Ordained ministry is been overprofessionalized. When you expect people (without ever coming out and saying it) to live in genteel poverty for their first ten or fifteen years, and when most new ministers take out huge loans and have children to support, well, it just isn’t right.

Add to that the “entrepreneurial” bit, as Scott Wells recently put it. It’s good for prospective clergy to show initiative, but it’s even better for the church system to show deep care for them throughout the process. I was stunned myself by the contrast in caring attention I got between my “called into the ministry” phase and the actual ordination process. It was as though the ordination process was wholly outside the church, wholly secular. It seemed wholly a matter of jumping hoops and reading the politics of the folks on your committee.

Perhaps this is what I mean by the ordination process being overprofessionalized: it feels little different than becoming a social worker, or a lawyer, or a doctor. That’s not a good thing. We should draw what we can from the professions, but we must remember that the clergy ain’t one. Because ministerial office is something that communities of faith (and not “the public”) entrust in certain of their members—a trust to embody and lead them in their deepest held values—it cheapens ordained ministry to make it no more or no less than the professions.

I’m going to insist that we play “by their fruits we know them” here.

1. We expect a graduate professional degree very similar in structure to an MD, JD, MBA, or MSW.
2. We expect a credentialing process very similar in structure to medicine, law, counseling and social work.
3. We do not “shepherd” ministerial candidates through this process in a way that comes close to embodying our deepest held values (what Scott Wells calls “entrepreneurial” expectations).
4. We then supply a dozen years of genteel poverty as their reward.

We expect professional level education and credentialling, but then treat successful candidates about as well as someone with an associates degree. Which is it? Are they professionals, to be paid as such, or are they not?

The education-credentialing process itself can do little to ensure that the candidates who make it through have the “gifts and graces” (as the Methodists put it) for ordained ministry. What the process does ensure is that successful candidates are those who can write a good term paper and say the right things in front of ordination committees. That folks manage to make it through who do have the gifts and graces is a sign of divine providence amidst our foolishness. Any ordained minister can name names of folks who made it through who have no business leading a congregation.

I propose a new model for ministerial formation. I propose that we set up several regional centers for ministerial formation, most of them not on a university campus. Places like The Mountain would be good, as well as some urban centers. An ideal location would offer several ministry sites within, say, an hour-and-a-half’s transportation. In locations like The Mountain where there are not enough congregations in reach, the initial ministry project would be to start those congregations (an entrepreneurial skill ministers actually need).

All ministry students would be completely funded during the twenty-four month, year-round process: if the church will not fund ministerial formation, it does not deserve to have ministers. This funding would include enough money for families to relocate to on campus during the entire process.

Students, in turn, would carry many responsibility for the day-to-day running of the formation center, including maintenance and upkeep, meal provision, etc. In addition, students would be expected to lead the formation center’s work in community outreach and social justice work. Many staff needs of the formation center’s adminstration could be filled by students and their families.

The educational requirements would center around short intensive courses, which would then be related directly to the students’ social justice and congregational projects. Coursework would be roughly comparable to two or so semesters of graduate work, although I wouldn’t require any more than an associates degree to begin. This coursework would include the more academic components of the current MDiv (history, sacred literature, etc.) and would occur in short bursts (perhaps summer and post-Christmas winter, when things are generally slower church-wise).

Intense practicums in the so-called “practical theologies”—community organizing, family systems theory, preaching, worship, spiritual direction, fund raising, and so forth—would dot the two-year process. They would be team taught, and students would be required to relate them to their community and congregational work.

Students would be expected to learn several spiritual practices well enough to teach them to others. Most electives would fall into this arena. They could be as varied as Zen meditation, nonviolent protest, centering prayer, labyrinth walking, and lectio divina. Students would be required to meet regularly with a spiritual advisor and a spiritual support group.

In fact, most of the work of the formation center would occur in overlapping small groups. Each group would be led by small teams of faculty-practitioners. These small groups would likely be the locus for most of the students’ community and congregatinal work. Practicums could consist of two or three small groups together, to allow the student groups to compare and contrast their own work with that of other groups.

Apart from the academic courses, student evaluation would largely take the form of project evaluation, done in a 360-degree fashion by individual students, the student group itself, the groups’ faculty-practitioner leaders, and members of the concerned communities and/or congregations. Evaluation of faculty-practitioner performance would be similar.

Ministers on sabbatical could relocate to a nearby formation center for refresher courses. Any graduate could apply for an additional year of specialized training. Students and faculty-practitioners alike could offer courses (or open their courses) to the larger community.

Benefits of the formation center model:

1. The process would actually form persons for ministry.
2. The formation center, through its central community outreach and social justice work, would form and model deep connections with its surrounding community.
3. The formation center, through its central congregational work, would actually serve the faith community it trains minister for, instead of the needs of tenure committees and academic departments.
4. Students would at least not be adding the problem of student loan debt to the genteel poverty they’d face in their first years of ordained ministry.
5. Faculty-practitioners would be deeply aware and involved in the actual situations of communities and congregations.
6. Denominational bodies could drop much of the red tape because they’d be assured that students who complete the process would be qualified.

This is a large change, to be sure. But the existing seminary system would not necessarily need to be replaced wholesale. A half dozen, say, of these formation centers could be set up in competition with the existing seminary system. If they succeeded, they would grow and become more numerous. In time, the best model would win.