Hubby brought this New York Times article to my attention. Thought y’all’d be interested.
Students Flock to Seminaries, but Fewer See Pulpit in Future
Peregrinato muses ministerial formation
Jim Estes (Peregrinato) has begun writing about ministerial formation at his blog, which has otherwise been quiet for a time. Do read.
Pearlbear and many others
Michelle Murrain (Pearlbear) has received word from her United Church of Christ conference, meaning in so many words that “she’s leaving.” Not suggest even a hint of self-pity, accusation, or anger. It sounds like the right idea, and not too long ago, I thought about it, too. Goodness knows the slightly older UU Christian clergy know this story, and can recite a roll-call of those bright lights that sought better options with the UCC, Friends United Meeting, the Episcopal Church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, the United Methodist Church, and — I’m thinking of a white woman here, incidentally — the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church. This is just the first time the story’s come up in the blog era.
Her story: Leaving Unitarian Universalism
My favorite churchly site
We all know the Desert Island game — immortalized on the BBC with its Desert Island Disks show — where you are limited to x number of books or records for an indefinite amount of time.
Not quite in the spirit of the game (unless one had it cached on a solar-powered laptop) is the Desert Island website. I suppose it should be about making a coconut radio or something the Professor would do. But assuming I was the chaplain, say, on Lost, what would I want?
Easy-peasy. Give me Ken Collins’ Web Site. Not an inspiring name, but a fantastic resource as a training tool for lay pastors or seminarians, or a refresher and resource for the more seasoned. I’ve not written articles because I know Ken Collins — a Disciples of Christ minister in the DC ‘burbs with a good sense of what’s core Christianity — wrote it first.
He writes well, with humor, and is very practical. To see what I mean, start with “How to Lead a Lousy Worship Service”.
MFC questions blog
Nate Walker, an M.Div. (Union) and intern at White Plains, has started a new blog with past questions dreaded by ministerial fellowship candidates in their interview with the Ministerial Fellowship Committee. He’s posting a few a week and looking for comments and discussion.
Perhaps this would be a good time for those of us in fellowship who vowed that we would make sure it was different for those followed us to go and add some wisdom to the questions.
I rather pity the candidates, as the questions, in toto, reflect an academic form of TofUUism. That is, representing a religion that takes on the flavor of the (loudest) congregants and other religions, but has nothing to say for itself. (And the reason I think the “I’m not hyphenated, I’m just a Unitarian Universalist” crowd/majority is so full of bunk.)
PeaceBanging ministerial debt
PeaceBang wrote an indignant and largely correct comment to reply to an earlier comment in Philocrites’s posting, “A religion still seeking definition” (which itself pointed to something I wrote, thus coming full circle.)
In a nutshell, she says if you want ministers trained for advanced theological reflection and production, the common fellowship is going to have to pony up the funds to make this happen. Not to be a cynic, we know that’s not going to happen for any number of reasons including the petty jealousies of who get the funds and the ever present appeal of sexier projects.
But the problem, I believe, is much deeper. After all, I already got a pretty good theological education; why get another degree when the proof of theological reflection is in the doing? The problem is in the parish, with its various demands — some fair and others foul — that have little or nothing to do with deeper thought. One particular Christmas Day — grr — memory I have is slopping out the snowy slush from a backed up drain in a former pastorate.
While I’m not making great fancies of mental flight on this blog, the irony is that I read deeper works, pray more, and write as much as ever as when I was in the parish. That congregational polity provides few options for scholars to do their thing (and most of those are in the seminaries, which are hurting) is more fundamental a problem to a very scholarly ministry than what increased funding can fix.
Personal M.Div.
Now that I’ve gotten a new feed reader, I can scan through fresh RSS feeds even faster, and pick up some blogs that I had to drop from being overwhelmed. One of this second class is the ChangeThis newsletter, which points to new manifesto titles at ChangeThis.com. A manifesto is a prima facie argument and plan for why someone or some entity should change its behavior to X. Some are quite sensible and others wacky, but all have some merit. One — to substitute the incredibly expensive taught M.B.A. for a self-study (a web forum exists to facilitate) of foundational works on business — caught my attention. (Download it here.) Self-study under a mentor was the most education many (American, anyway) ministers could historically expect before the rise of the seminary system. And the money part: anyone who has worked the numbers around a seminary education knows that its effects on financial security are humbling, especially when coupled with the current opportunities for ordained clergy in the UUA. Or as I used to say, “if you’re going to go into the ministry, learn to cut hair first.” Or repair bikes or fix computer networks. Church or not, you’re going to have to eat.
Of course, others, chiefly Jordan Cooper, (also here) had already made the mental leap to the “personal M.Div.” and have already written about it. (I had dropped his feed, too.) For the most part, it has been a small bloggish ripple in the Internet. A development wiki has been created. [Site dead. Link to a snapshot at Archive.org] Some have pointed to “essential” reading lists (like this one) which is the kind of thing that makes other nervous about ruining the institution of the ministry, and that the whole idea of a “personal M.Div.” runs counter to common sense or good church practice. The whole notion smacks of self-gratification and ego.
Perhaps a generation of self-studied ministers would be a problem, but I hardly think seminaries are the solution either. Right now, Unitarian Universalists, for example, have a polity-for-congregations that effectively excludes congregations from all formation but the final act: ordination. (Yes, I know about sponsorship and how that can be worked.) The current formation process — mind, I “went through” before the regional committees, but I suspect the difference is in degree, not kind — depends on the seminarian’s “entrepreneurial” skills to find a school, find funding, and finding an internship. Followed then by finding an ordaining church and a settlement. If that isn’t a recipe for ego and eccentricity, what is? Churchly formation — when it occurs — comes from mature internship sites and by proxy from the seminaries themselves.
Sell the books back
Shawn Anthony — bless his heart — is having agita over the cost of seminary textbooks (“The Campus Bookstore Lament”) but a rather warm feeling towards his bound paper children. My advice: get over that feeling right now. Last night I was culling my groaning bookshelves, and it seems to be a task I do far too often. Some of the books have never been opened (by me), and many of the rest have been so long with me that I don’t recall when I read them. A significant portion of the later group I bought for seminary. My seminary career was 1993 to 1997, before email was common and the Internet acquired useful resources. Instead, I acquired books, many of which I got for research and these are many of the ones I don’t use. After all, I’ve got Google.
Not that I didn’t try to save money. Both as an undergrad and in seminary, I borrowed books from others and the library, including Congregational Library. (I still do.) I tried to sell books back, but I could get little money for them.
And not that I don’t buy a lot of Universalist books, but that’s only to make a library that can’t be found outside of Massachusetts or perhaps New York. (With the pull times being what they are, the Library of Congress doesn’t count.) I would rather do without all the paper, and I keep asking myself, “if Universalists were so danged revolutionary, why didn’t they invent the PDF file two hundred years ago.” Getting those books into electronic circulation is a long-term goal, stymied no doubt by my hand and wrist problems.
But the real problem was the warm advise of older ministers who associated (in so many words) the aquisition of a large library to mature ministerhood. All I’ve gotten out of that is backaches moving dozens of cartons of books around and student debt I’m still paying. Information overload, not information want, is the problem of our age. Since we don’t share Erasmus’s book and information market, why should we share his seminary-folk-wisdom about buying books first?
Choose your books — like your battles — carefully.
Red Ken's letter is a good example for younger ministers
At age thirty-six, perhaps there are others better equipped to offer advice to younger ministers, but they don’t blog.
Right now, read and bookmark the Mayor of London Ken Livingstone’s remarks following yesterday’s bombings. I’ve long liked him for having a keen interest in city transport, for his role local government, and for putting the screws to Thatcher when few would; Red Ken — I rather like the nickname even though it was coined perjoritively — is the kind of politician I wish we had a few of.
His words are stirring, but the reason you should read and bookmark them is because they are a good example of the kind of emergency letter or speech most minister will need to give at least once in their careers. Firm, caring, directive, and hopeful. With a recognizable structure, which is an aid to writing and listening when the stress is high. Just barely long enough to get the message out without being tedious.
Livingstone was being a good leader here, and good leaders need good models.
Hattip: Philocrites and others.
Options for ordination: UCC
Chuck Currie forwards without comment a news release about a proposal that will come to the United Church of Christ General Synod (Atlanta!) this summer.
Since the subject of alternative formation and fellowship has come up several times before, I can’t help but be interested. Now, I have to wonder if there is a difference here despite the historical ties between the UUA and the UCC. We have a rare ministerial glut. Perhaps the UCC doesn’t. There’s also a different, semi-Presbyterial mechanism for ordination.
But, like the UCC, we have an underused “equivalent to M.Div.” proviso standard. We also have a history, via Universalism, of licensed ministers, though the use has morphed in a couple of small ways in local areas.
There’s a link to the proposal at Churck Currie’s blog or the UCC press release.
But a line makes me consider the purpose of the proposed change: to open up the ministry more effectively to ethnic and cultural minorities.
Episcopal bishop (for the American churches in Europe) Pierre W. Whalon wrote an article (read to the end) about how that would work under their alternative ordination Canon 9 and another on the importance of recruitment to the ministry. Both are worth a read.