Privileging People over Process

A few days ago I posted about how the church can often be its own worst enemy when it comes to the ordination process.

Posts about ordination candidacy tend to generate a lot of response - both in terms of e-mails and reader comments. I've always seen that as an indication of the level of frustration people often experience in the process itself. Having received a call from God to enter ministry, it can be exasperating to navigate a bureaucratic maze that seems designed to frustrate more than facilitate.

As I wrote about in my last column, there is a momentum in the UMC at large to reform the structure of the ordination process. That's good news! Significant changes were made at the 2008 General Conference, and I expect there to be more in 2012.

But we need more than just structural reform. We need a reform of personal attitudes as well. I take up this subject in my current column, where I talk about the importance of personal concern and attention on the part of candidacy mentors, DCOMs, and BOMs. You could add to that list, of course, with seminary professors, pastors, district superintendents, and bishops.

I firmly believe that any complicated process is made easier with the right attitudes on the part of the people in authority. The church as a whole should be constantly aware of the vulnerable and often uncertain position that ordination candidates find themselves in. They need the love, care, and wisdom that mentor figures can provide. And with that, I think a lot of the deep frustration that they often experience can be avoided.

The trend in our culture is, on the whole, toward greater bureaucracy. As that happens, we tend to think processes can take over in systems where people used to be the integral parts. That may work for shopping online and self-check outs at the grocery store, but I don't think it will ever work in the body of Christ.

We are members, one of the other! And as we try to respond faithfully to the Holy Spirit's work in raising up shepherds, we need to make sure that we're personally involved to help, assist, and encourage.

The Long Road to Ordination

What if the biggest obstacle in responding to God's call to ordained ministry turned out to be the church itself?

And what if, with the very best of intentions, the church was ironically hampering its own witness and compromising its own future in the way it had laid out the path to ordination?

For a lot of candidates for ordination in the United Methodist Church, this worst case scenario seems anything but far-fetched. I've heard scores of stories over the past few years about the difficulty of pursuing ordination as an elder or deacon in the UMC.

I am convinced the ordination process can be reformed. And the change that have been made in the past couple of years only reinforce that conviction.

In my current column in the UM Reporter, I look at reform of ordination candidacy in two forms: the need for a change in structure and the need for a change in personal attitudes.

The willingness to change our structure - as outlined in the Book of Discipline - seems to finally be underway. Last year's General Conference legislated a number of long-needed changes, some of which I mention in the column. There are more changes that need to be made, and it's my hope that the 2012 General Conference will continue that crucial work.

The willingness to change attitudes (which I'll look at in the next column) is no less needed but also a bit more difficult. We've allowed ourselves to shift focus from people to process, a move that largely reflects the wider culture's growing belief that virtues of bureaucracy. But layers of organization and piles of paperwork cannot do the very human work of discernment, and the Holy Spirit doesn't work as well through standardized tests and surveys as he does through personal mentoring relationships.

I know a lot of this blog's readers have personal experience with the UM ordination process. I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on what is needed the most to improve our ordination candidacy.

Also, here are some other ordination-related articles and posts I've done in the past:

"Can't we simplify" (UM Reporter, September 9, 2009)

"Reflections on the ordination process" (blog post, July 9, 2008)

"The devil's in the details with ordination process" (UM Reporter, October 3, 2007)

"Ordination problems ... uh, process" (blog post, August 15, 2007)

Reflections on the ordination process

On the second night of my Annual Conference session this year, the young clergy of the conference had their annual Gen X/Y Clergy Dinner. This is a practice that began a few years ago under the leadership of Eric Van Meter, and it has grown in size each year. In fact, this year the bishop ate supper with us! The dinner gives a great opportunity for Gen-X and Millennial-aged clergy to get to know one another, have fellowship, and engage in conversation about issues that are relevant to our lives in ministry.

This year, Eric asked me to lead a conversation about Lovett Weems and Ann Michel's new book, The Crisis of Younger Clergy. (I've written a review of this book, which you can read here.) Their book looks at the declining numbers of young adult elders in the United Methodist Church and attempts to offer some solutions. It is, by the way, a great resource for Boards of Ordained Ministry, District Committees on Ministry, and local churches. They could all benefit by using it to seek out ways the church could better nurture a "culture of call" for its young people.

As the conversation began, we asked each person to speak - sharing information about placement in ministry and about the greatest challenge each has faced in the ordination candidacy process. The results were fascinating. I think it would be best for me to just list the examples we were given of greatest challenges encountered:

- Loneliness/Isolation
- Difficulties in itineracy/family issues
- "Good ol' boy" system
- A feeling of invisibility
- Not recognizing the value of people serving in extension ministries
- Being sensitive to clergy couples
- Mechanics of the process (and let-downs in BOM record keeping)
- Seeing the attrition of others leaving the ministry
- Not taken seriously and the church no responsive to concerns
- BOM politics [editorial note: presumably among members of the BOM itself and how that impacts candidates]
- Being sensitive to the particularities of calling
- Others' expectations of my calling in ministry
- The BOM's difficulty in really nurturing candidates

Following this time of sharing experiences, we asked the young adults present to offer possible ways that the candidacy and ordination process could be improved. Here are their responses:

- Need for great financial support (MEF Funds, support for Exploration and other events focused on calling, etc)
- Need for programs run throughout the conference - "centers of hospitality" - possibly on college campuses. Also, a greater, more personal role for mentors. Conference funds could support these types of initiatives.
- Accountability/Peer Groups amongst probationary/provisional clergy
- Networking & support structures within the Annual Conference [editorial note: the work of Eric Van Meter and others over the past several years has sought to directly meet this need]
- The character of the relationships between young clergy [editorial note: this point was much-discussed, and a lot was shared about what relationships can accomplish that programs cannot]
- A "call event" for high school or college students held locally within the annual conference possibly in the off-year that the Exploration event does not occur

Overall, I thought it was a very productive conversation - at times funny and at times poignant. There were 26 people present for the conversation, and several more than that at the dinner just before. All of them were either currently in the ordination process or recently ordained elders and deacons. For me, the fact that so many were present and engaged in the conversation was a great sign of hope. The point that came up at the end of the evening about the importance of person-to-person relationships was key. The more we nurture those, the less impersonal the ordination process will seem. And that would be an important step in helping young clergy enter their ministries with the right attitude and the right relationships.

A strained love

My friend and fellow pastor Eric Van Meter has got a remarkable article in the United Methodist Reporter this week, where he tells the imaginative story of being in "therapy" for a troubled relationship with his true love - the church. The church he's talking about is the UMC, and he relates how he was attracted to it by the warmly evangelistic outreach of the Wesley Foundation where he went to college. His love of the church grew throughout his college career as he saw a Wesleyan expression of faith at its best, from heartfelt worship, to weekly Holy Communion, to outreach ministry to children and the elderly.

Eric then describes how his idyllic view of the church came crashing down around him during the ordination process, particularly when he started meeting with the Board of Ordained Ministry. There he saw how particulars of polity certain structures or traditions of the church (though he doesn't say which ones) caused him to become frustrated, because it seemed that they stood in the way of the church's full flourishing. These experiences caused him to begin seeing the church as having a "split personality."

This article is worth a read, both for its creativity and for the way so much of it will ring true in the experiences of young clergy. This is only the first installment in a series of articles continuing the same story. I'll post them all as they appear online.

Devil in the details

The outpouring of commentary I've read the past few weeks over problems in our ordination process - in blogs, columns, and e-mails - has been both surprising and encouraging. So I took stock of it all and penned a Reporter column sketching some things to remember as we seek to reform our process. These include:

-- Holding on to the idea that there is nothing wrong with rigor. It's not the seriousness of the ordination process that is the problem. It's rather the fact that "rigor" takes the form of "mind numbing bureaucracy" in our current system. And that leads to...

-- Fighting bureaucracy. We all know about this: forms, timelines, intricate steps to follow, and lots and lots of repitition. Which leads to...

-- Avoiding needless repitition. I know the process reflects our connectional structure of charge, district, conference, and general church. But a slavish adherence to this hierarchical structure can quench the fire of the Spirit. And besides, can't we somehow involve our seminaries in the process, since a great deal of a person's formation for ministry takes place there? That leads to...

-- Engaging the seminaries. It's no secret that UM theological schools are completely off the leash. That leads to the teaching of ridiculously un-orthodox theology at times, but probably more importantly, it means that they are not accountable for helping shepherd their students through candidacy. They offer the courses required by the Discipline, but not much else. All of this together makes me want to cry out...

-- Humanize the process! The system itself, and the various levels where it is played out, all need to re-orient themselves around people rather than paperwork. We've got to get the devil out of the details! And until that happens, a candidate's best friend has got to be her candidacy mentor. Mentors, you're the last line of defense!

I know it seems like we've talked this thing to death on the 'sphere the past few weeks, but any suggestions you'd like to add are welcome.

Ordination Process: One more round

Dr. Rebekah Miles has published her op-ed piece in the United Methodist Reporter, calling for changes to the ordination process in the UMC. I initially told you about Dr. Miles' interest in this subject in this post back in mid-August.

You can find her op-ed here.

She makes a challenging, lucid case that the church needs to wake up and smell the ordination coffee. In the article, Dr. Miles writes:

"We have put into place a long, bureaucratic process with loads of paperwork, saying all the while that we want to attract more young adults to ordained ministry. Yet young adults (between 21 and 35) are members of two generations that tend to share several things in common: their deep dislike of bureaucracy and red tape, their suspicion of large, centralized institutions, and their frustration with hierarchical systems based on seniority and not merit.

"If we were to set out to design a system that was unattractive to Generations X and Y, we would have a hard time coming up with anything worse than the system we have now."

I only offer two observations:

1) After my posts dealing with this subject last month, I had a couple of people respond that the ordination process didn't need to be easy. If folks are really called, they said, a little red tape wouldn't dissuade them. To this, I would say that it isn't the difficulty of the process that is the problem. It is the needless difficulty. There is nothing wrong with having a rigorous ordination process, where a person's call is genuinely explored and tested. But I also think you can make a strong argument that the process we currently have in place does not do a good job of this at all. It has bureaucratic processes set up that make it look rigorous, when they are really just a series of almost-useless hurdles designed to give the whole thing a veneer of professionalism.

2) I've read the letters of Ignatius of Antioch in the past week. In them, Ignatius talks incessantly about the churches of Antioch, Philadelphia, Smyrna, Rome, etc. And it is clear that all these churches are connected to one another, communicate with one another, and send missionaries to one another. But you also get the idea that there is very little bureaucratic red tape traded between them. They didn't seem to have a problem forming people in the faith. In fact, they did such a good job of it that Ignatius and scores of others were willing to be martyred for the faith they received. So what, do you think, they had that we are lacking? Hmmm?

Blogging about ordination

In the past week, there have been several blog posts about the issue of the candidacy and the ordination process in the UMC. If you are interested in what has been said elsewhere, check out:

-- This Methoblog post that I wrote on Friday, basically summarizing what I said a couple of days earlier on Gen-X Rising.

-- This impassioned and poignant post from Gavin Richardson (who, by the way, may be the hardest working blogger in show business). Gavin offers a few good examples of how bad candidacy can really be. It wasn't nearly this bad in my own experience, but I have certainly heard stories of the kind Gavin shares.

-- This post on the United Methodist Reporter's new blog, written by Amy Forbus. Amy mentions on the Reporter post that Rebekah Miles' op-ed piece is going to come out in the Aug. 31st edition of the Reporter. Keep an eye out for that. The Reporter's general website address is here.

I will link to Dr. Miles' Reporter article when it appears. In the mean time, you might be interested in seeing this report on clergy age trends, compiled by the Lewis Center for Church Leadership at Wesley Theological Seminary: youngumclergy.pdf. It is filled with fascinating and shocking statistics, most of which are related to the aging of United Methodist clergy. For instance, did you know that in 1985, over 15% of clergy were under the age of 35?

Want to take a guess what it is now? Try 4.69%.

Correlation does not prove causation, as psychologists like to tell us. And I have no doubt that there are many reasons why younger folks are not answering God's call to ordained ministry in nearly as high numbers as they once did. But I also do not doubt that the length and complexity of our candidacy process does not help.

Ordination problems ... uh, process

I was on an e-mail list that received a request from Dr. Rebekah Miles at Perkins School of Theology, about a piece she is working on related to ordination candidacy and the probationary process. The problems with candidacy are felt pretty universally across the church, I think, which is demonstrated every four years when the General Conference tweaks the Book of Discipline to try to improve it.

Dr. Miles is trying to gather opinions from recently ordained clergy for the project she is working on. As I was writing my own thoughts, it made me want to hear the thoughts of others. So to any of you probationary deacons and elders (and recently ordained clergy) what was the best and worst of your experience with candidacy?

My main concern with the ordination process is that we've allowed the whole thing to take on too much of a bureaucratic feel. We've created this system that, in theory, is supposed to aim toward good ends: making sure that candidates are qualified, that they are truly called to ministry, and that candidates with 'red flags' get weeded our before they reach ordination. But the net result of all of it is that we have handed over too much of the candidacy process to the process itself and distanced candidates from the real human nurturing and formation that should be a part of bringing someone into the clergy. We've all experienced this bureaucratic aspect with the seemingly endless checklists, forms, and tests that have to be completed and sent in to Nashville, the D.S., the DCOM, the Board of Ordained Ministry, etc. It also greatly increases the time it takes from the beginning of candidacy to actual ordination (for me, it was about six years, and I think I did it much faster than some).

I don't know how to untangle this knot. But for starters, if a candidate's bishop, district superintendent, and clergy mentor were trained to understand their roles in the ordination process differently, perhaps the whole thing could be 'humanized' or 'personalized' to a greater degree. That would seem to get us closer to the supremely important spiritual formation aspects that need to be a greater part of our ordination process in general. I am a clergy mentor to an elder candidate right now, and I am trying to be as 'hands on' and supportive as I can. Of course, all mentors, bishops, and district superintendents have to do their best to work in the present (dysfunctional) system.

As a sidenote, I have always suspected that our fears of being personally responsible for telling anyone 'no' has led to our willingness to hand over the ordination process to a bureaucratic system. Our present American conception of individual liberty has led us to never want to presume to tell anyone 'no' in any instance. That is particularly the case when it comes to discerning a calling from God, which each 'called' person believes is authentic. So by handing over ordination to a bureaucratic system, we can be relieved that we don't have to ever say 'no' and hope the 'problem candidates' get weeded out in an impersonal way. This is, I believe, exactly an area in which we need to be countercultural. We have a responsibility to God & the church to say 'no' when 'no' needs to be said, and ultimately that is a much more pastoral attitude to have toward candidates anyway.