My friend Ben wrote an article about the conference I went to way back in May and it is up on the umc.org website here.

I have a handful of friends in seminary to become pastors in the United Methodist Church, and a large amount of people I know who have thought about seminary and going into parish ministry, but the process is antiquated and doesn't seem to help those who are pursuing a calling.

A huge part of why I'm not in seminary right now is that the candidacy process isn't terribly appealing to me at the moment. For someone who at least for a time feels called to youth ministry, I feel like I am serving better in my current capacity than I would be if I ran off to seminary and ended up doing youth ministry and trying to be an associate pastor at the same time.

So many young clergy are forced into doing things that they aren't passionate about, and this is after they've been completely torn to shreds by the Board of Ordained Ministry. I was taught early on that if I wanted to go into ministry to work on becoming friends with people on the Board of Ordained Ministry. It is almost a good ole boys concept still which really really irritates me.

There are reasons that I will have to jump through hoops one day. Pastors in the UM tradition are basically guaranteed a job once they get out of the probationary period (don't get me started on how I think the word "probationary" is bad).

In any case... Ben did an awesome job of summing up the event, so go check it out.... Coming up next here, probably tomorrow... a discourse on why I hate the term "singles ministry" and why I am frustrated with the thought of it.

This entry was posted on Monday, September 17, 2007 at 7:19 PM. You can skip to the end and leave a response.