wfn.org | Entrance into pastoral ministry proposal passes committee, educator

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Note #6603 from PCUSA NEWS to PRESBYNEWS:

recommendations fail
11-June-2001
GA01045

Entrance into pastoral ministry proposal passes committee, educator
recommendations fail

by Alexa Smith

LOUISVILLE, June 11 – A report asking that seminaries and presbyteries
work more closely together to prepare pastors for the parish will be coming
to the floor of the General Assembly via the Committee on Church Orders and
Ministry.

	But the committee is recommending that the church, once again, delay voting
on whether to equalize minimum pay scales for certified Christian educators
and ministers or to give educators – at least the ones who are elders
- voice and vote on presbytery floors.

	"This is very disappointing," said Elaine Barnett of Tampa Bay Presbytery,
who left the meeting just after the 29-13 vote to hold the final report of
the Christian Educator Certification Council back another year.  "It happens
year after year.  We don't have any power ... and it is always a different
issue.

	"I can't decide whether it is a power issue between clergy and lay, or
whether it is a gender issue."

This year, the objection was two-fold.

	After hearing the Advisory Committee on the Constitution’s
representative, the Rev. Neal Lloyd of Rochester, Minn., Elder Shirley Huser
of  New Covenant Presbytery moved that the report be delayed until the 214th
General Assembly.
Lloyd said parts of the document will be incompatible with the section of
the Book of Order where it would be lodged if the Committee on Church Orders
and Ministry opts to affirm a proposed revision of the chapter.  The
revision would shorten the present Chapter XIV by deleting certification
criteria, material that the educators’ want inserted.

What’s more, Lloyd described the educators’ insistence upon
voting rights as counter to historic governance that only gives presbyteries
the right to control their membership.

The Rev. Ann Graham-Johnson of Eastminster Presbytery said that only about
one-fourth of the 550 certified Christian educators, and the 300 or so in
the certification process – still do not total more than one
elder-educator per presbytery.

The vote was reflective of an earlier decision not to standardize exams in
the training of commissioned lay pastors as proposed by Yellowstone
Presbytery (overture 01-7) – a recommendation also offered by the ACC.
 The Rev. David Dobler, a former General Assembly moderator and the current
executive Yukon Presbytery, said presbytery contexts differ too widely to
standardize; in his own, for instance, there is wide disparity in language
and in literacy.

The committee unanimously voted to commend a General Assembly Council (GAC)
project that is currently under way that is proposing models for training
and commissioning church leaders.

In contrast to the educator proposal, the final report of the Work Group on
Entrance into Pastoral Ministry was approved virtually intact.
Authorized by the GAC in 1998, the group was asked to address how the church
might offer better educational resources in the first years of ministry, the
timing and nature of ordination exams, how seminaries and presbytery
committees might work together better and whether to consider a period of
licensure for seminary grads before entering unsupervised ministry.

Phil Gehman, a Columbia Theological Seminary dean and the work group’s
spokesperson, told the committee that licensure offers no more guarantees of
improving ministry than the present system does.  The report commends
built-in supports, such as:

* recruiting those who show high promise for ministry;

* developing material that helps Committees on Ministry, sessions and
congregations enter into a first call with help in identifying common
troubles;

* passing final assessments, that identify specific concerns, from
presbyteries of care onto presbyteries of call;

* ensuring that first-time pastors get supervised parish experience; 

* convening a major consultation between seminaries and presbytery  
representatives to find ways to assist each other in complicated matters,
such as discerning a candidates’ suitability for ministry.

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