Becoming a Pastor

I got a batch of questions from somebody curious about how I became a pastor and what it took and such.  Things are small and cozy enough here yet that I want to address every question you submit, so that seems like a good topic for the day.  I want to split it into two parts, though.  Today I'm going to talk mostly about what it takes to become a pastor in our denomination and a little bit about what that process was like for me.  Sometime next week maybe I'll invert those and talk more about my personal story along this journey.

Click through to read all about it!


One of the first steps in becoming a pastor is being approved by your synod's candidacy committee.  For those who don't know, a synod is a partial chunk of the greater national church, divided up by geography and population.  Each synod has a bishop and several staff members to help administrate the church in the region.  Synods do lots of things:  provide training, recommend curricula for various programs, help out when a church is in trouble, coordinate region-wide projects such as mission or disaster aid, and administrate a pool of potential pastors available for call to the region.  Each synod also has a candidacy committee that vets potential candidates for ministry.

I came up in the Oregon Synod.  As part of the candidacy process I had to answer a candidacy form full of essay questions about why I wanted to become a pastor, provide various letters of recommendation, meet with the committee for an interview, take a psychological exam, and agree to abide by the various guidelines of the ELCA if I became a pastor.

In addition to passing muster with the candidacy committee you also have to get accepted to a seminary.  This almost always requires a Bachelor's Degree from an undergraduate college or university.  My degree was in political science.   They take almost any kind of accredited degree, though.  Like any graduate school they prefer your grades to be good and your recommendations to be in order.

Once accepted by a seminary and approved by your candidacy committee you head off to school.  In my case that meant packing up and heading for St. Paul, Minnesota.  Brrrr.  At seminary you get an adviser, take classes...do all the stuff normal graduate students do.  In the ELCA a Master of Divinity degree (the one you need to become a pastor) usually requires four years of study:  three in which you pay them a ton to teach you and one in the middle there in which you earn a little money serving a full-year internship.

In seminary you study various things.  Learning to read ancient Greek and Hebrew is required, as those are the two root languages of the Bible (Hebrew in the Old Testament and Greek in the New).  You usually do those your first year.  You study the Pentateuch, or first five books of the Bible, and a little bit about the prophetic books and Jewish literature which comprises the rest of the Old Testament.  You go pretty heavy into all four Gospels and eventually into the epistles.  By the time you're done you've pretty much read (and at least half-studied) the whole Bible.  You also get courses in church history, preaching, worship, and pastoral care (meaning working with folks through their troubles), among other things.  Somewhere during your first two years you have to do a few months of Clinical Pastoral Education, serving as a chaplain in a local hospital while being trained for hospital work.  Somewhere during your four years you're expected to embark upon a cross-cultural experience, working in an environment different than your norm.  Mine was working in rural areas...a first for this city-boy.  During your years in seminary you're expected to become a part of an area congregation, serving as a really good member and meeting occasionally with the pastor to hobnob about church stuff.  I didn't have a car for most of seminary so I picked the second closest church to the school...the closest already being full.

You meet again with your synod candidacy committee after you've completed your second year of classes.  They haven't seen you for two years but they breeze in, check with your professors, interview you for an hour to make sure you haven't grown horns and tail or something, and then pronounce you fit to continue.

Assuming you pass that interview you then head out to your third year, the internship experience.  Basically they ask you what general part of the country you're interested in and then send you wherever they see fit.  If you have a family, especially if your spouse has their own job or your children are attached to their school friends, you pray that they can find you a spot close to where you want to be.  Most often not.  Interested pastors from internship-ready churches come to school and interview candidates, then they choose you and off you go.  One of the funniest experiences of seminary was heading down to the married/family apartments on campus at the end of each year to see all the furniture and other great stuff those newly-minted internship families had to throw out to prepare for their move.  You could snag some sweet loot that way!

When on internship you serve as an (intern) pastor, performing pretty much every duty a full pastor performs, just under supervision.  You participate in every aspect of church life...quite deeply in every aspect the supervising pastor is tired of doing him- or herself!  You attend council and committee meetings, preach once a month or more, visit people all over, work with music people and youth people and evangelism people and everything.  Just when you get in the groove of things and start having fun, your year is over and it's time to go back to seminary.  Assuming you didn't make a total donkey of yourself your supervising pastor leaves a good report and you're ready for your final year of study.

By your fourth year you're used to all the classes and papers.  You start studying theologians like Karl Barth and Clement of Alexandria.  Naturally you get large doses of Martin Luther as well.  This is all super-complex, ultra-goopy stuff.  If they would have given you this during your first year you would have run and gone home.  Fortunately having just served a year of internship in the real world you understand that nobody outside these walls understands the difference between Karl Barth and Bart Simpson, so you're able to put perspective on the ordeal.

Also during their senior year many seminarians panic and get married to each other.  This is a direct result of internship where you learn that:

A.  You're only a year away from being sent out into a church, likely somewhere near the back end of beyond.
B.  You're going to be a pastor.
C.  Nobody is ever interested in dating the pastor except for those weird people who are fixated on dating the pastor whom you definitely do not want to date!
D.  Even if someone were interested in dating you, they're almost certainly going to be below 18 or above 60, as those are the only kind of single people who live in these little farm towns.  And...
E.  This means if you don't get married now you're going to be subjected to year after fruitless year of congregational grandmas trying to set you up with their high-school-aged grandchildren or their Social-Security-drawing-aged nephews/nieces until you, yourself, are beyond marriageable age.

In this environment those fourth year boys and girls you're going to school with start looking really attractive.  So every summer after the senior year of seminary there's a rush of weddings between future pastors.

Assuming you complete your senior year--whether singly, married, or newly engaged--you graduate seminary just like any other grad school.  Just before graduation a representative of the national church comes and congratulates you, then invites you to list all the places you'd like to be called for your first assignment before they (again) send you wherever the heck they want to anyway.  You also have to pass a rigorous interview with a couple of seminary faculty and yet another interview with your synod's candidacy committee whom, once again, you haven't seen for the last two years.  But that's OK because in the four years you've been studying half of that committee has turned over so the people interviewing you probably haven't met you before.  Unless you grew the horn and tail you're probably good to go.

Every year the bishops of the church hold a draft wherein they select available graduates for their region.  I was selected by the brilliant and insightful bishop of the Western Iowa Synod.  In actuality Western Iowa has one of the highest pastoral vacancy percentages in the nation so it's likely they'd take just about anyone. The prize positions are in places like Minnesota and out West here where it's beautiful.  I suspect I raised too much of a stink about certain things in seminary to get drafted to those prize spots.  Whatever.  I figured as long as there were people to serve one spot was about as good as another.  I would have preferred to be closer to my family but that national church guy had told us (and I quote), "I know most of you are going to say you want to serve close to your former homes, that your parents are getting older and you might not see them much otherwise or you have brothers and sisters and connections.  Doesn't everybody?  Every year we get these stories.  Talk to your family on the phone.  You signed up to go where we call you."  I thought maybe he was being a tad bit unappreciative seeing as how many of us had already left our families to come to seminary and paid thousands of dollars to the church for the privilege, but what can you do?  I certainly hope they don't let that guy talk to graduating classes anymore though.

And after that, dear friends, you become a pastor.  The bishop of the synod that drafted you submits your names and forms that you've filled out to congregations where you'd be a potential fit.  Those congregations review the paperwork and decide who to interview.  If they want to interview you and you're open to the idea you take the interview, answer their questions, and wait to see if they issue you a call.  If they do and if you accept it, you can become a pastor...their pastor really.  You can't just become a pastor of no congregation.  Somebody actually has to call you before you can be ordained.  Assuming that happens, you arrange an ordination service, invite all your friends and family, and a bishop comes, conducts a service, and pronounces you a called and ordained minister of God's church.  And off you go!

In my case it was simple.  I interviewed at a church in Duncombe, Iowa on the day the rest of my class was graduating.  (Not much for ceremony, I guess.)  They called me and I was ordained in my hometown of Portland.  Then I was off for six years of adventure with them.  But that's another story.

I hope this answers some of your questions.  We'll talk more about the journey soon!

--Pastor Dave (pastordave@geneseelutheranparish.org)