also have five pastoral interns, who are doing their FIRST unit of CPE. They're mostly here on Mondays.

We all (so far) get along very well, and I can't see that changing much. The staff tends to eat lunch together every day and we have a staff meeting most mornings. We also gather for devotions in the morning, and take turns leading that. It's a very diverse group (although we're all Christian), which is pretty cool.