Roof Above and Atrium Health Begin a New Chaplaincy Training Partnership
Atrium Health Chaplain Interns, left to right. Adrian Taylor, Fatemia Gunter, Beverly Turner-Styles & Garrick Combs; Chaplain Educator Candidate Charles Thompson
In October 2024, a dream came to life at Roof Above. The first cohort of Atrium Health Chaplaincy Interns began their rotation at Roof Above’s shelter and housing locations!
Director of Education Joe Hamby says that he and CEO Liz Clasen Kelly had long asked themselves: “How could a chaplaincy presence make a difference for the kind of community we are trying to create? Homelessness is an intersection of so many challenges in our society — childhood trauma, foster care, incarceration, mental illness, poverty. What better training ground for anyone in ministry?”
Our partners at Atrium Health were thinking along similar lines and enthusiastically welcomed the idea. Terri Bolotin, Director of Spiritual Care and Education at Atrium Health Mercy, says, “We have become more and more aware of how much the social determinants of health are part of what brings people into our hospitals. That what is happening on the streets, where people don’t have the resources they need, is why they have to come to acute care hospitals. With this program we are using all the skills we have to accompany people on their journeys.”
Joe Hamby and Charles Thomspon, Chaplain Educator Candidate, led the program. Charles says, “The students have been able to really come alongside the neighbors at Roof Above. I feel as though they have been able to learn a lot, and they also have been able to give a lot.”
The second cohort of Chaplaincy Interns started on March 26. They will have the opportunity to learn from their counterparts in the first cohort.
Learn about how this program was born and hear from our first class of Atrium Chaplaincy Interns at Roof Above: