Young Vocations - To Cure or Not to Cure

There's an interesting discussion going on right now over at Daily Episcopalian. Liz Zivanov posted Revs & Drs in which she compares the education and training that priests and medical doctors receive before being allowed to "practice." Andrew Gerns then responded with Formed by the Church, in which he tells his own story of having been ordained at age 25 and how he was fortunate to be in a diocese that had a good training program in place. Both of these articles - and the comments that have been posted in response to them - raise valuable questions about how we should be looking at "maturity" in terms of readiness to respond to a vocation.

Personally I support young vocations, although I have to admit I get a little queasy when I consider a newly ordained 25-year old being put in charge of a congregation. As Liz spells out in her piece:

So we have a 25-year-old with a seminary degree, maybe 10 weeks of basic Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE), and some part-time field education work who is now faced with many levels of parish dynamics, deaths, marriage difficulties, drug problems, local politics, unruly children and adults, hidden agendas, triangulation, skeletons in the closets, the onset of terminal illnesses, and all the other problems that arise in parish communities. Can a 25-year-old with no practical life experience and no in-depth supervised training adequately handle being the person to whom Christians turn for their emotional, psychological, and spiritual health? Do three years of seminary provide adequate preparation?

But Micah Jackson of Seabury-Western responds:

This is one of those rare "big problems" that cannot be solved by asking institutions to throw money and programming at them. This problem will only be solved by experienced priests intentionally seeking out mentorship opportunities and sharing their wisdom with the newly ordained. A relationship with a mentor (whether issued by the diocese or found on their own) is among the most important indicators of effectiveness of clergy of any age, according to some fascinating research done recently by the Rev. Drs. David Gortner and John Dreibelbis (of CDSP and Seabury, respectively).

Seminary training is about giving up oneself to the process of clerical formation, and having your worldview changed from that of whatever you were before, to that of an ordained leader in the Church. It has been my experience that younger seminarians often have less invested in their previous identities, and are sometimes able to make that shift more easily. Though it's also been my experience that older seminarians who are willing to trust the process are also formed into incredibly strong clerics.

Yes, Liz, you're right that there are problems with the way that clergy are trained in our church. But let's stop blaming the victims. It isn't the youth of the seminarians that is the problem. It's the oldness of our thinking.

In the Diocese of Los Angeles we are fortunate in that the Bishop has been blessed with the funds to help support a two-year curacy for the newly ordained. And he the Canon for Formation and Deployment take good care to make sure those new priests are placed in congregations where both the Rector and the congregation will do a good job of helping form that new priest before they move on to work on their own.

We are also blessed with the Episcopal Urban Intern Program based at Holy Faith parish in Inglewood. This is the perfect place for a young person just graduating from college to spend a year living in community and serving those in need in the greater Los Angeles community while getting some "life experience" under their belt and further discerning what God might be calling them to do.

Thanks be to God!