Candidacy IV: Call

Assignment & Call is the last stage of the candidacy process.

In the ELCA you have to be doing ministry to be considered on active call. (Think of "having a call" meaning "being a pastor somewhere.") You can be between calls (parishes/assignments), but there's only so much time you can be doing other stuff. Now, you're thinking, "but I know lots of pastors who aren't in parish positions, are they not having a call?" No. Well, not always. A pastor can apply to have a different type of position count as a call. Professors, those working with/for social service agencies, and so on do this type of thing.

Now, currently for most, if not all, types of "specialized" ministries (most ____ chaplaincies: hospital, military, campus, etc.) one has to first complete three years of parish ministry before entering into the specialized ministry or the training for it. This is mainly so that people going into specialized ministry (which is often a focus of some aspect of a parish pastor's life anyway) have the experience of parish life first. They (the churchy people who make these rules) are starting to phase out this rule in some areas of specialized ministry because the need for such ministers is so great. No idea what the rules'll be four years from now, so I'm not going to speculate.

The point is, one has to have a call to be a pastor. SO one does not get ordained until one has one's first parish assignment. It's called assignment, but it's more of a mutual picking process. You don't just get sent somewhere randomly, you get assigned a region (group of synods) and then a synod (note the "s" not "S"... we're not talking Synod like Missouri Synod, we're talking synod like archdiocese) then you go on interviews and preach at different places and so on. The congregations looking for pastors go through a process also called the call process whereby they come up with what their needs are, what their congregation looks like, and so on. And, hopefully, there's a pastor that'll fit their puzzle.

The region and synod assignment process happens when bishops from the different regions get together and basically play baseball cards with the candidates set to graduate seminary. They know what is needed in their areas and they all look at all the different information on the different candidates and dish them out to different places. A candidate can "restrict" (for reasons such as spouse with job, dependents, etc) or list preferences. Restrictions usually (always?) are heeded (although there's no guarentee that there'll be a church that will take you in whatever synod), preferences may or may not be heeded based on the needs of the Church.

Once one has a parish call, one gets ordained and is a pastor!