Ministerial Credentialing-What I Notice

What I notice in this discussion, in the several venues that it is taking place, heartens me about our faith.

Firstly, it's been a serious, creative discussion, as if this issue of ministerial credentialing matters deeply to the health of our faith and is therefore worth wrestling with.

Secondly, that there appears to be a consensus that all individual persons within the system are doing the best they can with that system. There's been no blaming, there have been plenty of kudos, and there's a lot of curiosity and hope.

Finally, there has been no suggestion that there is no need for the MFC, for credentialing in general. No one is advocating that we do for credentialing what we did in settlement, which is to open the system to several kinds of free choice. The longing is for us to do a better job of discernment in credentialing, not that there be no credentialing.

Some of this is to protect vulnerable churches with their volunteer search committees and boards, but I think another part is deeper; for all that some hesitate to call us a "denomination", that some are anti-clerical, that some are radical individualists, we all seem to want to be proud of the people who have the right to call themselves Unitarian Universalist Ministers.

And I think that that is a good thing.

Ministerial Education; Ideas from Clyde Grubbs

A guest Posting from my colleague Clyde Grubbs

The UUA has since the merger maintained a list of ministers in fellowship and the Board of Trustee's has appointed and exercised oversight over its Ministerial Fellowship Committee. The mandate of the MFC is maintain the list of ministers in fellowship. The UUA Board of Trustees jealously guards its fiduciary responsibility over ministerial fellowship. I recall when I was on the UUMA exec there were discussions with the MFC of the UUMA being involved in panels that would work with ministers seeking specialized ministries that would be recognized at Final Fellowship. The UUA BoT said no way, the UUA has sole responsibility for Fellowship. (No outsourcing.)

My observation of the UUA is that an attempt at fundamental change to the principle of a unitary MFC overseeing the whole process would meet massive institutional resistance. Such a proposal would need a broad and committed constituency to enact such a radical change. Since, I do not see that constituency, I think that it safe to assume the MFC will survive as long as the corporate UUA survives.

I think the discussion has indicated that present process is dysfunctional (works with pain) and not user friendly (seeks objectives unrelated to the perceived needs of the students.)

We could compare our credentialing system to other professions, and conclude that ours is just as terrible as others, but that does not help us seek some possible reforms that might make the credentialing process work a little better and with a little less pain.

1. First, our present system is trying to do too much with too little funds. So proposals must be redistributive, take money from somewhere and put it somewhere else. We can't add on to the present system, without cuts.

1. When the Regional SubCommittee(s) on Candidacy was proposed in the early 1990s it was supposed to function as a UU version of an in care system. The advocates talked of retreats and getting to know the students and finding ways to discern who should continue and who should not. By the time the RSCs were actually instituted in the late 1990s the vision had been watered down to a way to discourage unlikely aspirants to the ministry before they acquired to much debt. The RSCs have failed even this more modest goal.

2.

3. We must conclude that the RSCs have devolved to just another hoop for students to jump over, granting candidate status based on an interview and paper work. They function simply to prescreen aspirants and while that function takes some burden from the MFC it does not change the quality of the ministerial formation process at all. Students are screened rather than nurtured and formed. Like child abuse victims many survivors enter our ministry resentful and regard the good people who serve on the RSCs and MFC as "strangers," "people with their own agendas" and other language indicating alienation rather feeling collegially embraced. For me, the Unitarian Universalist Ministry belongs the community of Unitarian Universalists and we together serve that community. Our process of credentialing must be part of a process of formation for full participation in that Unitarian Universalist Ministry.

4. Based on the above, I propose we seriously think of phasing out the RSCs and instead building an in - care system for formation, discernment and support closer to the students. I pray for a in care team made up of ministers in final fellowship and experienced lay folk who would work with a aspirant through the candidacy process and to the point of appointment with the MFC. The MFC would extend candidate status when the local in care team recommend that the aspirant has the potential to pursue fellowship. The student would make an appointment with the MFC when the local in care team recommends that they are ready to see the MFC. Since these local structures would not need funds for travel, hotel and what not they would free up funds for program costs. (Things we require students to do like CPE and Career Evaluation should be paid for.) The MFC could also meet more often or be expanded so it could meet with students on a timely basis. Long waits are cruel.

4. I am convinced that theologians need supervised clinical practice and reflection on that practice. But we do need to find ways to help pay for the cost of taking Clinical Pastoral Education.

5. I think theological education must evolve away from expensive residency programs toward on line and week long intensives. This would mean students would be less concentrated in Boston, San Francisco Bay, Chicago etc. and could continue deep relationship with congregations. It would mean in care and formation would be shared by a larger cadre of ministers in the vicinity.

6. The above wouldn't work for everyone. Lots of folks go off to theological school to discover themselves and end up in our ministry and would find the long time nurture and more intimate locality of an in care system an imposition. They would long for the day when becoming a UU minister was just a series of hoop jumping exercises. But one can't please everyone.

Cookies for My Readers

Christmas in the Robinson-Baker household is not complete without these cookies. I made them early so my son could take them back to college with him. Ah, the sweet smells of Christmas...

I share this easy but very distinctive recipe for beautiful cookies about which people will say, when you take them year after year to holiday events, "Oh, those are so good...I remember them from last year!"

Sepculating on Ministerial Formation

These are the thoughts of my colleague Steve Edington of Nashua, NH

Say we take a population of 100 individuals who have prepared for the UU ministry and have all met the following criteria at approximately the same time:

*Have an MDiv or equivalent degree

*Have completed the requisite CPE requirement for Fellowship

*Have done an internship and received a favorable evaluation from their supervisor

*Have taken the required psychological evaluations and been declared sane enough, and emotionally fit, for the UU ministry

*Have completed any of the other requirements for Fellowship that I've overlooked, short of the MFC interview

We divide this population into Groups A and B with 50 in each group. Those in Group A each go before the MFC and those who get good numbers go into the search process as per usual. Those in Group B bypass the MFC and go straight into the search process. Enough persons in each group (say, at least 30) get settlements in parish or community ministries and launch into their ministerial careers.

Now, (for you who are still with me) those conducting this experiment devise a set of criteria for measuring a successful ministry, which I will not spin out here. We track the ministers in each group for, let's say, ten years to see how they measure up to the "successful ministry" criteria; and at the end of those ten years we see how many successful ministers/ministries we have from Groups A and B.

And the question is (if you haven't guessed it already): Do you think there would be an appreciable difference in the successful ministers in Groups A and B?

My answer, based as I'll admit, on sheer personal speculation, is No. This does not mean I'm opposed to any kind of a credentialing process, only that I have some serious reservations about how well the one we now have in place is serving our ministry, and by extension, our liberal religious movement.

Final caveat: Nothing contained in this post is in any way meant disparage, diminish, or demean the fine, competent, and dedicated individuals who serve, or have served, on the MFC. I'm only asking if there's a better way. Got some thoughts on that too but this has gone on too long as it is.

The cost of credentialing "mistakes"

My colleague Dan Hotchkiss writes this very interesting comment to an earlier post, which I thought I'd bring up to the front page:

Your suggestion of waiting till a candidate has three years of ministry service before evaluating fitness is an interesting one. My experience as UUA settlement (now transitions) director, 1990-97, was that the search committees not only gave more time and attention to candidates, but also were the only part of the system that consistently had the spine to say no. The seminaries had a financial incentive to say yes; the MFC caught flak whenever they said no, and so did I. My impression is that the MFC says no a little more often than it did then, but that the Department has relinquished the gatekeeper role. So more than ever, the search committees are the place where the buck stops. When they make a mistake, though, three years' bad experience is a high price for the congregation.

My first thought is that a congregation evaluates a minister's performance, up close, personal, and continually and is perfectly free to part company with that minister long before preliminary Fellowship is over. For the MFC, a pattern of short tenures would surely weigh very heavily against the granting of Final Fellowship, just as it does now.

However, since the main reason...I believe the only stated reason.. for the whole credentialing process is to try to prevent the high cost (to congregations, although ministers and their families bear a hight cost, too) of inept, unprepared, or unsuitable persons getting through the search process and doing harm to congregations, I think we should ask ourselves (and probably gather real data on) the kinds of ministerial issues which do real harm to congregations. Because, as any HR director will tell you, every time you hire somebody you take a risk, and even pros have a considerable failure rate. No credentialing process will make ministerial settlement easy or foolproof.

It is my impression (based on 30 years of cursory observation and in depth knowledge of two church histories and lots of anecdotal evidence...but I know of no real statistics on this matter) that there are two kinds of minsiterial settlement "mistakes," and that that have different costs. The first kind of settlement mistake happens when someone is called to a position that they don't, in retrospect, have the skill or interest to hold. Their preaching may be just not up to snuff in the long run, they may lack real understanding of church systems, they may not be able to muster the emotional energy or emotional intelligence to cope with the situation, they may discover that they can't cope with the social situation, hate the landscape, or have health or family issues that keep them from focusing on their work. The cost of this kind of problem, when it is bad enough to require the minister to leave, is considerable, there's no doubt about it; money and lost momenteum on the part of the congregation, and the need to move to a more appropriate job or line of work for the minister (and their family.)

But almost everybody adjusts and moves on from this kind of situation and lives happily ever after.

The settlement "mistakes" that I think of as terribly costly and damaging, the ones which come up over and over again in histories of congregations are not simple matters of lack of skill or focus, they are instead matters of poor ministerial mental health, personality disorder, leadership style, lack of emotional intelligence, and inability to maintain good boundaries. (All of these problems can become predominant in the lay leadership of a congregation, which also causes settlement failures but that's another subject.) It may be that others have a different take on this issue, but if I could wave my magic wand, I'd give us a foolproof tool for weeding out candidates with the above issues. Lacking the magic wand, I'd focus ministerial credentialing on doing a better job on this part of the score.

For the past 30 years, ministers have been screened for mental health and fitness in a psychological exam (the old days) or Career Center Screening (current practice). There is almost always a psychologist on the MFC. But it's clear to me that these tools are not adequate to the task and people with significant problems slip through. Fewer now than in the old days, and there's less damage done now that, as a society, a denomination, and a professional organization we've become clearer about the incredible damage that sexual misconduct can do and are quicker to report it and act on it. Still, I wonder if we are using state of the art tools. (Actually, I'm pretty sure that we are not). Because my observation is that this is where the rubber of preventing harm hits the credentialing road.

Eliz Curtis on credentialing

This is a guest post from Eliz Curtis. She blogs at Politywonk

My political science undergraduate training emphasized what was called

"small group dynamics" and "group think" as a pitfall in decision-making.

Small self-contained groups tend to make decisions based not on discreet

sets of facts, but on the needs and dynamics of their ongoing

relationship. Each player comes in with larger goals and continuencies;

they need these other folks on board to serve those objectives. In

military parlance, this is the difference between "tactical" thinking --

short-term, here-and-now goals -- versus "strategic" -- how does this fit

into the larger objective. We who see the MFC do not want to be cannon

fodder for the larger visions of ministry each committee member brings,

but that can be what happens.

It does not mean any MFC member is to blame. It means they spend tons of

time fashioning their larger visions, rather than listening to specific

congregations.

Purists among our historians point out that during the heyday of

congregational authority, ordination applied only to the congregation

which bestowed it. There was no such thing as a pure ministerial gift: it

was all relational.

What I like about the pulpit rotation system and learned ministry is that

it formed an early attempt at bicaleralism.

For the record, I STILL support this kind of bicameralism. RSS's would be

more accountable not only spend time with the aspirant, but also to visit

their home congregation for story-telling. There would still be a central

MFC, with powers of arbitration, appeal and review when the local

processes get stuck on particular cases.

All records, being essentially employment records, would be public and

publicly available.

Elz Curtiss

Burlington, Vermont

Yet More Voices on the Cost of Seminary

Can be found here (The Rev. Ron Robinson, no relation) and here. (The Rev. Scott Wells)

Other Voices on Ministerial Credentialing

My colleague Margret O'Neall, interim minister of the UU church in Sarasota, Florida, lately wrote this to her colleagues, and gave me permission to reproduce it here.

I give a lot of thought to our MFC processes, having seen the committee within the past year, and comparing it both to other professional credentialing systems, and to the process one of my colleagues in the UCC is going through (their "in-care" system). I believe that a more relational and grounded process could, if thoughtfully cultivated, be more consistent with our theological and philosophical understandings and commitments, and contribute more fully to the process of formation.

In my own case, both the idea and the actual experience of being examined by a board of strangers, who knew me only from paper and a brief personal exposure under extremely stressful conditions, felt disrespectful of my ministry and inadequate as a pass-fail system of judgment on my preparation for professional engagement with a congregation or community. No matter how they tried to be both objective and relational, those who sat in judgment over me did not know me, some clearly had their own agendas, and had a lot of power over my future.

Much of my career prior to ministry has been invested in community and academic systems. I find that our current process of admitting ministers into fellowship picks up some of the worst faults in a range of systems, and would do well to be re-thought systematically and with a stronger grounding in congregational, seminary and ministerial mentoring relationships. Some good things are clearly happening -- strengthening RSCC's, mentored praxis in seminaries, the Mountain Desert District's "Living Into Covenant" initiative. Perhaps it will trickle up to the MFC, but trickles do not usually run in that direction unless there is a pump involved.

Margret O'Neall

THe problem with debt reduction

Actually, I'm all for helping working ministers reduce the monumental debt of their educational expenses. However, this approach has several significant down sides.

1. First of all it is excessively hard on the people who discover in their seminary career, or who are told by the RSCC or MFC that they just don't meet the grade or who don't, for whatever reason get a job, to have amassed huge debt. It encourages...perhaps even requires...people to persevere who are not good candidates or who really don' t like the work. And I sometimes catch undercurrents of the possibility that seminaries and credentialing bodies feel inhibited from helping boarderline candidates out of the ministry track because they are aware of the financial burden they have taken on.

2. Secondly, it is excessively discouraging to prudent people who really look at the bottom line when they are considering ministry as a career. The Ministerial Bottom Line is already more than a little intimidating in our denomination; adding Seminary debt to that bottom line is a real financial deal-breaker. And while we might want to respond that ministry has to be a heart-felt and strong call, devoid of details like financial reality, do we really want our ministry to be completely made up of persons who are either independently wealthy, supported by a spouse, or are inclined to throw caution to the wind when it comes to financial matters? We don't.

3. Thirdly, debt reduction reduces the incentive for students to work during their formation years. I learned more about being a minister from managing a dorm during my seminary years than I did from my internship (at which I learned a lot...a bow to my internship supervisor, Randy Becker.) There is nothing like being the only occupant of the room where the buck stops to require learning! I learned a great deal from field work, especially at the First Parish of Belmont, MA (another bow, to them and to Marjory Montgomery, then their minister). I could do all of this in part because I was free of family obligations, but I was also encouraged by a Methodist seminary to do them, and I got credit for them. There were fewer course requirements for the MFC in those days. No one would have dreamed of asking how many districts the UUA had at an MFC interview. Believe it or not, there were no study groups for the MFC bound. We had to understand congregational polity and UU history in general, not in specifics.

The overall social issue of student debt is massive in our nation and it is no small part of our national ills. Massive Young Adult Debt reduces choices, creativity, and social responsibility. Massive New Minister Debt does the same thing. We need a better way.

The cost of Ministerial Formation III

One more thought on this topic...

Another think I think we should seriously explore.

Given the fact that it is hard to know who is going to succeed in ministry until they succeed, I would suggest that the major "gatekeeping" function be, not at preliminary fellowship, but at Final Fellowship. At that point, the record of a new minister's ministry can speak for itself. Most will have clearly succeeded or failed and will not even need to be interviewed, which is no small expense for candidates or for the UUA. (The interviewing will have been done by one or more search committees who actually spend a lot more time with candidates than the MFC and whose judgment, in congregational polity, should be respected.) The requirements for Preliminary Fellowship might simply be the passing of RSCC, background check, and careful scrutiny of documents, not for "ministerial presence" (which only appropriately develops in ministry, after all) or preaching ability (congregations can be trusted to judge for themselves whether they want to hear this person) but for psychological health and a healthy attitude towards ministerial leadership.

Persons in preliminary Fellowship would be provisionally ordained and it would be suggested to congregations that they be hired for a three year term, with the possibility of a call extended after Final Fellowship is granted.

The advantage of this is that almost everyone would search for a church in their senior year of seminary and begin to work the next Fall, and when they were judged, they would be judged on their record, and that would, for most people be much less anxiety-producing. Lots of things to think through, of course, but I think this approach (more like what the Methodists do) is worth thinking about.

The cost of Ministerial Formation II

Part two of a conversation about how we might reduce the cost of ministerial education.

Another part of the cost of ministry is the cost of moving somewhere for 9 months to do an internship. This model is nice for the unattached 20-something but it doesn't work well for older ministers or those with families. I have had several applications from interns who proposed to leave small children with their working spouse for nine months in order to come to New Mexico and do their internship. The family finances required that. This is not a good situation at all.

Let's re-think that one-size-fits-all ministerial formation model. How about the possibility of 3-5 year supervised residencies, or allowing interns to take a job in the church they have interned in, or even intern in their home church? While there are reasons all of those are disallowed or frowned on, our frowns may just be too darned expensive in the current climate.

The Cost of Ministerial Formation

There is growing concern in our denomination about the cost of ministerial formation these days, which is up vastly from 30 years ago. (I ended my seminary career $300 in debt, having worked my way through as a dorm manager. This was unusually low even then, but today, it is not unusual for new ministers to have $50,000 debt. This is causing all kinds of obvious and subtle consequences and so...folks are talking. Here's my part of one such conversation.

Here is one thought I have about reducing the cost of ministerial education.

Make it possible for most candidates to complete their preparation for this career in three years, inclusive of CPE, internship, reading list, MFC interview, and job hunting process. That's the way it used to be. Most candidates are taking four, five, or more years these days. Even if they are only paying three years of tuition, they are taking several more to complete their requirements...a lot more time than it used to be, because the requirements have gone up and the anxiety and timing detail of RSCC and MFC interviews has skyrocketed. I have not noticed a corresponding increase in the quality of our ministry in the past generation. I am sure all the new requirements and processes were good ideas, but the total preparation required has gotten out of hand. You can be a physician in the time it takes to be a minister.

I grieve for the many people of modest means who will not be able to afford to prepare for our ministry, and I grieve for what we are missing from them. I also worry that our current situation fills our ministry with people who are so sure of their call from the very beginning, or so heedless of the financial risks that they are taking that they will do this...leading to a ministry devoid of the more humble, frugal, and cautious persons who would also serve us well.

The REAL doctrine behind Pro-Life

The Catholic church has focused, wisely, on "pro-life" as the doctrine that it brings to bear in public when defending restrictions and bans on abortion. Not only does this ring well with us all...who, after all, is "for death?" but it hides a much more fundamental Catholic belief which argues against abortion rights but which, when brought to the light of day, is not widely shared by anyone, including rank and file catholics.

Let's first dispense with "pro-life". To its credit, the Catholic church has attempted in these past decades to enlarge this stance beyond abortion. They Catholic church stands against capitol punishment, for instance, and against assisted suicide as a part of its pro-life stand. Gotta give them credit for attempting consistancy.

However, official Catholic doctrine still has a just war theory, and just war theory says that, if someone is seriously endangering your nation or threatening the freedom of its inhabitants, war with all its killing is justified. The nation at war must have tried all other routes to solve the problem and must attempt to avoid killing non-combatants, but there is a place in Catholic doctrine where, when fundamental human freedom clashes with life, freedom wins.

Well, I have to say, that I know of no more fundamental clash between freedom and life than that which takes place within and around every unwillingly pregnant woman, who is giving up huge chunks of her freedom for the sake of the life of another...for nine months if she can bear to give away the baby for adoption, and for at least 18 years if she can't. The fact that this is never discussed points to the fact that there's something else going on in our minds and hearts,

And it is.

The REAL doctrine underlying abortion restriction is the (old but still powerful) doctrine that sex is for procreation. Since you should never have sex unless you want to have a baby, then if you do have sex and get pregnant, you should accept the consequences.

The newer version of this doctrine is that every act of sex should be open to the possibility of creating new life, which, in a culture in which we don't need any more babies and in which every baby is a significant burden as well as a joy, amounts in practice to the same thing. Shall we have sex tonight, honey? Well...maybe not.

These are the doctrines that lie behind the church's prohibition of artificial means of birth control, which most Catholics and others don't support. But they are unconsciously powerful.

Look, for instance at the fact that, besides an exception if her life is in danger, the most common exception in anti-abortion legislation is the exception in cases of rape and incest. Why those exceptions? Because in that case, the woman didn't choose to have sex and shouldn't be expected to take the consequences.

Now I myself believe that it sex is a part of human life for far more than creating babies. Evolution made sex such fun because it's necessary to keep families together over the long haul of the lives of children and grandchildren, who benefit immensely from intact families and care from multi-generations of relatives.

If sex has two legitimate purposes, it is likely that those purposes will sometimes conflict and that conflict has to be managed. Unwillingly pregnant women are not bad people who were doing something illicit and have to take the consequences. Unwillingly pregnant women are bearing the consequences of evolution's duel purposes for sexuality and need assistance.

Or, we could all agree that sex is for procreation and we should only be doing it a few times in our lives. That, too, would solve the abortion problem.

The Crux of Abortion

This quarter's UU World contains this article about abortion by my colleague, Scotty McLennan. It's a well researched article about Christian (and Jewish) positions about when human life begins over the centuries. Abortion rights folks, so often battered by people with their Bibles, do love to see that the biblical and religious view is not as clear cut as conservatives think it is. But UU's don't tend to look to the Bible for advice about specific moral issues, so the article is at best, preaching to the converted and at worst, doing more harm than good to the pro-choice cause by belaboring the wrong point.

UU's look to science for clues to what is right and wrong, and science no longer looks for "breath" to determine the presence of life. It looks to brain waves, heart beats, and genetic science. This has been very problematic for abortion rights. There's no doubt about it...any layperson can see genetically human life squirming around in every fetal ultrasound. If we want to support abortion rights, it just won't do to travel old paths of biblical argument or parse out the ancient meanings of "person". If we want to support abortion rights in the modern world, we have to be able to clearly say why a woman who is unwillingly pregnant, or who is carrying a fetus whose life will be painful, short, or terribly compromised has the legal and usually the moral right to terminate her (early and middle) pregnancy.

Here it is in a nutshell. The western political and religious tradition values human life supremely, and we usually value human freedom even more. "The God who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time" said Thomas Jefferson, and there's the even starker, "Give me liberty or give me death." These two values often conflict, as in, the freedom to make money and vs. need for regulation to protect public health. In these conflicts of values, "freedom" is often the winner, as in, "If you come from a country that is threatening the freedoms of my county, I will kill you."

Thus it is that Rev. McLennan, a man, will never be forced by law to give up so much of a drop of his own blood to save the life, even of his own newborn child, as that would infringe on such a basic freedom, the freedom of bodily self-determination. He'd be asked, perhaps expected, to make this easy donation from love or duty, but he will never be forced to do it. His freedom is naturally valued, by everyone and by the law, as more important than the life of another human being, even one he is responsible for having brought into the world. Of course we might condemn him morally for his selfishness, but the law will never compel him to give any part of his body to his child.

So iMinister, a woman, thinks it's pretty irksome to hear him opine that her decision to decline to provide her uterus, which is to say, a whole lot of her body and that huge medical drama called childbirth, to a developing fetus is only ok because he thinks that the fetus isn't a human being yet. He just so doesn't get it! It doesn't matter whether the fetus is a bit of tissue or a full person. It doesn't have a right to use my body unless I want it there or consent to be it's hero and provide my body for its use. If I decline to support it I undergo and abortion and the fetus dies. That's the end of a precious possibility, but if my humanity (and freedom) is valued as much as Rev. McLennan's is, it wouldn't be against the law.

Like McLennan, but for different reasons, I think that Roe v. Wade did a good job of parsing out how this fundamental conflict between life and freedom can be managed. A woman can choose her freedom over the life of the fetus during the first 6 months of pregnancy. After that, the life of the fetus (and the trauma to society of aborting it) is the more important value, unless it's life is hopelessly compromised or hers is in danger. I honor them for seeing, a generation ago, that women are human beings with the human right to freedom.

We've spent 40 years yammering on about when human life begins in fetuses. Let's ask ourselves instead when all the benefits of a human life (beginning with the right to freely choose when to donate one's body to another the cause of life) to half of the human race begin.

Then we'll be talking.

P.S. Rev. McLennan, "Abortions of convenience" undoubtedly happen, do they? Tell me about one....tell me a real story about a convenient pregnancy, abortion, or decision about motherhood. Just try it.

There are other posts on this subject in the backfiles. Search for "abortion" in the search box above.