Kintsugi Resilience Formation Fellows
We are looking for practitioners who feel called to accompany people from brokenness to wisdom.
By Geof Tio, D.Min.
Every day, chaplains, counselors, pastors, coaches, healthcare professionals, educators, and community leaders encounter people carrying wounds that are difficult to see.
Grief. Trauma. Burnout. Shame. Fractured relationships. Loss of identity. Spiritual struggle. Life transitions.
These experiences affect more than how people feel. They can reshape the stories people tell about themselves, the beliefs through which they interpret life, the relationships they form, and the ways they understand meaning, purpose, and hope.
We believe these deeper human questions call for practitioners who are not only trained, but formed. That is why Community Care Chaplains created the Kintsugi Resilience Formation Fellows Program.
What Is a Formation Fellow?
A Formation Fellow is a practitioner preparing to become a Certified Kintsugi Resilience Mentor (KRM). But the journey begins before certification. Formation Fellows enter an intentional process of personal formation, study, mentoring, supervised practice, reflection, and community.
We believe that those who accompany the wounds of others must also learn to understand their own stories. Formation therefore begins with the practitioner. Before learning how to facilitate Kintsugi for someone else, Fellows experience the Kintsugi journey themselves. They explore their stories. Map significant wounds and formative experiences. Examine the beliefs they carry. Reflect upon their relational patterns. Discover sources of resilience. And begin integrating their own journey from brokenness toward wisdom. From that place, they learn to accompany others.
The Kintsugi Resilience Approach
Kintsugi Resilience is an integrated approach to human and spiritual formation. Rather than relying upon a single theory or technique, our formation brings several disciplines into conversation:
- Narrative Practice helps us listen for the stories through which people understand themselves and their experiences.
- Pastoral REBT helps us recognize and examine the beliefs that influence emotion, behavior, relationships, and spiritual life.
- Wound Mapping helps us identify formative experiences and understand how wounds continue to influence the present.
- Attachment Theory helps us explore patterns of trust, connection, belonging, intimacy, and relationship.
- Human and Spiritual Formation helps bring these insights together into a continuing journey toward meaning, resilience, compassion, hope, and wisdom.
Together, these become more than a collection of techniques. They become a way of accompanying people.
From Brokenness to Wisdom
Kintsugi Resilience does not begin with the assumption that cracks must disappear. We begin by listening.
What happened?
What story emerged from it?
What did I come to believe?
How did it shape my relationships?
Where did I discover resilience?
What might this experience now have to teach me?
And perhaps the deepest question:
Who am I becoming?
This movement—from awareness of brokenness toward integration and wisdom—is at the heart of Kintsugi Resilience.
Who Should Consider Becoming a Formation Fellow?
We are particularly interested in practitioners whose work already brings them alongside people during meaningful or difficult seasons of life. Formation Fellows may come from backgrounds such as chaplaincy, counseling, psychotherapy, pastoral ministry, spiritual direction, coaching, social work, healthcare, education, organizational leadership, and community service.
Professional experience matters. But credentials alone do not make someone a Kintsugi Resilience Mentor.
We are also looking for qualities that cannot simply be taught in a classroom: Compassion. Curiosity. Humility. Emotional maturity. The ability to listen. Respect for another person’s story. Willingness to examine oneself. And a commitment to lifelong formation.
A Sponsored Formation Opportunity
Preparing practitioners at this level requires a significant investment. The complete Kintsugi Resilience Mentor formation experience is valued at more than $4,000.
For our Fall Formation Fellows initiative, Community Care Chaplains is sponsoring the training investment for selected qualified applicants. Selected Formation Fellows therefore do not pay the Kintsugi Resilience Mentor training tuition. Instead, Fellows commit to active participation in the formation process and maintain membership in the Kintsugi Premium Community at $125 per month during their formation.
Premium membership provides the environment in which formation continues through curriculum, community, mentorship, supervision, reflective practice, and ongoing professional development. This is not a discounted training program. It is an investment in practitioners whom we believe have the potential to carry this work into their communities.
What Formation Includes
Formation Fellows participate in a structured journey that includes personal Kintsugi formation, study of the Kintsugi Resilience framework, mentoring, reflective practice, supervised application, group facilitation, and integration of learning into their own professional context.
As Fellows progress, they move increasingly from participant to practitioner. They do not simply learn about Kintsugi. They experience it. They practice it. They reflect upon it. And eventually, they learn to hold the space in which others can experience it.
The Path Toward Certification
The Formation Fellowship is a pathway toward becoming a Certified Kintsugi Resilience Mentor. Certification is not automatic simply because someone attends the training.
Readiness is discerned through participation, integration, supervised practice, demonstrated mentoring capacity, and the ability to embody the values and practices of Kintsugi Resilience. Our goal is not to produce the largest possible number of certified mentors. Our goal is to cultivate practitioners we can confidently entrust with people’s stories.
Where Can This Work Be Practiced?
Kintsugi Resilience Mentors can bring this formation into many settings. A chaplain may use it in spiritual care. A pastor may develop a Kintsugi group within a congregation. A counselor or coach may integrate appropriate elements into their existing practice and professional scope. A healthcare professional may use its principles to deepen whole-person care. An educator may bring its understanding of story and resilience into student formation. A community leader may create spaces where people can gather, reflect, and grow. And some mentors may facilitate Kintsugi Resilience groups directly through Community Care Chaplains and its growing network of communities and partners.
The setting may change. The commitment remains: Honor the story. Hold the space. Cultivate resilience. Awaken wisdom.
More Than a Certification
We hope Formation Fellows will eventually become much more than graduates of a program. We are cultivating a community of practitioners. A community that continues learning. Continues reflecting. Continues receiving supervision. Continues accompanying one another. And continues asking how we can serve people with greater wisdom, humility, compassion, and integrity.
Because becoming a Kintsugi Resilience Mentor is not the end of formation. It is another beginning.
Is This Journey Calling You?
Perhaps you are already accompanying people through some of life’s hardest moments. Perhaps you have discovered that techniques alone are sometimes insufficient for the questions people bring. Perhaps you are looking for a framework that honors psychology, spirituality, story, relationship, resilience, and the complexity of being human. Or perhaps you have experienced your own cracks and have begun wondering whether what you have learned through them might someday help you accompany others.
If so, we would like to hear your story.
Applications are now being considered for the Fall Kintsugi Resilience Formation Fellows cohort.
Selected Fellows will receive more than $4,000 in sponsored Kintsugi Resilience Mentor formation while participating as active members of the Kintsugi Premium Community.
Your story has formed you.
Perhaps it is also preparing you to accompany someone else’s.
Apply to Become a Kintsugi Resilience Formation Fellow.