Moved in

Dear Mr Rain,

Thank you for your cooperation in the matter discussed previously. You showed excellent restraint in waiting until we were driving home to begin your business. It was much appreciated.

All my bags are packed...

Dear Mr Rain,

I am moving to seminary today. I am moving to seminary today with many, many books. I am moving to seminary today with many, many books in cardboard boxes.

As you may well know, cardboard boxes are in love you with and melt in your presence. 

Court them another day. I need my books.

Thank you. You can come back, as they say, another day.

Blog of the Panda: Return of the Panda

I have returned! I am done my paperwork, done my classes, done graduating (well, don't have the diploma yet, but there's nothing more I have to do about it). I'm not necessarily done packing, but that's why the next post you'll see will be Packathon!

I've decided not to make up the missed posts, since they were planned to be things like "Classes" and "Orientation," and you'll hear about those things as they happen. 

And now that I'm done with paperwork, I'm headed toward lunch and packing!

Extra, extra!

Regularly scheduled 24 Days of Grad School will continue tomorrow. (I may write up some missed posts and back-date them...we'll see.)

But first, just so you know, you are now reading the blog of an officially graduated bachelor of arts.

Just, so you know.

We interrupt...

Appologies, but regularly scheduled 24 Days of Grad School coverage will resume Wednesday.

Papers take priority.

Fast Facts: Philadelphia

Located at 39.953333°N 75.17°W, Philadelphia, PA, is...

• 1064 miles from Waverly
• 1418.03 miles from Fosston
• 119.59 miles from the Bwawablah Family Inn
• 98.90 miles from NYC
• 71.89 miles from the NJ shore

It boasts an international airport, several Amtrak stops, and the SEPTA train/bus system.

Home of the Philly cheesesteak, the Liberty Bell, and the Declaration of Independence, Philadelphia is rich with cultural, artistic, and historical heritage.

It is the sixth most populous city in the USA, although at one point is was the second most populous in the Brittish Empire.

Philadelphia is home to America's first Botanical garden, cancer hospital, electronic computer, fire company (also fire insurance company... lots of fires?), medical school, pediatric hospital, post office, public library, and zoo. (Check out here for more Philly firsts.)

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!

Seminary V: Fourth Year

The final year. So close to being done, yet so much yet to learn. Especially since one is just returning from internship and probably highly aware of all there is left to learn!

The final year is spent taking more classes, mostly electives in the areas most interesting to the student. (For example, I would hope to take extra homiletics and pastoral care classes.)

The second half of the final year is also spent finding a first call, which will be discussed more in tomorrow's final candidacy section.

Candidacy III: Approval

Approval is the second-to-last stage of candidacy and happens after internship. If you guessed that this would involve another essay, another interview, and a few more forms (final resume stuff), you were right!

Since this is the last stage that involves the committee, it's pretty important. (Well, they're all important, really.) The committee goes over all the information, discusses what the candidate learned during internship, the preparedness of the candidate to enter into full time ministry, and what the candidate has learned (academically and other-icallies), and so on. Ordination is no longer that mystical event four years away, it's right around the corner!

Seminary IV: Internship

During one's third year of seminary, one goes away for a year. They're tired of listening to you in class, so they send you away. Oh wait, no... that's not right...

What it really is is a year spent actually doing parish ministry. Sort of. Think of it like student teaching, only a year long, and a with a congregation instead of a classroom.

Internships happen all over the place. There are certain requirements for the parish taking in an intern, such as the number of years the (senior) pastor has been there, the health of the congregation, and so on, to ensure that the intern's going to learn. Of course, sometimes the intern-supervisor relationship doesn't go well, but that's why the ordeal is only a year long.

There are some internships grouped together called the Horizon program where less wealthy congregations that would not otherwise be able to support an intern are able to. It's a grant program, but I don't know the specifics of how it works. There are also international internships. These programs ensure that students have the opportunity (although of course not all students can be accepted into all programs) to intern in a variey of settings. And, for the churches being served by the interns, programs like the Horizon grants enable churches that might not otherwise be able to benefit from an intern's ministry to have that chance.

Seminary III: Second Year

The second year of seminary is much like the first, only (I believe) with more classes that focus on practical application of ministry skills. This is when homiletics (preaching), pastoral care, Christian education, and other such practical (meaning practice-based) classes are taken and focused on.

One also spends much of the second year preparing for the third year, internship, which we will highlight tomorrow.

Candidacy II: Endorsement

Before I begin this, I'd like to note that if you'd like more specific information on the candidacy process, you can go to this website. (Which is where I got some of the information I was lacking for writing these entries.)

Endorsement is the next phase of candidacy after Entrance. Now, the candidacy website (above) treats each phase as an ongoing thing, whereas here I treat them more like events on a timeline. I suppose the truth is a combination of the two.

Endorsement occurs after CPE (in the phasic view it includes CPE) and requires another essay from the candidate and another interview. This interview isn't in front of the whole committee, but rather a few people from the committee come to the seminary campus and meet with the candidate and their academic advisor. Same general process: looking over file, interview, waiting period, results.

Seminary II: CPE

Seminary isn't just a school-year gig. It's a year-round fount of knowledge, learning, and experience!

Following a typical plan, a seminarian will spend the summer after their first year of classes completing a unit of CPE (Clinical Pastoral Education). CPE teaches the seminarian about wider ministry by working in a clinical setting. This can be at a hospital, nursing home, trauma room, ER, or other setting. The CPE students work together with CPE instructors to discuss cases, learn and hone skills, and so on. CPE is an opportunity for students to work on personal goals with relation to ministry, and to get to know themselves, their call, and the world better.

I believe that for me, CPE will be even more important, as it will be a discernment factor in determining whether or not I am actually being called to be a hospital chaplain. Residency (a requirement for chaplaincy) will help with that even more, but I believe CPE will be a good starting point for some of those conversations.

Seminary I: First Year

Seminary is the academic side of the four year process. The counterpart to candidacy, which we began discussing yesterday.

Seminary is a four-year process and a specific type of grad school. (Like med school, nursing school, law school, etc.)

Seminary involves classes of all sorts as well as hands-on experience in a variety of ministry settings. Classes vary as they do at many institutions: some lecture, some discussion, some participation, etc. Usually no dissections though... guess we're not too much like med school.

In one's first year of seminary, one takes introduction courses, and begins language training. At my seminary, students must take, in the end, both biblical Hebrew and Greek, although at other seminaries and divinity schools the language requirements vary. I would hope to find the time to take Latin as well, but I'm not sure that will happen. At many Lutheran schools, advanced reading of German is offered, for the advanced study of Luther and other German reformers. 

Also during the first year (at LTSP: other seminaries vary) one takes field experience, going with a few other seminarians to different churches in the area. Each group spends a few weeks at each location, attending Sunday services and meeting as a group during the week to discuss observations. The churches vary in size, predominant race and culture, and even denomination. This is to educate the new seminarians in the variety of ways that ministry is done. Well, I think that's why... I suppose I'll find out more later.

Candidacy I: Entrance

Candidacy is the ecclesial side of the process I'll be going through in the next four years to become an ordained pastor in the ELCA. It involves four steps, which typically occur in conjunction with the stages of seminary. (Which I will be introducing to you simultaneously with the candidacy steps.) Candidacy functions basically to ensure that a person meets all of the non-academic requirements to be a pastor: basic sanity, doctrinal alignment with the tenets of the ELCA, spiritual preparedness, and call. 

The first step in the process is called Entrance. It includes many typical first-step items: an application, an essay, an initial interview, a psychological examination... Okay, some of those are typical first-step items. The main part of Entrance, however, is the Entrance interview in front of the entire Candidacy committee.

The Candidacy committee consists of the bishop of the synod (for you Catholics: the equivalent of the Archbishop of the diocese), synod staff, and select pastors from the synod. One of the people on the committee is the one who does the initial interview, which is just for initial information, and to begin the conversation. One of the people on the committee is assigned to the candidate as their relator, and is the contact person for the candidate with regards to questions and whatnot. I'm also told it's a good idea to be in contact with your relator throughout seminary, to keep them up-to-date. It helps maintain a relationship between the candidate and the committee.

At the Entrance interview, the committee begins by looking through the candidate's file before the candidate enters the room. The file includes the application, the essay, notes from the initial interview, recommendations, and the report from the psychological evaluation. Then the candidate enters the room and the fun begins. They ask questions, discuss call and spiritual life, ask questions they may have of any of the materials in the file. The goal is to assess the candidate's preparedness for entering seminary. It's not an attempt to see if the candidate is all-knowing about all matters regarding theology... the candidate is being sent to seminary to learn that, not to already know that. The interview is about call, preparedness mentally, emotionally, and spiritually, and getting to know the candidate. After the interview, the candidate leaves and spends approximately fifteen terrifying minutes waiting, while the committee discusses and composes their response (which has to have a justification, not just a yes/no). Then they call you back in and let you know. (Now do you see why the fifteen minutes are terrifying?)

 The committee can come back with a variety of responses varying from "yes" to "yes with recommendations" to "postponement" to "no."

The 24 Days of Grad School

Welcome to the 24 Days of Grad School: a Traveling Panda Blog event!

Think of this just like the 12 days of Christmas, except twice as long, and taking place before the event being celebrated. The 24-day coverage will include:

• Introductions to the important aspects of seminary and candidacy
• "Fast Fact" looks at Philadelphia, the seminary's neighborhood, and the seminary itself
• A discussion of my fabulous new apartment
• A forward look at the upcoming orientation week and fall classes

And of course...

• Coverage of everyone's favorite yearly event: Packathon 2009!

For those of you readers who read this on the actual page (as opposed to through a feed reader), you'll notice some changes: mostly everything's green. No particular reason for this change except that I felt like change. Well, and we're in Pentecost or Ordinary time, which means green's the color of the day and with this layout I can easily change up the colors to be appropriate for the liturgical season. Wait... does this make me a liturgical calendar nerd?

Anyhow, now, back to homework (you know, that thing that's been keeping me from updating all summer? yeah... that)...