Survey Results: General Conference and Ordination

A couple of weeks ago, I posted a short survey asking people to prognosticate the future of the candidacy process within the United Methodist Church. Eleven responses were received - which is not as many as I had hoped - but I thank all who took the two seconds to vote.

The result was rather pessimistic in outlook:

• 1 vote for "do nothing"
• 6 votes for "refer to another study commission"
• 4 votes for "shorten the process"

I say this is a pessimistic result because I think referral to another study commission is the same thing as doing nothing. The net effect of delay until 2012 General Conference to enact legislative changes is doing nothing. And I think that's a sad outcome. From reading both the current study commission's report and the history of the decades of previous ministry studies, I am convinced that we need to do something now!

My own journey through the candidacy process is now six years and counting. While I am expectant of being approved for full elder membership in the conference next year, there are no guarantees. Seven years is an awfully long time, and there have been significant ups and downs through this process.

Eric Van Meter wrote a column for the United Methodist Reporter a couple of weeks ago. Actually, it was the latest installment of a series of occasional commentaries he's writing for them. In the columns, he imagines himself talking to a marriage counselor about his relationship with the church. Here's what he had to say about his experience with the candidacy process:

[S]o much of [the Board of Ordained Ministry's] encouragement seemed geared toward making me into someone I could not ever be, even if I wanted to (which I didn’t). I had not been nurtured in the United Methodist womb like many of them. I did not have emotional ties to structures or traditions or distinctive elements of polity or personality. All I had was the depth of my own experience with God and his people, which had been inextricably tied to the close-in relationships of a community that identified with the UMC. At the BOOM retreat, I began to understand that those relationships were not the priority of my denomination. Rather, they wanted me to remain largely unencumbered by emotional networks, lest my ties to people in one place limit my ability to serve wherever the Conference deemed appropriate. If I needed close friends and allies, I should look to my clergy peers. They were the ones who understood what ministry was really like, who could help me find the competence I needed to aspire to higher appointments.

“I just wanted the freedom to be myself,” I say. “I wanted to be the best me God could make, not the best imitation I could muster of someone else.”

Eric captures an emotion that I have felt several times: frustration that this process is often more about molding me to fit the system than a true mutual examination of my God-given gifts and graces for being in ministry.

As General Conference concludes this week, we will find out what will be done with the ordination process. And here's howI remain hopeful: God is bigger than any system; and God can both work the system and circumvent it when necessary to accomplish God's will. So I pray that I remain faithful to God's calling first, to serve faithfully where I am appointed second, and to work as a genuine participant in this struggle we call "holy conferencing" third.

Thanks again to all who participated in the poll