Meet New Student Rev. Stephan Brunelle

I’m grateful for this chance to pursue an education that will help me become a spiritual care educator and chaplain. I hope to deepen my spirituality and become more compassionate and equipped for my students and community. The financial support makes this possible.

It has been decades since I last attended graduate level classes at Brite Divinity School. Cranking out papers on WordPerfect was a thrill after struggling to use a typewriter. Fellow seminarians taught me about email and the internet at the time. It was a whole new world. As I enter the D.Min. program at Claremont School of Theology, it is once again a whole new world with lots to learn!

I was born in Frankfurt, Germany to a German mother and white American musician father. My mother immigrated to the United States with us when I was one year old. I grew up in Davis, CA, watching my father conduct the church choir while my mother sang beautiful solos. After a rebellious adolescence, I enlisted in the Air Force as a Crash Fire Fighter Specialist. I had hoped the military would help me “get my life together.” Military chaplains helped me find meaning and discern a pathway to ministry, including finishing my tour of duty and attending college. Chaplaincy had helped ignite a fire in my belly.

My early years of ministry led me to become an ordained Pentecostal preacher serving in an Assemblies of God church. I met my wife, Crystal, in Bible college, and we married. This was despite my conviction that the rapture of the church would occur at any moment and left little time to build a family. The end of the world would be coming soon. Well, that didn’t happen. We’ve been married 34 years with two adult children.

After Bible college, I attended Brite Divinity School at Texas Christian University to become an endorsed chaplain. I also completed a residency year as a Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) Chaplain in a trauma hospital, which transformed my life and opened me up to interreligious ministry. I no longer felt at home in the Assemblies of God and transferred my ordination to the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) where all are welcome and accepted as they are. I had experienced this welcome and acceptance (with my dispensational theology), and I wanted to be in community with those who shared my values of acceptance and non-judgment. This continues to motivate me to this day.  

Crystal and I recently returned to Davis where we live with my 86-year-old mother. I joined First Christian Church, Sacramento, but I’m more likely to attend church with my mother here in Davis, where my father was the music minister. My mom still sings in the choir. I also enjoy meditation at a local sangha and experience interfaith communities like the Association of Clinical Pastoral Education to be among my spiritual homes.

The last two decades of my ministry as Clinical Manager of Spiritual Care and Clinical Pastoral Education in La Crosse, WI involved training chaplain interns and residents, leading an interfaith team, and overseeing CPE educators. During the pandemic, the years of secondary trauma and emotional labor overwhelmed me, leading to a time off for recovery. Afterward, I accepted contract work as an online and/or hybrid educator, rediscovering my passion for training spiritual care providers. Currently, I work with the JED Center online CPE program, educating students in various ministry settings, including military, hospital, hospice, palliative care, campus ministry, church pastors, lay ministers, social justice agencies, and mosques. I envision myself continuing this work for at least another 5-10 years, sharing my gifts and experience without the added stress of management duties in a healthcare system.

Why the D.Min. program? Well, I am finding that much of what I learned in the ‘90s needs to be updated and decolonized. I want a renewed and improved operating system that is contemplative, mindful, trauma-informed, and justice-seeking. I am attracted to Internal Family Systems and finding ways to integrate its liberating approach into my CPE curriculum and practice. So many of us in spiritual care do not know how to care for and love ourselves. I discovered this reality as a learning from my own experience of burnout. I also hope to rethink my theology, stir up the passion of my calling, and be with other care providers and educators who long for deep spiritual renewal. I hope to be a positive influence and agent of change in this time of deep division and conflict. This D.Min. program will help me achieve my goals.