In 1994, at the time I went through the
ordination process, we went through the same discernment process as those
called to the priesthood, with the exception that those feeling called to the
diaconate were required to have had a ministry in the world of some duration.
My initial meeting with my priest was followed by a year of prayer and spiritual direction. After a year, I submitted my paperwork with the encouragement of the people who had mentored me during this process.
The first step, after discerning the call with a priest, was meeting with the Canon to the Ordinary, followed by a meeting with the bishop and my priest. If the bishop heard your call, he encouraged you to apply to be an aspirant. This was followed by a weekend retreat with other aspirants, the bishop and the members of the Commission on Ministry. Each applicant’s spiritual autobiography was thoroughly explored by commission members in small group interviews throughout the weekend. At the end of the weekend, we were either encouraged or discouraged to continue in individual meetings with commissioners, based on the interviews, our letters of endorsement and various evaluations from our ministry sites. This was a stressful weekend.
An aspirant is assigned to a parish for three months and also to a field placement. I was assigned to Old Donation in Virginia Beach, and Mary Immaculate Hospital, required to spend 10 hours a week at each place. In the parish, I was to meet with a lay discernment committee once a week, preach three times, teach all levels of the congregation, make pastoral calls and learn a deacon’s role in the liturgy. I was mentored by the Rev. Joy Walton and Karen Meridith at Old Donation, and the Rev. Al Wray at MIH. They were both very rich experiences.
At the end of our internships in the parish and the world, we met again with the Canon to the Ordinary, who advised of next steps if we wanted to continue in the process and apply for Postulancy. Psychological and psychiatric tests and interviews followed that, as well as background checks. There was an interview with the full Commission on Ministry. Granted postulancy, we then were assigned to our formation program, held at Duke University and coordinated by Dr Earl Brill, a Christian ethicist, and Dr. Fred Horton, a professor at Wake Forest. We attended this program for two years, every other weekend, with reading, and written assignments. We studied Old and New Testaments, Church History, Ethics, Homiletics, Liturgy, Ministry and History of the Diaconate, Theological Reflection, among other subjects, combined with participation in various types of worship. We did not have to take Greek or Hebrew. This was in the early days of computers, so conveying some assignments via email made for smoother communication between the weekends we were in class, and made it possible to cover more ground. We had postulants for the diaconate from four different dioceses, with a plethora of social and institutional ministries, so this was a wonderful experience. My last year, I also did my Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) residency at Riverside Regional.
We took our General Ordination Examination via computer at the end of this time. My computer crashed more than half way through, and even Mark Winward, then an assistant at St Andrew’s and a Mac expert, could not resurrect what I had completed. I had to take two days off from work to start over. I have not had a Mac since.
There were three interviews with the commission over time (as well as a yearly retreat with everyone in the process), all stressful, as the commission has new members each year, and some of the issues raised and questions asked, were repetitive. Final psychological and psychiatric tests and interviews were repeated. At the end of it all, almost 100 people sign off on each person ordained in the church, counting parish of origin, parish of internship, and three years of commission members, and faculty in formation, CPE, and School for Deacons, as well as psychologists and psychiatrists.
Our diocese has a different process now, and a shared School for Deacons with the Diocese of Virginia, with a great deal of the work being done via computer, and only periodic retreats of those in formation. CPE is no longer required. The internship in a parish comes at a later time in the process.
While I was in the Diocese of Southwestern Virginia, I served on the Commission of Ministry, which had an entirely different process. We had our own School for Deacons, moderated by a priest, who called various clergy in to serve as adjunct faculty. The ministries were primarily parish-based, and they were allowed to stay in their parishes of origin, permanently. In this diocese, you do not return to the parish in which you were ordained, and deployability is a requirement, usually anywhere from every 3-4 years.
I was sent to the Diocese of Upper Michigan to observe their process in 2001. They have ministry teams in many remote locations composed of Canon 9 priests, deacons, Christian education leaders and musicians who are in formation together, usually taking Education for Ministry, and are called to the various orders by the parish. At the time I visited, they had not sent a priest to seminary in over 15 years. We visited four churches and experienced worship with them, with various levels of vitality and always faithfulness.
In dioceses with few resources, formation is tailored to the needs of the church and whatever resources are available. A diocese that has no school and cannot afford EFM for those in formation, might have reading for Holy Orders as the norm.
My own process was enriched by having taken EFM and doing all four steps of Servant Leadership Formation, as well as the Training for Trainers, prior to entering the process. I would encourage anyone who is pondering a call, to explore that call in spiritual direction initially.
My initial meeting with my priest was followed by a year of prayer and spiritual direction. After a year, I submitted my paperwork with the encouragement of the people who had mentored me during this process.
The first step, after discerning the call with a priest, was meeting with the Canon to the Ordinary, followed by a meeting with the bishop and my priest. If the bishop heard your call, he encouraged you to apply to be an aspirant. This was followed by a weekend retreat with other aspirants, the bishop and the members of the Commission on Ministry. Each applicant’s spiritual autobiography was thoroughly explored by commission members in small group interviews throughout the weekend. At the end of the weekend, we were either encouraged or discouraged to continue in individual meetings with commissioners, based on the interviews, our letters of endorsement and various evaluations from our ministry sites. This was a stressful weekend.
An aspirant is assigned to a parish for three months and also to a field placement. I was assigned to Old Donation in Virginia Beach, and Mary Immaculate Hospital, required to spend 10 hours a week at each place. In the parish, I was to meet with a lay discernment committee once a week, preach three times, teach all levels of the congregation, make pastoral calls and learn a deacon’s role in the liturgy. I was mentored by the Rev. Joy Walton and Karen Meridith at Old Donation, and the Rev. Al Wray at MIH. They were both very rich experiences.
At the end of our internships in the parish and the world, we met again with the Canon to the Ordinary, who advised of next steps if we wanted to continue in the process and apply for Postulancy. Psychological and psychiatric tests and interviews followed that, as well as background checks. There was an interview with the full Commission on Ministry. Granted postulancy, we then were assigned to our formation program, held at Duke University and coordinated by Dr Earl Brill, a Christian ethicist, and Dr. Fred Horton, a professor at Wake Forest. We attended this program for two years, every other weekend, with reading, and written assignments. We studied Old and New Testaments, Church History, Ethics, Homiletics, Liturgy, Ministry and History of the Diaconate, Theological Reflection, among other subjects, combined with participation in various types of worship. We did not have to take Greek or Hebrew. This was in the early days of computers, so conveying some assignments via email made for smoother communication between the weekends we were in class, and made it possible to cover more ground. We had postulants for the diaconate from four different dioceses, with a plethora of social and institutional ministries, so this was a wonderful experience. My last year, I also did my Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) residency at Riverside Regional.
We took our General Ordination Examination via computer at the end of this time. My computer crashed more than half way through, and even Mark Winward, then an assistant at St Andrew’s and a Mac expert, could not resurrect what I had completed. I had to take two days off from work to start over. I have not had a Mac since.
There were three interviews with the commission over time (as well as a yearly retreat with everyone in the process), all stressful, as the commission has new members each year, and some of the issues raised and questions asked, were repetitive. Final psychological and psychiatric tests and interviews were repeated. At the end of it all, almost 100 people sign off on each person ordained in the church, counting parish of origin, parish of internship, and three years of commission members, and faculty in formation, CPE, and School for Deacons, as well as psychologists and psychiatrists.
Our diocese has a different process now, and a shared School for Deacons with the Diocese of Virginia, with a great deal of the work being done via computer, and only periodic retreats of those in formation. CPE is no longer required. The internship in a parish comes at a later time in the process.
While I was in the Diocese of Southwestern Virginia, I served on the Commission of Ministry, which had an entirely different process. We had our own School for Deacons, moderated by a priest, who called various clergy in to serve as adjunct faculty. The ministries were primarily parish-based, and they were allowed to stay in their parishes of origin, permanently. In this diocese, you do not return to the parish in which you were ordained, and deployability is a requirement, usually anywhere from every 3-4 years.
I was sent to the Diocese of Upper Michigan to observe their process in 2001. They have ministry teams in many remote locations composed of Canon 9 priests, deacons, Christian education leaders and musicians who are in formation together, usually taking Education for Ministry, and are called to the various orders by the parish. At the time I visited, they had not sent a priest to seminary in over 15 years. We visited four churches and experienced worship with them, with various levels of vitality and always faithfulness.
In dioceses with few resources, formation is tailored to the needs of the church and whatever resources are available. A diocese that has no school and cannot afford EFM for those in formation, might have reading for Holy Orders as the norm.
My own process was enriched by having taken EFM and doing all four steps of Servant Leadership Formation, as well as the Training for Trainers, prior to entering the process. I would encourage anyone who is pondering a call, to explore that call in spiritual direction initially.
The Rev. Katherine T. Gray
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