One of the rules of the United Methodist Church is “Do No Harm”, yet I believe our current ordination system does cause harm to those seeking ordination in our church. I believe there are also positive and encouraging moments and people in the ordination process and I will get to that later as well, but for this post, I want to focus on ways I think the process could be changed for the better. I also recognize some of the options I mention may not be possible, and there may be better options that I may not realize.

I also understand this is a human process so it has flaws. There will be elements that work wonderfully. There will be elements that worked for a time but are no longer effective. There will be things that worked previously but need to be tweaked/changed so they are better today. There will also be elements that do not work, that can be harmful and need to be removed.

In our denomination, we talk a lot about the importance of our connection. Yet, in various ways, we seem to apply the concept of “connection” when it is convenient to those who desire it or we want people/churches to get on board with decisions. One of the ways I see our connection break down when it comes to our ordination process is with inconsistencies.

What do I mean by inconsistencies? One way is that our process does not look the same even in the United States from conference to conference. When I realized this it filled me with the immediate question, “If we are supposed to be connected, and there is supposed to be this deep working between all of our conferences, how can such an important task such as ordination look differently even within the United States?” But, not only that, the process can look different within districts within a conference. Let me elaborate, when I was going through the ordination process trying to become a Provisional Elder in the district I was serving in I had to interview around a table with the whole DCOM team so 15-17 people were sitting around a table asking me questions, BUT in the same conference in a different district, candidates would only interview with 4-5 people. That is a significantly different experience even within the same conference. From what I understand this has now been changed but, there are other consistencies as well.

During one part of the ordination process candidates have to go through a very large candidacy guidebook. This is regardless of whether you are already serving in ministry or not. When you are a candidate you may have a mentor who takes the task of going through the guidebook very seriously and wants to go through each part of the book, so this means you may meet every two weeks and that part of the process could extend for many months, where I knew of other candidates where they met with their guide like two to three times and that was it. So, there are parts of the process that are not only inconsistent within the denomination, within conferences, but also within the districts. This can be very challenging for those trying to navigate the process when the process in other areas can be rigid.

Another aspect that I believe needs to be examined is the length of the process. I became an “inquiring” candidate in the Fall of 2011 and it wasn’t until September of 2020 that I became a Full Elder in the UMC. So, the process took 9 years! I am very thorough and stayed on top of my process and it still took that long. There are different sections of the process for the candidates which include, “Inquiring”, “Exploring”, “Certification”, “Candidacy Renewal Requirements”, “Licensure for Pastoral Ministry”, “Renewal of Pastoral License”, “Provisional Elder Requirements”, and “Elder Requirements”. Each one of these various categories has numerous elements to it such as psychological testing, local church interviews, district interviews, board ministry interviews, going through books, guidebooks, many different written exams, lots of writings on our call, theological beliefs, medical reports, trainings, written reports, multiple references, submitting video sermons, licensing school, annual reports from mentors, needing a Bachelor’s degree, a Master of Divinity degree, and many other elements. I fully understand the need for thoroughness to make sure someone feels called to ministry, to make sure they are vetted so that we avoid abuse in the church, but this process is quite frankly overkill. We need to simplify the process for candidates instead of making it like some kind of extreme gauntlet.

Because our ordination process is so extensive I will not be able to address all the various aspects that I believe could be addressed. Yet, there are two parts of the process in this post that I do want to address. First, I think there is far too much weight given to a once-a-year interview. We have to do so much paperwork, meet with guides, answer questions, do reports, and serve in the local church. Yet, if someone doesn’t particularly interview well they are automatically delayed and the process becomes even longer. I think of myself, I have ADHD and Generalized Anxiety Disorder, and having to be super concise yet thorough in an interview can be incredibly daunting for me. I have no problem sitting around a table talking about the faith, teaching a Bible study, or preaching a sermon, but when you get me around a table with various people who are firing off questions it can be difficult.

When candidates have expressed concern about this area of the process they are often told, “Well, you have to be able to answer questions like this if you are going to serve in the local church” YET! The reality is most of the candidates are already serving in the local church, and are quite often serving in churches that are smaller, challenging, and even dying. The first church I was appointed to serve as a lead pastor faced incredible inner turmoil. To say there were people in the church who hated one another is not an exaggeration. I was their 5th pastor in 4 1/2 years (counting an interim). During my first week at the church, I can remember another colleague telling me, “This church is a clergy killer. They eat clergy alive, so if I were you I would focus on your studies, finish seminary, and get out of here as soon as you can.” This is not the kind of thing you want to hear during your first week in a new appointment. The church was known as one of the most toxic churches within the district and possibly the conference. So, somehow I was called and equipped enough to serve as a pastor at that incredibly challenging congregation, but not enough to ordain without several delays.

Another time, when I had already gone through some delays in my ordination process I was appointed to a church where I was only told “finances are tight” and I spent the next year doing intensive work to figure out exactly what the financial picture of the church was. After all that work it became clear that the church couldn’t afford to keep me as a full-time pastor. So, effectively I worked myself out of a job, and after moving my wife and two young children just a little over a year earlier to that location we had to move again. This was following me completing a special 2-year resident program for “up and coming pastors with a lot of potential” where I was supposed to be placed in a thriving church that just needed some extra help getting to the next level. However, instead, I was appointed to a church that could not afford to keep me as a full-time pastor and my options were to stay there and go part-time while adding another church, or receive a different appointment entirely. So, after 14 months my young family had to move again. An interesting thing about this was that one of the Elders who asked me an inappropriate question in a future interview was a previous pastor at that church and never sought to address the financial situation. So, I took on that task and completed it when that same Elder who didn’t address it viewed me as “not ready yet” for ordained ministry.

A second reflection I have about the interview process is that once a candidate makes it to a certain level they shouldn’t have to go back to a previous level. For example, one year as I was seeking to become a provisional elder, I was approved unanimously at the DCOM, I proceeded to the BOM, and while my interview team voted in the majority to approve me it was not unanimous, it then went to the whole BOM, where I didn’t receive the 3/4 I needed to be approved. Those not aware of our process don’t always realize that when this happens you don’t just go back to the BOM the next year, instead I had to go back to the DCOM even though they unanimously approved me the year before. In a situation like this I think it would be more beneficial to assign a mentor/guide to the candidate to shore up some of the areas the BOM feels they could work on and return to the BOM the next year.

In my case, the next year since I didn’t pass the BOM, I had to go before the DCOM again. As time would have it my wife that late summer/early fall gave birth to our son. As the date for my interview approached, and I had already turned in all the required paperwork I inquired as to whether I could delay my interviews a couple of weeks so I could focus on helping my wife with our 3.5-year-old daughter and our newborn son. I was told unequivocally no, that I could interview at the time I was given or I would need to wait until next year to try again. Really?! This is how we treat a pastor and their family. How is this even remotely gracious? How is this kind? So, my wife gave birth to our son on August 15th, yet he was struggling to breathe on his own, his APGAR score was incredibly low which is used to evaluate a newborn’s condition immediately after birth. He had an infection and therefore had to spend a week in the NICU.

So, two weeks after my son was born, and only a week since we were able to bring him home I had to go to my interview at 8:00 a.m. At the beginning of my interview one of the Clergymen worded a question to me as, “Dave, I heard your wife recently gave birth to your son, so how would you deal with a couple whose 3-month-old unexpectedly died” It surprised me that someone would word a question so insensitive especially since my son struggled to breathe when he was first born. NO ONE on the interview team spoke up. So, I shared how I had tried to compassionately reach out to a friend whose family had lost a child unexpectedly the previous year who was only a couple of years old, and offered love and care to them. The interviewer says, “That’s good and all but that child was a couple of years old, what if the child was only a couple of months old.” Confused by this reply I responded that I didn’t see myself responding differently to that family whether the child was a few months old or a few years old. I could tell he was annoyed by my response. So, I said, “I am sorry. I am just not understanding what you are asking and are wanting to hear.” He frustratingly says, “What if the family was concerned for their baby because it was only a couple of months old and they hadn’t had the child baptized yet.” So, I said, “Oh, I would explain that God’s grace and love are greater than our ability to understand or fathom it. That God’s ability to save is not limited to our quickness to have a child baptized and so therefore I would assure the family that God dearly loves their child, and their child was with God.” (or something to that effect) The interviewer said, “I wish you would have just said that to begin with.” Honestly, this pissed me off but I kept it to myself, because my thoughts were I am sorry you can’t ask a question in a way that addresses what you are wanting addressed. It was clear to me that the interviewer was trying to see if they could get a defensive response out of me and this was later confirmed by another interviewer.

During that same interview, they wanted to address my understanding of the atonement which I will get back to but first let me explain why. This was primarily because in my BOM the previous year, I had submitted a sermon on the assurance of salvation. In my sermon, I shared that I find assurance of salvation is based on who Jesus is, what Jesus has done, and who Jesus says I am as a child of God. That I can have confidence in my salvation not based on myself, but based on the love and faithfulness of God. One of the interviewers spoke up and said something to the effect that they believed we can also have assurance based on the closeness we feel to God and the feelings we receive from the Holy Spirit. I spoke up and said something like I believe the problem with that is that our feelings change on a day to day basis. One day I can feel confident and peaceful, and another day I can feel uneasy and alone. If my assurance is based on my feelings which can waver then I won’t always feel assured, but what doesn’t waver is God and what God has done. This upset them and this person acted differently towards me in the rest of my interview. When that interview was done and they brought me back in to share what the teams decision was. They said the team was split in their decision for me, and one of the main reasons is because they felt like I needed to be more open to feedback around my sermon and not defensively respond. When I responded to the person’s reply to my sermon in the interview I did not raise my voice, I did not act aggressively, I merely shared why I disagreed with that person’s understanding. So, when they were sharing how I needed to be more open to feedback around my sermon I said ok I can do that (or something to that effect). Then one of the interviewers told me that if I had responded that way first when the person gave me feedback the team would have unanimously approved me and I would be moving on. So, because I disagreed with an interviewer about a comment they made on my sermon on the topic of assurance and didn’t just nod, agree, and accept whatever they said I didn’t get to move on. To me that says less about whether I am prepared, called, and ready for ministry and more about bullying candidates into conformity around their interview team’s beliefs. They say these interviews are to prepare you for ministry and how you respond to difficult conversations. Well, as a pastor at times, you have to preach on difficult topics, and there are times when those who listen to those messages won’t agree with them. There are times as a pastor you have to stand your ground and articulate why you believe what you believe. Yes, of course, we as clergy have to be open to feedback and differences of opinion and beliefs, but there are also many times we must stand our ground. In these interviews, you are expected to share what you believe and why, but in this case, it seemed one of the interviewers in particular let their pride get in the way of an otherwise good interview. My answer was consistent with Methodist beliefs, and yet I was punished because I spoke up. This decision would eventually lead to my process being extended another two years.

Let me explain…

So, following that BOM interview in January, I had a follow-up interview with the DCOM team (small group of 4-5) in the spring to renew my pastoral license. They brought up that a concern was shared around my understanding of the atonement (which was centered around the assurance of salvation issue with my sermon and my response). So, I shared my understanding of the atonement and the team said, “I am not sure why the BOM said they had an issue with your understanding around the atonement, you are able to very clearly articulate what you believe and why.”

Fast forward now to when I met again with the whole DCOM (around 15-17 people) and after the toddler dying question another clergy member dove in hard on the atonement question. So, I shared exactly what I did with the smaller DCOM team in the spring. My answer was insufficient for the interviewer. He responded by saying, “Yes, but what about the blood of Jesus?” I said I believe that Jesus being fully God and fully human laid down his life for us, to cleanse us of our sins, and help us to be reconciled to our creator. Through this incredible act, we can live out the faith as redeemed and restored creations in a hurting world that is desperately looking for peace, hope, and love.” He says, “Yeah, but how does the blood exactly do that?” I shared, “Jesus was without sin, he was without blemish, so he laid down his life to pay the price that I could not pay myself.” Once again, he says, “But how can the blood do that exactly?” I had to say, “Sir, I feel like I have answered your question and I am not sure what else you are looking for.” He didn’t like that I said that. He quickly furrowed his brow and became more disgruntled than he already was. Eventually, they moved on but these two individuals basically took up more than half my interview time because they couldn’t reword their questions appropriately or effectively. It was clear with the second interviewer that he held very much to a penal substitutionary view of the atonement, and while I believe Jesus served as a substitute for us, it was not in the judicial way the PSA presents itself. This is another perfect example of these boards not just wanting to make sure you align with Methodist beliefs or that you can fulfill the role of Elder, but people on the teams having agendas and wanting to have candidates respond in a very narrow way. DCOM’s and BOM’s will tell you as a candidate, “Don’t tell us what you think we want to hear, tell us what you believe.” Yet, the truth is not all the interviewers believe these words. So, the interview went poorly, and I didn’t pass. So, even though the year before I passed DCOM unanimously with a group of 15-17 people, and went to the BOM but didn’t pass, this time I didn’t even pass the DCOM so I had to wait a whole year to try again. Where I would have to pass DCOM in the spring, and then pass the BOM in January.

Following that DCOM interview, several people from the team privately reached out to me and shared how they disapproved of the decision, apologized for how I was interviewed and said that they didn’t interview anyone else like that for the rest of the day, but they had to stand by the decision of the committee. Even though those two interviewers dominated my interview with vague and repetitive questions and came across as aggressive towards me it didn’t matter. As a candidate, all I could do was take it, keep my mouth shut, and try again the next year, and hope for a different result.

An interesting aspect of this was when I brought up to several on the team that I shared the same answer to the atonement question in my spring license renewal as I did in that interview, and they shared with me that information was never shared with the whole team. What?!? How could that information not be communicated? How could that not impact my interview? How could those team members who heard me share that answer not speak up when they said I had clearly and adequately communicated my understanding of the atonement?

One of the ways things like this can be avoided in the future is by having questions written down that both the interview team and candidates know will be asked. I think issues arise when interviewers try to take the various ordination questions and get creative with them. This causes the candidate to attempt to decipher on the fly what exactly they are being asked. When this happens interview teams think candidates are trying to figure out the “right answers”, when in reality I think it is more the candidates are trying to understand what theological issue this question is connected to. If the main thing is we want to make sure the candidate understands our methodist beliefs and doctrines then there is no reason these questions cannot be clear and concise for the interview team and candidate. If the interview was conducted in this way it keeps it focused on the main things, it optimizes the time the team has, and it keeps those on the interview team from interjecting personal issues and agendas they may have.

This post has gone on far too long for today, so I will have to do another part to share more aspects of my concern. However, when you are a candidate in the process you cannot speak up publically about these concerns. You are expected to keep your mouth shut, keep your head down, and just keep pushing forward. You are told things like, “Everyone has to go through this, if you can’t deal with it then you will not be able to hack being a pastor in the church”. Quite honestly this is gaslighting and abusive. This is basically saying “You need to accept the abuse from us because you will also face abuse in the church so get used to it.” Too often people have the mindset, “I had to endure the pains of the process so I am gonna make sure others don’t have it easy either”. Once again to me, this is like someone saying, “I would get beat as a child and I made it through ok so you can deal with it too”. Instead, I think we should be saying, “How can we arrange and organize the ordination process so that it is most helpful to churches and the candidates?”

I am speaking up now because I am 45 years old, so I have at least 20-25 more years serving in pastoral ministry and I want to see the church be the most beautiful version of itself. We lament that we have fewer young people wanting to go into the ministry, but why would someone younger want to put themselves through this process? I have only been a fully ordained Elder since 2020, but I have been in paid ministry positions and appointments for over 21 years in the United Methodist Church. Ministry is tough enough without our colleagues and laity beating us up in the ordination process. I am also speaking up because there are still many who are going through the ordination process and are not able to speak up for themselves without fearing retaliation or something being “placed in their file”. With General Conference going on right now may we continue to look at how we function as the church, including ordination so that we can be the very best image of the church that God desires us to be.