Joey Lyons of Radical Hapa reflects that his Ministerial Formation and in an earlier entry he laments the number of his fellow students that drop out of the process of becoming UU ministers. He writes that he has been intentional "about developing my ministerial skills and theology from a community based accountability, but honestly, I recognize that this is purely because I've chosen to do so. Ultimately I am primary in shaping and negotiating my ministerial formation, almost to the point that I'm uncomfortable and a bit surprised at the level of individual responsibility necessary to achieve each level of UU Ministerial Credentialing."
I think a lot about the formation of ministers, and the Unitarian Universalist community of ministers As a member of the Executive of the Unitarian Universalist Minister's Association (UUMA), I have a small role in shaping policy relative to formation, and collegial community. In our polity, no one individual has a determining role, the UUA Board of Trustees, the UUA staff, the Ministerial Fellowship Committee (MFC) members, the theological school boards and faculty, the Association for Clinical Pastoral Education, the search committees, the internship congregations, the colleagues who mentor students, the UUMA chapters and the UUMA executive all participate in shaping policy and helping to oversee the process. But it is the students in formation who determine the success or failure of all of those efforts.
Joey Lyons alludes to our reality, our polity is associative, rather than hierarchal. Our Association of Congregations has established requirements for credentialing, but we don't direct the process of ministerial formation. In this essay, and in several to follow I will analyze this reality, examine the necessary limitations of institutional guidance, and propose some ideas that might contribute to a more supportive, community based ministerial formation in the future.
There is a distinction to be made between formation and the process of credentialing. As I understand that term, formation is spiritual and personal development. It is gaining the skills, personal habits, and awareness necessary to be a reflective practitioner of ministry. For example, if we think of a minister as a spiritual leader, we might ask what is this candidates spiritual practice? How is this candidate engaged in deepening the quality of personal relationships to self, cosmos, spirit and other creatures? What disciplines of self care and spiritual nurture does this candidate practice? Credentialing on the other hand has to do with an institution certifying competence.
Ideally we would meet with each candidate for ministry and discern what skills, knowledge, experience, spiritual and personal qualities that candidate would need to acquire in order to function and thrive as a minister. One candidate might need to develop a sense of humor, another might need to develop more discretion when it comes to sharing their visions, another might need to cultivate their inner boldness. But alas, the institution needs to make judgments based on uniform standards, so the MFC proposes standards and the UUMA has decisive input, and UU theological schools make contingency plans, and the non UU theological schools ignore the process, and the UUA Board of Trustees adopts the standards and the students adjust to the new requirements. Over the last four decades, the requirements have changed significantly and there are plans and discussions to change them again.
The basic requirements for UU ministry are:
1. Career assessment program at a career center approved by the Ministerial Fellowship Committee
2. Candidacy status granted by an RSCC
3. Sponsorship by a UU Congregation
4. Master of Divinity degree or its equivalent;
5. Approved internship;
6. Basic unit of Clinical Pastoral Education;
7. Completion of the Reading List;
8. Interview with the Ministerial Fellowship Committee.
We might question the efficacy of any and all of these requirements towards actually forming a minister. Channing read with the minister in Lancaster, Massachusetts while he taught school, there was no Divinity School to attend. Couldn't our students just read with a tutor? Do a little apprenticeship with a wise old cleric, and when ready for prime time, do some circuit preaching? One of the little churches on the circuit would grab the aspirant up, ordain and install their find and a pastor would be formed. That is the way it was, it gave us great ministers.
We have established credentialing, and we have requirements. But our students do not have uniform experiences in meeting these requirements. Some schools that give Masters of Divinity degrees are part of major Universities, and some are smaller and intimate and deserve the name "seminary." One school provides its students with access to famous scholars, the other provides directed spiritual and ministerial formation. Some schools are UU friendly, some are not. Depending on the peer group and the supervisor, as well as the maturity of the student, Clinical Pastoral Education can be nurturing experience through which a student learns pastoral skills and awareness or it can be an traumatic and destructive experience. I have known students who dropped out of the process because of a personality conflict with one of the gatekeepers as they were moving along the process of credentialing. We might blame the victim if the student has repeated conflicts with authority figures, we might blame the gatekeeper if many students have found that functionary problematic, or we might write this students loss off to serendipity. My point is that the process has been created to make judgments of competence, based on uniform standards. It is a screening process. We are trying to institutionalize fairness, and encourage a qualified ministry. But these requirements do not help a student in the process of ministerial formation. That has been left to the schools, to the mentors, to the intern supervisors, and most of all to the students.
Coming soon my second reflection will ponder our system of "self selection" of aspirants. The UUA provides little or no support for students in the first year of theological school, and little guidance as they enter the process of credentialing. This weakness is built into our polity, and the history of our ministry. In order to make changes, we must begin by examining our polity.
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