Ordination hurdles

AS SOMEONE WHO is a psychologist and pastoral counselor, has spent time in parish ministry, and conducts the "dreaded psychological exam" for clergy in two denominations, I read with interest Kristina Robb-Dover's article "Psyched for Ministry" (Nov. 29).

For most candidates, help with how to live with and manage key issues related to overgiving, overcontrolled anger, conflict avoidance, setting limits, balancing the personal and the professional, and dealing with the demands of polity, is central. Mentoring, spiritual direction, colleague groups, learning about emotional patterns, and developing realistic expectations of the denomination would help many candidates. Self-reflection, flexibility, self-care and ability to interact warmly and genuinely are often indicative of an emotional capacity to flourish in ministry.

In my experience, denominations eventually select over 95 percent of those who apply. Severely emotionally impaired persons are usually obvious. While therapy is not a necessary condition for the prevention of clergy burnout or breakdown, the ability to be emotionally honest about one's limits, needs and care is crucial. The demands of ministry require all involved in the selection process to provide respectful, realistic and ministry-related feedback to candidates.

Pam Holliman

Samaritan Counseling Center, Philadelphia, Pa.

Reading Kristina Robb-Dover's article on her experience in the ordination process rekindled my own simmering "anger issues" with the process in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. The candidacy process in both of our denominations appears to be set up for a church that no longer exists.

While I understand the need for the church to guard against the admission of those who would betray power and trust, the church should be doing its best to protect the edges of strong opinion, dissent, conservatism and leadership in an ever more pluralistic and relativistic culture. Instead, the "process" is used to produce party-line pastors and candidates who are afraid to raise their head up in fear of getting pounded down by those in control of their futures.

The process in our denominations is opaque and there is no accountability or objective standards for candidates to anticipate. Those are all signs, to me, of a sick and broken process that is in desperate need of reformation.

Chris Enstad

Edina, Minn.

It was with disappointment that I read about Robb-Dover's seeking Holy Orders. It is easy to critique any process as complicated as the seeking of appropriate persons for ordination. As one who personally has gone through and administered the process, I know it is far from perfect. But Robb-Dover's negative characterizations seem to reflect on her rather than the process.

The canons governing selection for Holy Orders are prescribed by those with the most experience: her fellow churchmen in General Convention. It is well to remember that ordination is for the whole church and not a private prerogative. As with baptism, it conveys an indelible character and cannot be undone.

Robb-Dover speaks of "ordained ministry" rather than the ministry of priesthood. One need not be a priest to minister as she describes. Baptism is the-commission for Christian ministry.

H. W. Shipps

Savannah, Ga.

Thanks so much for Robb-Dover's essay. My own ordination process in the United Methodist Church has been the most humiliating and painful experience of my life. After ten years in the process, it was time for me to leave the UMC when I realized that I would never encourage a teenager to pursue a career in ordained ministry in that denomination.

Ordination needs to be understood as a sacramental process, one based on baptism, if it is to be justified as such a "big deal" for the way we do church. Instead, it is too often reduced to a list of requirements that resembles an Eagle Scout award. It rewards and encourages church politics and otters to the ordination candidate an ideal of ministry that is safe, avoids taking risks and challenges, and bows to the status quo.

Christopher D. Rodkey

Community UCC, Mountain Lakes, N.J.

The ordination process in the Episcopal Church, as both Robb-Dover and I experienced it, is indeed something of an endless obstacle course. The most telling thing I can say about it is that what most prepared me for it was having gone through plebe year at the United States Naval Academy. Those who administer the process deny it, but I will always believe that inherent in the process is the attitude of "By George, we are going to find out how badly he or she wants to be a marine."

James B. Craven III

Durham, N. C.

I would agree that if "therapy and not spiritual direction becomes the preferred vehicle of discernment [in judging an individual's qualifications for ordained ministry], psychology has overstepped its bounds." But what Robb-Dover calls "the dreaded psychological exam" is still necessary.