Last night I attended the ordination of a friend of mine. I was honored to be there as a witness and as a participant. He was ordained into a mainline denomination.

While milling around the reception afterward, I was once again struck by how incredibly socially awkward many seminarians are. Painfully awkward. Can’t hold a conversation and make people uncomfortable awkward. This has been my experience with many, many seminarians (though, clearly, not all).

This morning I was still thinking about that experience and my mind once again drifted to evangelical traditions. I started thinking about all of the incredibly charismatic people from the evangelical church. They are incredibly relational, able to talk to just about anyone, and rarely awkward (again, clearly not all, but many, many that I have known).

So what’s the difference?

In the evangelical world, seminary isn’t necessarily a priority, ministry is. Someone does the ministry, puts in the hours, answers their calling, sometimes for years. Then, possibly, someone else comes along and says, we recognize the work that you are doing, why don’t you go to seminary and get your degree? By this point a lot of people (even if they are still young) have had a LOT of ministry experience.

In the mainline traditions we tend to not recognize the ministry someone does until they have completed seminary and get ordained. So in a lot of cases someone has fully finished seminary without a lot of hands on ministry experience.

The reality is that seminary is not designed to see if you have pastoral skills. It’s designed as an academic program and it grades in that way. You either pass or fail academically. A graduate from seminary can have next to no people skills. They have been tried as an intellectual and passed muster; they haven’t been tried in parish ministry.

Once again, I long for a balance.

I have also been finding that people speak to me as if I am new to ministry (because I only graduated from seminary two years ago). They completely disregard that I have basically been in full time ministry since I was in high school (and I am not exaggerating). I have YEARS of experience. Certainly this is my first time in a large and wealthy church, but that doesn’t mean I am new to ministry. But it does mean that my “worth” is somehow judged (in the mainline tradition) by whether or not I have an ordination paper.

Different conceptions of ministry. I wonder how things would be different if people did ministry first and then went to seminary. If seminary was a recognition of the calling on a person’s life instead of a place to discover call. I wonder if denominations would commit to a different system if maybe we would send less people to seminary, but give them more support (financial and emotional) while they are there. There needs to be a partnership between seminaries (who are only equipped to do academics) and denominational structures (who are interested in formation and experience) in order to make sure that people who are graduating from seminary have a realistic picture of what they’ll be doing as a pastor. This partnership will make sure they are adequately equipped for that work. And if they aren’t gifted in this way, then it might prevent them from ending up deeply in debt and unable to be called.

The reality is that ministry is relational. You need people skills. You need to be able to relate to folks and hold a conversation. You need to know boundaries and how to keep them. Granted, God often calls people that we wouldn’t expect. God can equip whomever God calls. But there is a difference between being called to be in a church and being called to lead a church. There is a difference between being in a community and shepherding a community. It’s not a matter of hierarchy but a matter of giftedness and calling.

I worry sometimes that the mainline church is not adequately equipping seminarians for the actual work of being a pastor. I also worry that the mainline emphasis on the intellectual overlooks and disregards the personal and relational. Something’s gotta give.

Related posts:

1. Ordination