The Ministerial Fellowship Committee (MFC) oversees the credentialing of Unitarian Universalist ministers, working as a committee appointed by the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA) Board of Trustees but with its own mandate elaborated in the By-laws of the UUA, the MFC develops the standards for ministerial fellowship, and interviews candidates in the light of those standards. In recent years the professional ministry of the UUA has been awarded fellowship in three separate categories: Parish ministers, Religious Education ministers, and Community ministers.
At its September 2005 meeting the MFC began awarding fellowship in Unitarian Universalist ministry without reference to categories. From now on, ministers entering preliminary fellowship are assumed to be able to serve as parish ministers, religious education ministers and/or community ministers.
The MFC still hopes to recognize achievement in a "speciality." If a minister achieves three renewals of preliminary fellowship as a community minister, for example, they will be awarded final fellowship as a community minister. The same for parish ministry and religious education ministry, "specialization" means three annual renewals in a single form of ministry.
But even in this half realized form, this change will help ministers develop new and more flexible ways of doing ministry - we have had ministers teaching in a college and serving a small church, for example, for whom filling out renewal forms under the rules of "three" categories was a nightmare. What was the part time chaplain, who is also the assistant parish minister responsible for religious education supposed to do? Choose one part of their work, and deny the rest?
Yet some ministers wanted the UUA to recognize their speciality, the full time religious education ministers insisted that a "one track" ministry would undermine their distinctive profession. Some community ministers are concerned that a "one track" ministry will eventually mean that the only way to do ministry will be a minister in a congregation. College, hospital and military chaplains will be forgotten, and social justice ministers working in a community organization will be dismissed as "social workers, not ministers."
I understand the concern, but now that at least 250 ministers who are not serving a particular congregation....some are college teachers, some are UUA officials, some are institutional chaplains, some are doing arts ministries, some are doing justice ministries, and many other ways and given the fact that more than 200 ministers who are not settled solo ministers or senior ministers but rather assistant ministers, specialized associate ministers, religious education ministers, part time ministers, or interim ministers, and the fact that we have large numbers of ministers who are retired, or taking a leave for child care, the "norm" of the settled parish minister is actually a minority along with a diverse array of other minorities. No one way of being minister in the UUA in now a majority of our ministers. Thus I don't think we will go back to the old days when "minister equaled parish minister," but rather we will continue to evolve a more diverse ministry with many different ways of doing ministry.
Should the MFC be in the business of recognizing specialization? I don't think so, I think the specialists should recognize specialization. That is not the role of "denomination." Rather it should be left such organizations as the Association of Pastoral Counselors, and the Association of Professional Chaplains. But what about smaller, less established specializations? I think the Unitarian Universalist Ministers Association could provide a supportive institutional framework for groups of ministers who have developed advanced skills to have those skills recognized and certified by other ministers who have developed similar skills. Let the MFC certify "ministers in fellowship with the UUA." Let specialists certify specialists.
I celebrate the MFC ceasing to award fellowship in categories, I think it allow our ministry to meet the challenges of the future in creative ways.
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