📬 A New Way to Stay Connected
You may notice this issue of Compassionate Accountability looks a little different! We’re trying a new newsletter format using HubSpot, which will allow us to share CRIC news, resources, stories, and updates more effectively. We hope you’ll stay connected as we experiment and learn. And, of course, if you no longer wish to receive CRIC news, you can unsubscribe at any time using the link at the bottom of this email.
🌱 A BIG INVESTMENT
Bringing behavioral health & addiction education to the formation of clergy!
🎓 Major Grant for Seminary Education
Preparing pastors to care with knowledge, confidence, and cultural competency
CRIC is excited to announce that we are partnering with two seminaries to develop two new courses in pastoral care with mental health and addiction issues. This work is made possible by a generous grant from the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation.
🧰 Called to Care. Prepared to Act.
Practical preparation for the complicated realities of pastoral care
Both courses are titled “Called to Care: Prepared to Act.” They will provide information, practical guidance, and pastoral tools for caring for individuals and families experiencing mental health and addictive disorders of all kinds.
An important part of that preparation will be developing cultural competency for pastoral care with three communities that face particular risks and challenges related to behavioral health and addiction: clergy, people who identify as LGBTQPIA2S+, and people from BIPOC communities.
Each community brings distinct lived experiences, stressors, barriers to care, cultural contexts, and sources of resilience. The courses will help participants better understand those differences so that pastoral care can respond not only with compassion, but with greater knowledge, awareness, and effectiveness.
🏫 Two Schools. Two Ways to Learn.
Graduate education and continuing education addressing the same urgent need
One is a Master’s-level course, with CRIC joining faculty and staff at Mercer University’s McAfee School of Theology in Atlanta, planned for the spring semester.
The other is a 10-hour Continuing Education seminar with Howard University Divinity School in Washington, D.C., to be held in late October.
Both courses will be taught by teams bringing together academic, clinical, pastoral, and lived experience. Both will use a hybrid format, with opportunities to participate online and in person.
🌱 From Two Seminaries to 235
Beginning with two partnerships. Imagining a much wider reach.
CRIC’s ultimate aim is to make these courses available to all 235 members of the Association of Theological Schools, as well as other institutions preparing people for ministry.
These first two partnerships represent an important beginning: helping ensure that those called to care are also prepared to act when mental health and addiction enter the lives of the people, families, and communities they serve.
Interested in attending one of these courses? Contact the editor at otto.schultz@restoreimpairedclergy.com
🔔 FROM THE BOARD TO THE BROADER CHURCH
Leadership, vision, and the work ahead,
🔄 Leadership Changes. Mission Continues.
Celebrating the leadership that brought CRIC here and welcoming the gifts that will carry it forward
This month marks an important transition in CRIC’s leadership. Rev. Wendy Miller Olapade, who has served as President of the Board since CRIC’s founding, is completing her term as President. David Shellenberger, RN, BSN, moves from Vice President to President; Dawn M. McCord, PCC, CBFRLC, becomes Vice President; and Rev. Dr. Andrew Scanlan-Holmes continues as Treasurer.
🔥 Vision at the Beginning
Honoring the imagination that helped CRIC become CRIC
From CRIC’s earliest days, Wendy brought together her experience in pastoral leadership and long-term recovery with a conviction that the Church could respond differently to clergy impairment.
Her leadership helped shape the vision at the heart of CRIC: Compassionate Accountability. Clergy experiencing addiction or behavioral health disorders need compassion, treatment, accountability, and the possibility of restoration. At the same time, congregations and church governing bodies need practices and policies that protect communities and promote healthy ministry.
Although Wendy is leaving the presidency, she is not leaving CRIC. She will remain on the Board, continuing to contribute her pastoral experience, prophetic imagination, communications gifts, and passion for recovery and restoration.
🧭 Experience for the Next Chapter
Welcoming leadership shaped by treatment, systems, and restoration
CRIC welcomes David Shellenberger, RN, BSN, as President of the Board.
David is President and CEO of St. John Vianney Center (SJVC) and brings more than 25 years of clinical and executive healthcare leadership experience in varied settings. Established in 1946, SJVC is the oldest and largest treatment program for Catholic clergy and men and women religious and also welcomes Protestant clergy. Its work includes outpatient and residential treatment as well as education and prevention.
David brings CRIC not only deep knowledge of clergy behavioral health, but significant experience leading a large and complex organization. That combination will be particularly valuable as CRIC enters its next stage of development: strategic planning, expanding partnerships, strengthening organizational capacity, and building for long-term sustainability.
💜 Recovery Has a Wider Circle
Welcoming Dawn McCord as Vice President
Stepping into the Vice President’s role is Dawn M. McCord, PCC, CBFRLC, a family and parent recovery coach, author, and educator.
After writing about her family’s journey through adolescent addiction, Dawn became a Family Recovery Life Coach. Today she coaches families, facilitates support groups, and teaches prevention and intervention classes.
Her Christian faith and knowledge of addiction have taught her that behind human behavior there is always a “why.” We may not understand that why, but recognizing its existence can open the door to greater empathy.
Dawn brings an important perspective to CRIC’s leadership: behavioral health disorders affect more than an individual. Families, congregations, colleagues, and communities are part of the journey toward recovery and restoration.
⚓ Continuity Counts
New roles around the table, with institutional memory remaining strong
Amid these transitions, Rev. Dr. Andrew Scanlan-Holmes continues as Treasurer. Andrew has also been part of CRIC from the beginning, and his continuing leadership brings valuable institutional memory, consistency, and experience to the Board.
CRIC is entering an important new season. New grants, new educational partnerships, and new opportunities are requiring the organization to think carefully about what comes next.
We enter that season with gratitude for the leadership that brought us here, confidence in the gifts moving into new roles, and a shared commitment to the mission that continues to call us forward.
😇 CLERICAL ERRORS
Because even clergy need a margin for humor.
A touch of (Otto’s) humor to brighten your day!
A fair summary of Paul’s Epistles:
“Greetings in the name of Christ.
I give thanks to God for you every day.
Stop acting like idiots.
Timothy says, ‘Hi.’”
Sometimes even the Apostle Paul apparently needed to practice compassionate accountability. 😇
JUST SAY “NO THANKS”
Compassionate Accountability is the newsletter of The Center for the Restoration of Impaired Clergy. You receive it since you indicated an interest in the Center’s work. To stop it, just say “No Thanks.”
Beginning September, 2026, you can “unsubscribe” to the newsletter or reach out to Otto Schultz via OttoBSchultz@outlook.com.