Accredited Chaplain
Accredited chaplaincy informs Sharon’s educational reflection on spiritual care and dignity.
Professional background · Resources · Formation
Chaplaincy & Spiritual Formation
Presence. Care. Formation. The publications of Spirit Led Counselling — The Practice draw on Sharon Mackenzie's chaplaincy training and professional experience. Spirit Led Institute carries that work into learning and formation for chaplains, pastoral carers and spiritual-care practitioners.
Spirit Led Counselling — The Practice publishes books and educational resources. It does not offer individual counselling, therapy or chaplaincy sessions; Sharon’s qualifications are described as background to her teaching and writing.
Sharon Mackenzie SpiritRSPrac · Founder & Educator
- Diploma of Counselling
- Accredited Chaplain
- Narrative Practice Practitioner · Health & Harmony Colleges
- Advanced Aromatherapy Practitioner · Health & Harmony Colleges
- Trauma-Informed Care
Sharon Mackenzie is the founder and educator behind Spirit Led Institute. Her work draws on a Diploma of Counselling, narrative practice, accredited chaplaincy, trauma-informed care training. She develops practical education at the intersection of safeguarding, organisational culture, dignity, authority, psychosocial safety and individual healing.
Free ebook · The Humanising Presence™ chaplaincy collection
The Balm of Gilead for Chaplains
Healing for those who became balm for others.
Chaplains enter difficult places carrying compassion, presence, faith and hope. They sit beside grief. They enter prisons, hospitals, schools, institutions and places of crisis. But sometimes the work leaves wounds of its own. This book is for the chaplain who came to serve and discovered that compassion did not protect them from institutional harm, moral conflict, disappointment, exhaustion, grief or the gradual erosion of something they once held sacred.
This is not a book about becoming more resilient. It is an invitation to set down what was never yours to carry — because healing is not measured by whether you become useful to the system again, but by whether you are becoming free. There is a time to carry. And there is a time to be cared for.
Download free (PDF)Background
Where this comes from.
Sharon’s accredited chaplaincy, Diploma of Counselling and trauma-informed care training inform the educational resources published through The Practice and taught through Spirit Led Institute.
Diploma of Counselling
Counselling training informs reflective resources without making these courses counselling services.
Trauma-Informed Care
Trauma-informed care training informs attention to agency, choice and the limits of educational resources.
Schools
Chaplaincy in schools & with young people.
Good school chaplaincy works inside the school's wellbeing and safeguarding structures — not alongside them, and never as a separate spiritual silo. It is relational care within a team, offered to every student regardless of belief.
A steady, familiar presence
Safe, consistent and approachable — the adult who is simply there often enough to be trusted, before anything difficult ever needs to be said.
Listening and relational support
Unhurried attention, without rushing to fix, advise or interpret. Most of the work is ordinary, everyday accompaniment.
Belonging, connection and inclusion
Noticing who is on the edges, and quietly widening the circle. Belonging is protective long before anything goes wrong.
Walking through hard seasons
Grief, family change, friendship difficulties, transitions, and questions of identity and meaning — held with care and without drama.
Knowing where the role ends
Clear about when to refer to school counsellors, psychologists, child-protection pathways, health professionals or emergency support — and doing it promptly.
Child-safe practice
Confidentiality limits explained honestly, appropriate documentation and information-sharing boundaries, and clear escalation pathways.
Correctional & justice settings
Presence inside hard walls.
Correctional chaplaincy is dignified, non-coercive spiritual and pastoral presence for people living with isolation, loss, shame, grief, family separation, and long questions about meaning, faith and hope. It works entirely within institutional protocols and security requirements, and within clear boundaries about what a chaplain can and cannot offer. Nothing about it is legal advice or clinical treatment. Its whole discipline is respect: meeting a person as a person, without conditions and without agenda.
Formation
Spiritual formation & pastoral care.
For anyone who sits with others — chaplains, pastoral carers, ministry leaders, lay carers and the quietly relied-upon. These are the themes that run underneath the work: clarity, discernment, dignity, agency, boundaries and release.
Presence before answers
Being with someone is usually the intervention. The words matter less than the steadiness.
What is mine, what is theirs
Discerning what belongs to you and what belongs to the person you are supporting.
Spiritual care without coercion
Faith, prayer and meaning offered — never imposed, assumed or used as leverage.
Agency, not dependency
Care that leaves people more able to carry their own life, not more reliant on you.
Boundaries as care
Boundaries are not the opposite of compassion. They are what make compassion sustainable.
Referral and the limits of role
Knowing the edge of your competence, and treating referral as good care rather than failure.
Chaplain & carer wellbeing
Who holds the person who holds everyone else?
Chaplains and pastoral carers absorb stories, distress, urgency and emotional residue. Most of it never gets spoken about again. Sustainable care needs somewhere for that material to be processed — rather than a long drive home still carrying it. The Balm of Gilead for Chaplains was written for exactly this, and it is free.
Download The Balm of Gilead for Chaplains (free PDF)These resources support reflective, pastoral and spiritual care. They do not replace clinical mental-health care, medical care, mandatory reporting or child-protection processes, emergency response, professional supervision, or an organisation's own policies and procedures. Practitioners should always work within their qualifications, role, employer requirements and applicable safeguarding obligations. If someone is at immediate risk, contact emergency services.
