I'm happy to let you know that I've put another major step behind me in this journey to first call. My husband and I flew out to Denver for our approval interviews this past weekend. If you recall, approval is the final step of the candidacy process which began way back before we entered seminary. Last summer, after we had finished internship, we wrote our approval essay. Then in the fall, we had interviews with the faculty, who made a recommendation that we should be approved for ordination. Finally, we met with the candidacy committee for the approval interview. At the end of all that, the committee made a final decision to approve us for ordination!
Now we really move from the candidacy process into the assignment process. We join the group of seminarians who are approved for ordination and are now awaiting assignment and first call. In essence, we are the pool of candidates from which the bishops will draw for their first call pastors. As I've described in my earlier posts about the assignment process, we have submitted our paperwork, including our preferences, but we don't yet have any information about where we will be going.
We find out our regional assignment (remember this map?) on February 22. Sometime after that, we will be assigned to a synod within that region. Then we can start working with the bishop of that synod and her or his staff to look at congregational profiles. Interviews with congregations should follow, and after a congregation extends a letter of call, the ordination can be scheduled. How long that process will take depends on a lot of factors, including the availability of first calls and the pace at which the congregation chooses to move.
As always, stay tuned for further updates about the first call process!
Showing posts with label first call. Show all posts
Showing posts with label first call. Show all posts
Tuesday, January 17, 2012
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
Assignment for First Call: Piles of Paperwork
I'm continuing my blog series on the first call assignment process. Check out the earlier posts if you haven't already:
Part One: Approval
Part Two: Introduction to Assignment
Now, on to part three. Tonight, we had an informational meeting with two important folks: the seminary representative who goes to the assignment summit in Chicago (in the case of Gettysburg Seminary, he's also our director of field education and one of the New Testament professors), and the Region 8 coordinator. Remember in Part Two, we talked about the nine regions of the ELCA? Each region has a region coordinator, and those coordinators also go to the assignment meeting.
Our theme in the meeting tonight, and my theme in this post, is the piles of paperwork that go into this process. Are you ready? It should be loads of fun.
If you want to find out more than you ever wanted to know about assignment, you can check out the ELCA website dedicated to the subject. That's sort of our home page for this process. You'll see it has practical information, theological foundation, checklist, schedule... and the forms. The many, many forms.
Piles of Paperwork: So What Are All These Forms?
The candidate (that would be me) fills out three major forms: A, B, and RLP. (If the candidate is restricting herself or himself to a certain area -- as I described in Part Two -- there's one additional form, Form R.)
Form A: Basic information. Name, contact information, home synod, home congregation, education and work history, etc.
Form B: Candidate preference summary. This is the place to state regional preferences (see Part Two), as well as preferences for the setting where you would prefer to be called -- for example, rural or urban, solo pastor or member of a large church staff. It also has a (surprisingly small) box to describe your sense of call and your gifts. This is the primary way the bishops will get a sense of what ministry setting you are suited for.
Form R: I won't say much about this one; I'm not planning to restrict, so I won't be filling out Form R. This form is only for first call candidates who are requesting a restriction to a certain synod or area. (Note that it's a request; the request has to be approved by the bishops of the region to which the candidate wants to restrict.)
Form RLP: Assuming you have gotten the attention of a bishop in Form B, that bishop may choose to look at your Rostered Leader Profile. While Forms A and B are just a page each, the RLP is a massive 16 pages. Obviously, with 200-ish candidates going through this process at the same time, the bishops are not going to read every one of their RLPs. So this form functions to elaborate on what was written in Form B, for those bishops who want additional information. Like Form B, it includes regional preferences, preferences for setting (say, small town) and ministry (say, youth ministry or Christian education). However, it has more space to provide input, and it includes larger sections on your strengths and gifts, education and work history, etc.
The Rostered Leader Profile will continue to be important after assignment, because it's also the form that congregational call committees will look at when you're beginning to interview for first call. It functions as your resumé for congregations to look at -- but it also includes your vision for the kind of ministry to which you think you would be suited.
We're not done yet! There are two more forms which matter for assignment, but are written by other people.
Form D: Form D is the summary of what the candidate did in seminary. On the left-hand side of the single page are the summaries written at the end of internship. The internship supervisor and the internship committee, as well as the intern herself or himself, each write a single paragraph that summarizes and evaluates the internship experience. On the right-hand side of Form D, the seminary faculty gives their evaluation of your abilities and preparedness for ministry.
Form E: This is the candidacy committee's equivalent of Form D. Since the candidacy committee makes the final decision to approve the candidate for ordination, this form is the document that contains the official recommendation for ordination. It also includes their own summary of the candidate.
(If you're as neurotic as I am, you may be wondering why there's no Form C. I think that form is filled out by congregations who are seeking a pastor, but I'm not sure exactly what it entails.)
Part One: Approval
Part Two: Introduction to Assignment
Now, on to part three. Tonight, we had an informational meeting with two important folks: the seminary representative who goes to the assignment summit in Chicago (in the case of Gettysburg Seminary, he's also our director of field education and one of the New Testament professors), and the Region 8 coordinator. Remember in Part Two, we talked about the nine regions of the ELCA? Each region has a region coordinator, and those coordinators also go to the assignment meeting.
Our theme in the meeting tonight, and my theme in this post, is the piles of paperwork that go into this process. Are you ready? It should be loads of fun.
If you want to find out more than you ever wanted to know about assignment, you can check out the ELCA website dedicated to the subject. That's sort of our home page for this process. You'll see it has practical information, theological foundation, checklist, schedule... and the forms. The many, many forms.
Piles of Paperwork: So What Are All These Forms?
The candidate (that would be me) fills out three major forms: A, B, and RLP. (If the candidate is restricting herself or himself to a certain area -- as I described in Part Two -- there's one additional form, Form R.)
Form A: Basic information. Name, contact information, home synod, home congregation, education and work history, etc.
Form B: Candidate preference summary. This is the place to state regional preferences (see Part Two), as well as preferences for the setting where you would prefer to be called -- for example, rural or urban, solo pastor or member of a large church staff. It also has a (surprisingly small) box to describe your sense of call and your gifts. This is the primary way the bishops will get a sense of what ministry setting you are suited for.
Form R: I won't say much about this one; I'm not planning to restrict, so I won't be filling out Form R. This form is only for first call candidates who are requesting a restriction to a certain synod or area. (Note that it's a request; the request has to be approved by the bishops of the region to which the candidate wants to restrict.)
Form RLP: Assuming you have gotten the attention of a bishop in Form B, that bishop may choose to look at your Rostered Leader Profile. While Forms A and B are just a page each, the RLP is a massive 16 pages. Obviously, with 200-ish candidates going through this process at the same time, the bishops are not going to read every one of their RLPs. So this form functions to elaborate on what was written in Form B, for those bishops who want additional information. Like Form B, it includes regional preferences, preferences for setting (say, small town) and ministry (say, youth ministry or Christian education). However, it has more space to provide input, and it includes larger sections on your strengths and gifts, education and work history, etc.
The Rostered Leader Profile will continue to be important after assignment, because it's also the form that congregational call committees will look at when you're beginning to interview for first call. It functions as your resumé for congregations to look at -- but it also includes your vision for the kind of ministry to which you think you would be suited.
We're not done yet! There are two more forms which matter for assignment, but are written by other people.
Form D: Form D is the summary of what the candidate did in seminary. On the left-hand side of the single page are the summaries written at the end of internship. The internship supervisor and the internship committee, as well as the intern herself or himself, each write a single paragraph that summarizes and evaluates the internship experience. On the right-hand side of Form D, the seminary faculty gives their evaluation of your abilities and preparedness for ministry.
Form E: This is the candidacy committee's equivalent of Form D. Since the candidacy committee makes the final decision to approve the candidate for ordination, this form is the document that contains the official recommendation for ordination. It also includes their own summary of the candidate.
(If you're as neurotic as I am, you may be wondering why there's no Form C. I think that form is filled out by congregations who are seeking a pastor, but I'm not sure exactly what it entails.)
Monday, August 29, 2011
First Call: What's this Whole Assignment Process, Anyway?
Part Two of my ongoing series about getting ready for first call. Check out Part One to read about the approval essay.
If you're a seminarian getting ready for assignment, you've probably found yourself explaining the process to friends, family members, parishioners from your internship site... the list goes on. If you're a friend, family member, etc. of a seminarian, you're probably interested in what a senior in seminary goes through. Assignment is complicated, and it can be confusing. I'll do my best to give an outline of how the process works.
Assignment for First Call: "So, you could go anywhere?"
Unlike nearly any other job (although the military seems similar, from what I understand), graduating ELCA seminarians going into their first call go through an assignment process. This is a mixed blessing. On the one hand, you're not expected to go out and find yourself a job, like most people have to when they get out of school. Instead, you are (ideally) matched with a congregation that needs your gifts and abilities. On the other hand, you don't have a lot of control over where you end up -- that decision is in the hands of the church, specifically the bishops. I'll be honest and say that it can be stressful to let go of that control.
So, how does the process work? In later posts, I'll write about the nuts and bolts, the paperwork seminarians have to fill out before they are assigned, the stages along the way. In this post, I want to lay out the broad outline of this nearly year-long process, as well as explain the geographical regions of the ELCA.
Every year, there are a group of graduating seminarians from the eight ELCA seminaries. And, throughout the church, there are congregations in need of pastors. Not all of these congregations are good contexts for first call pastors; their bishops help to decide which congregations will be open to being a first call site. The goal of assignment is to match up these soon-to-be-pastors with calls that are a good fit for their gifts and abilities. However, the church does not assign graduating seminarians directly to congregations (although it used to work that way, at least in some of the Lutheran denominations that preceded the ELCA). Instead, seminarians are assigned to a region and then a synod, and that's the process we call "Assignment".
Assignment for First Call: Regions? Synods?
A friend of mine, and spouse of a now-graduated seminarian, made a fantastic resource for anyone trying to understand the assignment process: a map of the regions of the ELCA. As you can see, the ELCA is divided into nine geographic regions. Each of these regions is broken into synods. (The size of the synods was determined by population of Lutherans, not land area. That's why you can have one synod - the Rocky Mountain Synod - that encompasses New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, and the panhandle of Texas, while the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul rate two synods.) Seminarians are assigned first to one of these regions, then to a synod within that region.
So, as a seminarian, do you have any control over where you're assigned? In a limited sense, yes. Loosely speaking, there are two ways a seminarian can influence their assignment: restriction and preference. If a seminarian has a restriction, that means he or she can only accept a call in a certain area due to extenuating circumstances. For example, he might have young kids in school and a spouse with a job who can't move; or she might have an aging parent for whom she provides care. In these cases, the seminarian fills out additional paperwork explaining their restriction (e.g. within fifty miles of a certain city) and their reason. These restrictions are taken seriously by the church, but they can mean that a seminarian has to wait much longer for a call.
Even if a seminarian doesn't have a pressing reason to restrict, he or she can still state preferences for where he or she would like to be assigned. For example, you could state a preference for Region 2 first, then Region 6, and then Region 3 (three regions is the most you can preference). Preferences are no guarantee for where you'll end up, but they are taken into consideration at the regional assignment meeting.
Assignment for First Call: The Draft Pick
Every year, the bishops in each region come together and decide how many first call spots they have available. At the same time, they receive loads of paperwork (more on that in Part Three) from the graduating seminarians who have been approved for ordination. This gives them an idea of who will be available at assignment. It also allows them to see the preferences or restrictions the seminarians have stated.
In February (for seminarians who will be graduating in the spring), these bishops gather in Chicago, along with representatives from each of the seminaries. Seminarians humorously refer to this meeting as "the draft pick". To understand how it works, I recommend reading this post from a bishop who's been there. In short, the seminarians are doled out to each of the regions based on their preferences, the first call sites available, and the matches bishops have in mind. Again, bishops don't assign a first call pastor directly to a congregation - "You, go to this church" - but they often have contexts in mind that would be a good fit for a particular seminarian. Also, a bishop can't request more first call pastors than they have calls for. In theory, that helps to ensure that graduating seminarians aren't sitting around for months waiting for a church. The system is imperfect, but it's set up to be as effective as possible both for congregations and seminarians.
Well, that's about as brief as a summary could be. This is the process my classmates and I will be going through this year. There are plenty of details - and probably plenty of anxiety - to describe over the next few months. Check back here to find out more.
If you're a seminarian getting ready for assignment, you've probably found yourself explaining the process to friends, family members, parishioners from your internship site... the list goes on. If you're a friend, family member, etc. of a seminarian, you're probably interested in what a senior in seminary goes through. Assignment is complicated, and it can be confusing. I'll do my best to give an outline of how the process works.
Assignment for First Call: "So, you could go anywhere?"
Unlike nearly any other job (although the military seems similar, from what I understand), graduating ELCA seminarians going into their first call go through an assignment process. This is a mixed blessing. On the one hand, you're not expected to go out and find yourself a job, like most people have to when they get out of school. Instead, you are (ideally) matched with a congregation that needs your gifts and abilities. On the other hand, you don't have a lot of control over where you end up -- that decision is in the hands of the church, specifically the bishops. I'll be honest and say that it can be stressful to let go of that control.
So, how does the process work? In later posts, I'll write about the nuts and bolts, the paperwork seminarians have to fill out before they are assigned, the stages along the way. In this post, I want to lay out the broad outline of this nearly year-long process, as well as explain the geographical regions of the ELCA.
Every year, there are a group of graduating seminarians from the eight ELCA seminaries. And, throughout the church, there are congregations in need of pastors. Not all of these congregations are good contexts for first call pastors; their bishops help to decide which congregations will be open to being a first call site. The goal of assignment is to match up these soon-to-be-pastors with calls that are a good fit for their gifts and abilities. However, the church does not assign graduating seminarians directly to congregations (although it used to work that way, at least in some of the Lutheran denominations that preceded the ELCA). Instead, seminarians are assigned to a region and then a synod, and that's the process we call "Assignment".
Assignment for First Call: Regions? Synods?
A friend of mine, and spouse of a now-graduated seminarian, made a fantastic resource for anyone trying to understand the assignment process: a map of the regions of the ELCA. As you can see, the ELCA is divided into nine geographic regions. Each of these regions is broken into synods. (The size of the synods was determined by population of Lutherans, not land area. That's why you can have one synod - the Rocky Mountain Synod - that encompasses New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, and the panhandle of Texas, while the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul rate two synods.) Seminarians are assigned first to one of these regions, then to a synod within that region.
So, as a seminarian, do you have any control over where you're assigned? In a limited sense, yes. Loosely speaking, there are two ways a seminarian can influence their assignment: restriction and preference. If a seminarian has a restriction, that means he or she can only accept a call in a certain area due to extenuating circumstances. For example, he might have young kids in school and a spouse with a job who can't move; or she might have an aging parent for whom she provides care. In these cases, the seminarian fills out additional paperwork explaining their restriction (e.g. within fifty miles of a certain city) and their reason. These restrictions are taken seriously by the church, but they can mean that a seminarian has to wait much longer for a call.
Even if a seminarian doesn't have a pressing reason to restrict, he or she can still state preferences for where he or she would like to be assigned. For example, you could state a preference for Region 2 first, then Region 6, and then Region 3 (three regions is the most you can preference). Preferences are no guarantee for where you'll end up, but they are taken into consideration at the regional assignment meeting.
Assignment for First Call: The Draft Pick
Every year, the bishops in each region come together and decide how many first call spots they have available. At the same time, they receive loads of paperwork (more on that in Part Three) from the graduating seminarians who have been approved for ordination. This gives them an idea of who will be available at assignment. It also allows them to see the preferences or restrictions the seminarians have stated.
In February (for seminarians who will be graduating in the spring), these bishops gather in Chicago, along with representatives from each of the seminaries. Seminarians humorously refer to this meeting as "the draft pick". To understand how it works, I recommend reading this post from a bishop who's been there. In short, the seminarians are doled out to each of the regions based on their preferences, the first call sites available, and the matches bishops have in mind. Again, bishops don't assign a first call pastor directly to a congregation - "You, go to this church" - but they often have contexts in mind that would be a good fit for a particular seminarian. Also, a bishop can't request more first call pastors than they have calls for. In theory, that helps to ensure that graduating seminarians aren't sitting around for months waiting for a church. The system is imperfect, but it's set up to be as effective as possible both for congregations and seminarians.
Well, that's about as brief as a summary could be. This is the process my classmates and I will be going through this year. There are plenty of details - and probably plenty of anxiety - to describe over the next few months. Check back here to find out more.
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