I've been recommended for Endorsement! That means that I can continue my seminary education and go on Internship next year in preparation for becoming a rostered minister in the ELCA. There wasn't much doubt that I would be recommended for Endorsement (if my candidacy committee or my professors or my CPE supervisor thought there were problems or room for doubt, they would have told me so that I could do something about it). It is still a great relief to get through it. The process is this: your academic advisor and two people from your synod's Candidacy Committee go over your transcripts, your ten-page Endorsement Essay, and your CPE final evaluation. They talk about them for about ten minutes without you, then bring you in and ask you about them and anything else they have questions about. The question-and-answer portion lasts about 45 minutes, and can include anything they think is relevant to being a pastor and/or anything that gets brought up. Then they send you out and discuss things, before bringing you back in and letting you know what they're recommending. Then they give their report to your committee as a whole, and the committee votes on it (the vote is basically a rubber stamp; I've never heard of anybody getting recommended for Endorsement who doesn't actually end up getting Endorsed). It's pretty important; without being Endorsed, basically, you can't progress any farther towards ministry.

( This semester as a whole )

I preached last Sunday the 21st; here's my sermon.
( Sermon for Sunday, October 21, 2007 )

So, I haven't been giving regular updates on my life as I usually do. I'm sorry, I kept meaning to, but CPE was (as it is designed to be) highly stressful, and when I got home I wasn't really in the mood for writing about it--I just wanted to relax and forget as much about it as possible until the next day. As you may recall, I did my CPE at Oregon State Hospital, the mental facility where they filmed One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

I don't remember what I've said before, but the point of Clinical Pastoral Education is to find any issues you might have that interfere with your ability to act pastorally/counsel people. And help you deal with them, or at least figure out how to not let them interfere with the counseling. Needless to say, dealing with one's issues can be quite emotionally stressful. My supervisor was very experienced, and very, very good at his job--which I had mixed feelings about, since it would have been much easier for me if he'd been not quite so good, y'know? One of those experiences that one is glad for afterwards because it was valuable, but never never never wants to have again.

( Highlights from this summer )

So, the second draft of my Endorsement Essay is finished. I'm going to go over it again tomorrow, fix the introduction and the conclusion, see if it needs more polishing, and put it in the mail to the seminary and my candidacy committee (it's due September 1). But I thought I'd post it here first, to see if you guys had any critiques/comments.  The specifications for the essay are here.

ETA: edited and sent in the mail, thanks for your help!

So, at the beginning of your second year of seminary, Lutherans have this thing called "endorsement" where they look at your first year's academic transcripts, your CPE evaluation, talk with your advisor, read a ten page essay you've written, interview you, and decide whether or not you get to go on with the program and eventually become a pastor or not. It's more than a bit nerve-wracking, even when you know your evaluations have been positive and that your candidacy committee likes you. (Because I have seen my evaluations, and my candidacy committee does like me. That doesn't make it any easier, alas.)

I am currently writing the essay. It is a maximum of ten pages, double-spaced. The guidelines and instructions for writing it are two and a half pages long, single spaced. That's right, folks, two and a half pages long. Anyone who thinks it is possible to write a coherent essay that covers all of what they want to see in sufficient depth to be worth anything and still fit into ten double-spaced pages, please raise your hand.

Yeah. That's what I thought.

I'll just be over here in the corner agonizing over this whole thing.

I had my interview with the Candidacy Commitee this morning, and they decided to accept me as a candidate for the ministry! Woohoo! (In the ELCA, anyone can go to seminary. But if you don't have the approval of your synod to be a candidate for ministry, you won't be a pastor after you've graduated.) It was mostly a formality; they rarely turn someone away unless there's some obvious reason why they can't be a pastor (they're far more likely to give you a list of things you need to work on while you're in seminary than deny you outright). But there's still that little bit of fear that they won't accept you. I had no idea how nervous I was until the drive up there. And the fact that I got lost on the way (not an unusual thing for me, if I've never been somewhere before; I always allow a lot of extra driving time for that reason) didn't help. But I made it! Yay!