The candidacy and assignment process

My last pastors' roundtable discussion is today, and I asked my dear pastors to share their wisdom on the assignment process, interviewing for pastoral calls, and so forth. So it's on my mind, and I know many folks don't know much about the process that leads from "Maybe God is calling me to ministry" to ordination or consecration.

Warning to the unsuspecting: This ended up crazy long. If you're already familiar with the candidacy steps I've encountered along the way, you may want to skip down about halfway (after the bullets) for a discussion of the assignment process. Be sure to check out this blog post by Bishop Mike Rinehart of the Gulf Coast Synod describing the experience of assigning candidates.

Candidacy is the process established by the ELCA to prepare and approve new pastors, associates in ministry, diaconal ministers, and deaconesses. Pastors are ordained ministers of Word and Sacrament, while the others are ministers of Word and Service, who are consecrated rather than ordained. Candidacy involves the candidate, his or her home congregation, the home synod candidacy committee, and seminary faculty. There are three steps:

• Entrance involves an application, essay, congregational registration, background check, psychological screening, individual interview, and panel interview with the home synod candidacy committee. The essay includes background information about the candidate and his or her family, faith life, and understanding of the ministry to which he or she feels called. This step happens before a candidate starts studies at seminary.
  
  
• Endorsement involves an essay and panel interview with members of the home synod candidacy committee and the candidate's faculty advisor. The essay is about the candidate's understanding of the church's confession and his or her own faith, the candidate's sense of vocation and assessment of his or her own gifts for ministry, and the candidate's understanding of the church's mission and his or her role in it. This takes place before a candidate serves an internship.
  
  
• Approval is the final step. It involves another essay. This year's questions focus on the church's situation in the midst of a changing culture, and one of the questions calls for a sermon (or Bible study for candidates who will be non-ordained leaders). If I understand correctly, there is an interview with faculty members of the seminary, who make a recommendation to the home synod candidacy committee. Then there is another interview with the candidacy committee, who make a final decision. A positive approval decision is necessary in order for a candidate to be assigned to serve in the ELCA.

Once a candidate is approved, he or she can then be assigned. The assignment process overlaps with the candidacy process in the final year of seminary study. Like so many things in life, it entails the completion of many forms. Most of us do not take great delight in filling out forms but, of course, they are a necessary means by which we attempt to communicate to the church something of ourselves and what our ministry is about. At this point, we have a chance to restrict our availability to specific geographic areas, or to submit preferences while remaining open to a call outside those preferences.

For spring graduates, the paperwork is submitted by December 1 and the assignment meeting takes place in February. Synod bishops, regional coordinators, churchwide staff, and seminary representatives gather to divvy up all the available candidates among the regions, and then among the synods, of the ELCA. Bishop Mike Rinehart of the Gulf Coast Synod wrote a great blog post describing this meeting. Check it out here.

Soon after this meeting (late February), candidates learn which region they'll be serving. I can't speak to other seminaries, but at Luther, everyone gets their envelopes together on "draft night," with attendant festivities abounding. Within a couple weeks (early March), each candidate gets a phone call from the bishop of the synod to which they've been assigned.

From that point, candidates work with the synod staff to discern which congregations in that synod have positions available and might be a good fit for each candidate. The synod sends the candidate's paperwork to congregations that have potential as good matches, and each congregation decides whether or not to interview the candidate. After each interview, the congregation can choose whether or not to extend a call, and the candidate can accept or decline any call that is offered.

So our process is more open that a strict assignment (as in, you go to the specific congregation to which the church sends you), but more structured than the typical process of finding a job after graduation (as in, you search for, pursue, and secure a job totally on your own). Subsequent calls are more flexible.

Like any other system, it's by no means perfect, but we all know the Holy Spirit is perfectly capable of working even through imperfect. So we simply hope for God to lead us to a place where we can serve faithfully and joyfully in ways that suit our new context, and we trust that everyone involved in the process is praying for the same.