Ordination Blues...

Last night I filled out the IRAI, one of the series of tests I will be taking over the next months (and perhaps years) of the pre-ordination process in the UMC. I call it the "pre-ordination" process, because I cannot be licensed until I have completed a sufficient number of steps in the process. Currently, I am waiting on an understaffed office in Nashville and the U.S. Postal Service so that I can plow through the multiple sessions of the candidacy guidebook. After several stages of the candidacy guidebook, I will be allowed to talk to my local church about God's call on my life, and hopefully they too will believe it has happened -- thus catapulting me back to the District Committee who has already met me once, who will then hear the pleas of my local church that I be made a certified candidate, and if my (by then) five semesters of seminary education pay off... I'll be a certified candidate for ordination. That is what I "fondly" (and irreverently) call the "pre-ordination" process.

My mentor seems like my kind of person -- a self-described evangelical United Methodist with an academic background -- and I'm sure he will help me do what I need to do to be ready for the District Committee and the Board of Ordained Ministry at the Conference level. Perhaps, both my wife and I might get through the process in this conference... that'd be nice, as we believe we have been called to do the work of the Kingdom here, in the UMC, despite occasional bouts of uncertainty about the UMC part. I love my church, most of the time, but sometimes I wonder why the UMC does when its mission "to make disciples of Jesus Christ" seems so clear and obvious to me.

Pray for me in the process, dear readers, and for my wife (she has a memorial service she's working on this week, with some family difficulties involved). Pastoral work isn't always easy, but for those God calls and equips, it is fulfilling, even when it's frustrating...