 truly truly truly blessed by your presence here and know that God's been working on your life and we're excited to hear you articulate that and to share that with us. Why are you here today? So you've been here before and we do this for commissioning right? You're here today just so that we can connect and kind of make sure that we're all playing in the same on the same field in the same game so that we can kind of help you present your best gospel. And so I'm going to start with Brother Billy. There you go sir. Tim I appreciate it. Good to see everybody this morning. Thanks for being here. As Tim said you know we've been together before. We've seen you in previous interviews and been around some of your residency stuff and things like that and so we are hopefully somewhat familiar with one another. So briefly today I just want to take a moment and say again welcome. We're looking forward to the interviews. I've handed you a sheet many of you that are current residents got this sheet back at the residency retreat just tells you about some dates and some other things. Instead of going over each of the areas myself this morning we have the great opportunity to hear from all three of the room conveners and so you'll actually hear from the convener of the theology room and the worship and proclamation room and the call room this morning. So I don't want to take up any more of their time. The only thing I do want to say is we are now in the process of starting to schedule on-site interviews and so members of the board of board aid ministry have started signing up for your on-site interview. Those are to be conducted between tomorrow now and the middle of February and so part of what you've got to do is work with board members. So I'm going to invite you to during the meet and greet there's a sheet over there that has who is signed up for your interview and I'd like for you to try to connect with them during the meet and greet at least one of them and say how can we begin to exchange information so that we can start getting this scheduled you can let them know these are the best dates and times and they can start kind of doing the same with you. So just make sure you start that process so that we can get that done. You don't actually interview until the first week of March so we've got a little bit of time in January and February to do these but if you're eager and everybody on your on-site team is eager then y'all can do that in November December as well. So without further ado let's turn this over and let you hear from the room conveners. We're going to start with theology and this is Dr. Stan Cuffman. Good morning. Good to see everyone. I hope everyone has this page. I think you've seen it before actually because we've been using the same page for several years now. It does have both the commissioning and the ordinance sections to it but there's a lot of things that is in common. So I'm just going to go through it just to make sure that that we're all on the same page and then we'll entertain any questions that you might have about the theology room but first I'd like to say that of course this time you're coming through you're going to be dealing with or we're going to be dealing with what is effectiveness and your effectiveness. You know you've been in the process for several years now and so it's different than when you were coming up for commissioning which was more or less testing your readiness and your ability to deal theologically with different matters and it's the same in that regard except for we're actually wanting you to integrate more and to talk more about your effectiveness and your practice of ministry I think in general. So we really want you to know that we're praying for you and we're pulling for you. I want you to hear that loud and clearly. Unfortunately we sense as a theology room that you come in there a little tense. The word on the screen is that you know the theology is a tough room. We're really not. We're really in there but we do want you to know we are pulling for you. We would love for you to be able to present yourself in the very best way. We try as much as we can to reduce that stress factor. I really try it when I come out and meet you before you come into the room. We want you to know you're really talking to peers and we're talking for what is it 30 minutes or so little more than 30 minutes about your paper and your work and your ministry and so we're we're really trying to put you at as much peace as we can so and I know you've come in there wanting to be peaceful but it's kind of hard but if we know we're all on the same page both desire and peace maybe we can get there a little easier so that's what we are trying to do with you and we want you to know that and what we do in preparation for your interview is this and I think you all know this you've been in this long enough but we've prayed for all of you we've had assignments to pray for all of you and that half of us will have read your paper that's no different now some overachievers read all the papers but most just read there are signed papers and that means that all of us will have met to discuss your written work even those of us who've hadn't read it will be brought up to speed by those who have read it when we get into the interview room the way we operate in our room is anybody can ask a question whether you read the material or not you know we don't come at this in any kind of rote manner we want to it to be more of a conversation so you may say something that someone might want to get more clarity from you on and push a little bit on that so our responsibility will to be to keep the interview on a time schedule and move the interview along and you know how that works with our own timing of ourselves and so you know that's that's the way that goes some of this is so repetitive for you who are coming up for coordination interviews so what would you do in preparation for your interview this is probably the most important reminder to you you need to write a good thoughtful professional paper i think we do have people in the theology room who are really looking for this paper not to be sloppy to be well done to be one that you would hope to turn in and and and really know that you've given the work and you've got it as across the teams and let one or two of your colleagues review your work and assist you with editing it okay i'm not good at editing so i always need to have this and i might need three people to look at it just to comfort me if i was turning in a paper such as this but don't fail to do that and don't do it the last week you know don't before you have to turn it in do it ahead of time so that you can make sure that paper is well prepared and this is another thing we encourage a lot and that is mock interviews with colleagues this is really proven to be helpful and i know many of you have done that and you know how helpful it is we want to encourage that having someone accompany you seems to be a good choice for some and we just remind you of that do what you can to relax and calm yourself so that you present your very best and if you get hung up on a question or feel you're struggling be ready to move on to the next question we may just say you know let's stop right there let's move on the next question we may come back and deal with that you know we don't want a situation where somebody gets so frustrated in the midst of the interview that they are not able to present them their best self because of a question that may may feel like they you know they didn't you didn't answer as well as you you should have or could have so let's go down to number six this is the measures regarding the ordination candidates the articulation of the faith with passion and relevance particularly related to your current context of ministry this is really what we're looking for i mean we know what you know the theology tell us how that theology applies to what you do tell us the integration of that theology into your practice of ministry and the ability to integrate the theology and practice of ministry i just spoke to that demonstrate a demonstration of growth and theology theological understanding and ability to discuss the development you know this is to be able to be introspective and to also to critique the way that you do grown this is always something that i think strengthens an ordination candidates interview to say you know i've grown in this way you know this is something that i've i've seen develop in my theology through my practice of ministry and then recognize and name the work of christ in the world and connect relevant events and to the issues of your theology theological understanding you know don't fail to address the prophetic nature of your ministry and how you see that prophetic dynamic been practiced in your pastoral ministry that's something that we'll also look for and continue the biblical and historical grounding in your discussion of the problem the questions you know you know i think that it's one thing to write and to basically reference historical and biblical understanding it's another thing to be able to talk about those and to articulate those so if you're going to write about them not what you're writing about so you can talk about it too and and so that's really kind of the the ground rules for what we we see is as for making for a successful interview and again that's what we're all looking for is for you to have a successful interview present yourself in the very best way all right or billy are we to entertain questions now we're going to continue to go through i think we're going to go to the other rooms that will take questions on all right very good next hi good to see y'all today i'm anna cozen butler and i'm the convener for the worship and proclamation room i'm just going to go through some things i sort of didn't make a handout for you today but i will put these thoughts together and make it available is it okay through marcia absolutely and i is our plagiarism policy as well available through you it is not online i can address it um when okay okay okay and i can't get cops about me today um so first of all uh we again echoing what sand said we're delighted to have you and be with you during this process it's our high honor to do that and um i want you to know as he already said that we don't do gotchas we try very hard not to do gotchas there no there's nobody in our room that's gonna try to lead you into a trap or anything like that theologically everybody's on your side so just please let that put your mind at ease we are looking for effectiveness in terms of proclamation one of the things we know very clearly is that especially with elders and deacons there are very different forms of proclamation primarily we'll be looking at sermons but we understand that not everybody preaches every week sometimes you have to struggle to preach at all in your context um so we'll also really love it when you can bring us another alternative form of proclamation that we can examine with you and hear how you presented it why you did it what what that was about and what you learned from it and how you were able to integrate your theology into that so if you're worried about the preaching process don't if that's not your gig okay because we're very open to that um again the key word is integration we want to know how you at this juncture can integrate your Wesleyan theology into the mission and ministry that you have been called to do in your context and in your mission field regarding the sacraments we want to know again if you're Wesleyan if you can articulate your understanding our understanding of grace and how that is lived out and how that is lived out that you see through the sacramental opportunities you have in ministry how that is lived out in the community in your mission field and particularly in terms of of liberation okay um we as I said a little while ago we do have a plagiarism outline a policy that we developed a couple years ago and if we'll get caught and have it available for you back there just so you know um just don't okay just don't um um whatever your version of proclamation is particularly um sermonizing just make sure it's your own okay I know it's tempting for us to go online sometimes just don't do it uh it's not it's not you okay and what we want to see is you proclaiming the goodness and the goodness of our reward regarding sermons um and this goes for any form of proclamation we want to hear the central message we want to see that you've done your at your homework your exegetical homework we do not need an academic treatise okay but we want to know that you've done the work you needed to do uh to to come to where you are in terms of your your word we want to see form and substance we want to see language and image imagery and of course we want to see um through the video it's here to look for you so I think that's it there are other members in the room here um I'm going to ask y'all to stand John Paul Linda Cassie Chris Chris um and Billy so later as we will have some time to interact if you have more questions about worship and proclamation please feel free to see any one of us okay have I left anything on guys okay my name is Henry Lester I'm uh I want you guys to convene the call room and uh we have a reputation opposite of what's being said about theology room we're the fun room so if you can come in when you come to see us you can just take a deep breath and say okay this is my chance to just tell this group who I am that's what we're really looking for who are you you should have a copy of this multi-page thing here I just put them on there I'm proud to say that most of the members of our committee are here so if you're in the call room would you please stand up so people can see that so anyway the names are on there so if you need any help we are available to talk consult whatever you need seriously well some of them do take advantage of this there's something in the room that have done that so the next page on there is um books uh paragraphs out of the book of discipline that I would just encourage you to be familiar with maybe have a talking knowledge of those uh not only for our room but for the other rooms and just for your own benefit these cover everything there is to do about what you know what is the church expecting of you if you're going to become an ordained elder or a beacon in our church it's very well written it's hard to read not just if you haven't read that you need to so go to the third page ordination interviews so when we have an interview our team has a lot of pre-work that we do and a couple of us do a lot of the stuff we do prior to Gretchen back here is the person who is dealing with the medical reports so if there's something that we see on a medic group all this by the way is confidential nobody sees it but Gretchen but Gretchen gets copies of the things that you've had the conversations with doctors and looks at things like if you're taking medicine about something what's going on there why uh are you continuing to do that by the way uh Pat Diehl who's not able to be here with us this morning Pat is the one who looks at your psych report and you're going to see I'm going to mention just a minute but we will ask you about if you're taking your psych report seriously what have you done that's on there that I guarantee we will ask you this so please come prepared with an answer for that um I talk about financial stuff and I do that all pre kind of like Gretchen does I do it pre-meeting so we probably will not touch on your financial stuff in the in our room conversation if there's something going on with you that I need to know about and I don't already know uh please come talk to me about that I will see your credit reports again uh so we're seeing what's going on with that so you can see all the things that we will do prior to that we'll see your recommendations uh we will see the results of your on-site meeting uh transcripts from school we want to make sure that you've taken all the required courses and such so then you get into some of the things we're going to ask you about and we're not going to probably ask you about your call story even though it says on there we might but probably not we've been through that before we probably have heard it once maybe more than once with some one of the big deals is you might make a little star by these these are the ones I'm going to say that we will ask you about and one is you're making a samples project we want to hear what you've done why you did it what were the results and by the way the results don't have to be positive it could be a total flop and failure but we want to know what did you learn from it what did your church get out of it what did you know how did this happen uh what was your process for going through this how did you evaluate whether it was successful or not we want to hear about that the other thing on that page is what have you learned since commissioning what have you learned about yourself what have you gained what have you have you changed your leadership style in any way um what have you learned about yourself what what have you figured out of strength or weakness that you have I need to stay away from this I need to do more of this those are things that we want you to be able to talk about when you get into the room with us turn the page um example of how you work with lady and again this is a little bit of a leadership kind of thing what's your management style what is your style how do you empower lady I mean when you go into a church there's one of you and there's tens hundreds dozens of others and your job is in my opinion one of your most important jobs is to get those people engaged and what's going on in your church um how do you motivate them so we we will ask you about that they're also on there engage in justice ministry and inclusivity we will ask you for a story uh tell us about how you've engaged in some sort of justice ministry in your current setting how have you engaged in something that shows that you understand what inclusivity means even um and again we're not looking for dramatic dramatic things just some short little vignette story that you've done how you've engaged and done these things if we as the church think that's important for you to be able to do uh if you read down there and also says have you taken seriously record I'll say this again recommendations of your psych report we will ask you about that and then down there one of the things the bishop just talked to us and he says this every time we meet in a in a forum like this if you're going to be an elder will you agree to itinerate we will ask you about that and we might ask you about why and what are your limitations and what's the theology about that what's the benefit for doing that so we will ask you about that covered that that question there's one on there that uh we sometimes get to announce the role of deacons and elders it is always disappointing to me to find out that people get to this point it can't differentiate what the two do so uh we have a gentleman in our group who always asks the question about that assuming he's there um you will be asked about how do I differentiate what's the role of a deacon in a church and what's the role of an elder in a church we should know by now but we will probably that's not a guarantee that you probably asked you about that if you go to the next page the next two pages by the way are the note forms that we use in there in our room to yeah as we're visiting with you where we take notes on that so just so this is complete transparency what are we going to ask you can see it it's right there so take a look at that I can't stand made a comment about it when he spoke I can't emphasize this enough is practice I know this these are really stressful days when you're preparing for all this you got all the other things that you do in your ministry setting find some time to sit down with multiple people I would suggest don't just do one big formal one multiple times like I mentioned the inclusivity justice ministry talk with somebody sit down and talk tell them your stories so you're ready to do that when you get there that you're not trying to make it up think about it when you get into the room you're not going to do well if that's the case so things that you've done and things about you've learned yourself tell other people write it down be prepared I mean this is in our room this is what we're going to ask you I mean it's it's that simple this we only have 40 minutes so we'd love to talk to you for three hours and we could by the way but we don't have that time Stan also mentioned the time pressure that we are under to keep this thing rolling so things are going to hit you really fast and as the convener sometimes I may cut you off even as we're going through because we have other things that we have to talk about so anyway so I'll be around for questions afterwards and we're glad you're here and I look forward to visiting with you in February right? Marsha Minton I'm the board ministry officer know most of everybody here so wanted just to be sure everybody's aware I put a a sheet back in the back that was developed by Liz Lancaster not by me she does training documents very well and so that is your U.M. hairs instructions if you are not yet up on U.M. hairs you need to get that way right now very very soon so like call me Monday or today and we'll get you set up on that and ready to go and access all of your documents I know many of you have already done that what I need to tell you about the track this year is that it is a little different every year I'm trying to tweak and improve just that hair make things a little bit more clear here you have received a set of instructions in the email having to do with the track and I'm going to invite you to read the instructions and read the instructions in the track for each step it's going to be really a problem if you don't because some of them have slightly different due dates for instance next week we have some due dates for persons who we need to turn in reference their reference names and all of that those are coming right out because it takes a while to get those process and just want you to be aware of that I'm going to go ahead and ask is anybody having any problems or questions right now about your peers yes all right um call me I'm here for you this is what I do this time of year so I want to let you know I'm available to help in any way I can cool thank you Marcia all right so I'm going to turn over to Billy just to deal with questions about a thing I want to remind you that we're going to have a few minutes out and asking what should I tell the candidates this is what the bishop said I know it's already been said that I'm being responsible to do it with what I've been told to tell you get serious about itineracy the bishop even asked that I would get out a piece of paper and make you sign it to be sure that you understood on what itineracy is first bit of advice from the bishop to me to you second bit of advice I asked candidates yesterday at clergy retreat while we sat around the breakfast table what is it you think that I need to tell everyone what's the best bit of advice and around the table my daughter was first to speak up everyone else chimed in get your paperwork done early enough so that someone else has time to read it enough to give back to you with a response cool third bit of advice says come back and I said when you have someone read your paperwork or you interview it do it with people that don't like you because they will be honest let's see what questions you have here there is uh if y'all just to be available what questions do you have what do you want to ask yes can't ask this earlier marsha our references from our theological schools do we need if we have the ones from commissioning can we use those because those will be the same people or do we need to give new names okay so the question was about um theological school recommendation notice that's a recommendation not a reference and they are different the different form so on theological school recommendations you have to have two and if you came through in this conference we probably already have yours on five however um because you did not come through last year you came through previous to that we have discovered several of those on occasion for folks are missing and we think what happened was they were accidentally shredded um after the interview process so let me know and I will check some of you I've already talked to you about this and gotten information back to you about about your uh a documents but let me know and and I will definitely double check okay thanks brian you have a question no if that was it I just want to know who didn't like me everybody likes you brian well I just want you to know so very quickly one of the things that I get is a reminder that your paperwork is due uh a week later than the commissioning folks but your paperwork is due on your submittal date it's december 13th you're saying how do I know that I know that because that's brian phelps birthday okay so that's my birthday too that's so get yours done so you might go out to lunch that day so that would be great all right all right one of the questions yes sorry i just had to say don't plug your eyes jack question but i've got an answer you're jack you got if you got a really important answer that's cited in the smile well so it is really quite simple it came up last year we assume because you're in this room right now you know your theology your theology is rock solid we know that but when it comes to the next interview it's important that you remind us that you know that theology but only briefly spend the rest of the time telling us about how that theology has been implemented in your ministry okay guard again spending your entire time talking about that theology again good work jack said we know but we need to be reminded thank you and then want to get on to the effectiveness of your theology in the practice of ministry yeah what else what are the questions yes checker so uh in my sermon on john uh i utilize a video clip um i don't know exactly how uh what would be the best way you recommend to integrate that into what we submit okay i can help with that so for your video video and any video clips there is a way to upload a url and so the url where it says upload the url you check that and it will give you access to your um documents in your computer and you upload it like that just with it um so you can have multiple uploads now on a non url it's going to say amazon three or something that means anything that's not that's a change this year and that happened in the software not with me so it just means that we use amazon web storage to store all of our data and that's why it says that so any other document pdf or whatever is is called an amazon document so like in the manuscript do i do i just put like asterisk video clip here right okay all right what else okay in paperwork when you print it from one word computer to another it can be i understand the importance of uploading it a document in words so that y'all can run it through software for plagiarism but can we do a second document that's a pdf file that makes printing easier i don't think i used it though i think i used the word version of it right now the policy asks for word so well i'm going to stick with that to make it fair for everybody let me look next year and see um there's a way we can expand the plagiarism software package that will allow us to run pdfs as well we just haven't paid that money yet or done that so let me see and because i don't want to make it comp i want to make it as simple as you can but i understand sometimes there are gaps and you know it does funky things and i think we've all worked with word we know what it looks like okay so let's bring up follow the question uh as far as the on-site uh interview as we mentioned that we need to schedule that with specific people right those people are pretty yeah so there's sheets on the back table now when you when we get ready to have the brain care and just a minute go back and look and find your name and find the people that are on there so all of us i think have at least three now and probably you may have four you don't have to connect with all four of those people just connect with one somebody you can start to get that and then once i hear that you've got an on-site schedule i'll send out to everybody in the next couple of weeks the instructions on-site you're really pretty simple in terms of the of how they're done but we do want to get that information to you as well yeah one thing i forgot to say when i was talking about proclamation is um some of you preach from outlines right and that's fine but we really really really love to have a transcript including even though it's videoed it's really um manuscript did not want to say oh i've been watching the news too much okay um manuscript okay so um thank you okay i'd come across as seren um so what are the parameters of those as we develop relationships in the past years of those who have to recuse themselves from the room oh in the actual interview all right so there's really uh three uh people that need to recuse themselves if you have an immediate family member that is on the war war day ministry uh if a staff person and you serve with in that church is on the war war day ministry and if you have an immediate formalized mentor okay now if you've got just informal mentors that that's you know we all have different people that we connect with and there are mentors they're fine to be in the room but it's those three thing it's those three groups of people that we asked to recuse themselves for both being in the interview and in the voting yep ashley i have a quick question yes it's for marcia marcia we were uh questioning several of us in the group of who is our i believe it says your primary mentor it asks you for that name and then asks for an unofficial mentor is who is that primary okay the primary mentor would be your mentor group or your residency group mentor leader person right that says so that would be um if that's not what we're told oh okay was that from camie that was an intercoach residency i've heard both yeah so i i am not sure i will try to find that out and get that back to you all you would pick somebody that you trust to be that person for you yes okay my second question was several people got up and had different i don't know if this is really that important but different times for each room since i'm this is my first time right where every room is 35 minutes yes every room is 35 minutes and then there's a 15 minute break while each room does time right after your interview and so you you have an interview 35 minutes you take a 15 minute break then you go in the second and third and then it's about an hour or to an hour and a half for the deliberation that you're around after that so normally if an interview morning interview starts at uh 8 30 we are not really done with you probably till about 12 15 the thing i will tell you is um i will send you probably in late january or February the schedule for the interviews in terms of what day and what time if you have a particular need with that please just send me that i mean occasionally somebody hasn't had a town commitment or something and they need to be interviewed on monday i will try to accommodate that as best as possible the other thing is that sometimes i get information from folks that say you know i just in the morning i'm terrible i need to be in the afternoon or someone to say i'm really fresh in the morning i need to be able to i'll try i will try to accommodate that put me in too horrible a situation regarding that we'll do what we can to be able to accommodate that's okay anything else the problem time to bug out have some time for uh refreshment and fellowship cool chance yep i have another answer great i love your answer now i'll be real quick with this uh every one of you i'd like to record every one of you i believe received a letter following your last interview and sometimes there are concerns and we will look at those letters before you walk in the room and we will ask you about whether or not you have fulfilled those requests good answers jack thank you all right so um to everyone in the room my goodness we are blessed with this incredible burden that god has blessed us in ways that dropped us to our needs and now it's just about the articulation and the expression of that in a wistful tradition and so we are just thankful to have all this in common and i mean that lay folks and clergy and candidates alike and so we share that together um i want to remind you and say all that warm mushy stuff because i love you all dearly but at about 11 o'clock i'm gonna see what you get out of here and it'll be because we need to start the next group and i just didn't want you to be offended or feel rushed if i just start pushing you out the door all right so i wanted to go with that all right um