Ministry Formation (doesn't end with Master of Divinity degree): third reflection.

In a previous post, I made the distinction between credentialing and ministry formation. Formation has to do with "spiritual and personal development. It is gaining the skills, personal habits, and awareness necessary to be a reflective practitioner of ministry."

A reflective practitioner is one of the defining characteristics of a professional. To reflect on one's experience is think about one's experience doing worship. providing pastoral care, administrating with a vision, witnessing justice and all the other practices of a minister. It is to think about that experience in the light of one's theological understandings, and one's knowledge of the history of religious movements. It is to think about that experience with understanding about how it is impacting the people of faith community and the larger community as well.

Thus formation that involves becoming a reflective practitioner requires experience in actually doing ministry. In the 1960s, Unitarian Universalists began to experiment with internships as a way to gain some experience before graduation and actually taking up a post as a professional minister. Another immersion in practice is known as Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE), which involves working in a hospital, prison, family court, or other setting where people are in crisis and providing pastoral care under supervision and reflecting on these experiences in a peer group. By the 1970s both CPE and internship were required by the Ministerial Fellowship Committee before a candidate was could apply for an interview. Internship and CPE are designed to help a candidate become a reflective practitioner.

But the experience of actually being a minister is radically different from being a trainee, whether in a clinical setting or in an internship. The expectations that are projected unto a minister and the conflicts that arise in congregations in which the minister is the symbolic center are much more intense than the supervised practice ministries of internships and clinical experiences. The number of ministers who experience crisis and leave the ministry in the first few years has become an area of concern, and that concern is reflected in the greater attention to the period between awarding preliminary fellowship and the granting of final fellowship after three years of successful settlement.

Many of the ideas that we learned in CPE and internship have been extended to some ideas for continuing formation during the first years of professional ministry. We now require mentorship during these critical years, hoping that some of the experience with internship supervision can help continue the process of reflective process as the new minister experiences their initial settlement. Some ministers voluntarily form support groups with colleagues and engage in peer group reflection on the problems that arise in ministry.

I am convinced that continuing education, and continuing reflection with colleagues is a key to ongoing growth in ministry. Formation in ministry does not end with theological school, the certification of preliminary fellowship is just the beginning of becoming a reflective practitioner of a very complex profession.