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.
The Rev. Katherine T. Gray
