Part II: The Transition into Ministry Initiative

For many years Lilly Endowment Inc. has lent its support to a wide variety of interconnected efforts aimed at enhancing and sustaining the quality of ministry in the U.S. Recently Lilly focused its grantmaking on programs that supported, trained, and nurtured clergy during the period immediately following their graduation from seminary, an effort that came to be known as the Transition into Ministry initiative. The Alban Institute has worked on this challenge of helping new pastors make the transition from seminary to pastoral leadership since the 1980s. In 2005 we were invited by Lilly Endowment to look over the shoulders of the young clergy, the various program teams, the congregations, clergy and staff, evaluators, and program coordinators involved in this initiative to learn more about this effort and to share early discoveries with religious leaders. What follows is a first report, based largely on the self-reporting of the program’s participants. We believe that there is much more to be learned from this effort as the body of experience and reflection grows. In Part Three of this report (see page 34) we identify several areas we believe to be of special promise. But even from these earliest reports we find there are signs that this work has the potential to lead others to join the effort to strengthen pastoral ministry at one of its most formative moments.

If there is a debate concerning pastoral formation, it is not about the importance of the actual practice of ministry to the formation of pastoral leaders. There is broad agreement about this. However, discussion continues about how theological schools can shape their engagement with academic disciplines and practices of formation in ways that more effectively connect with the practice of ministry. One of the reasons this debate continues is that the dominant frame of reference for integrating issues of ministry practice remains the academic ethos and established curricula of theological schools. Even though the congregational (or clinical) ethos and work of pastoral ministry has been widely regarded as invaluable to pastoral formation, schooling remains the primary context for thinking about the teaching and learning of ministry.¹⁷

The TiM initiative and this report, on the other hand, situate practice-centered pastoral formation squarely within the time, space, and content of congregational life in the company of seasoned practitioners. The intention of this report is not to critique the preparation for ministry that takes place in and through the seminary curriculum. Rather, it is to mount a strong argument for the critical importance of congregations to the teaching and learning of ministry. For too long, the concerns about pastoral formation have over-focused on seminary education and tended to place in the background, and thereby diminish, the role of congregations and the expertise of seasoned practitioners. Only when both domains of pastoral formation—the seminary and the congregation—recognize and resource one another can the full range of formation be accomplished. As Daniel Aleshire, president of the Association of Theological Schools, said in a recent address, “Each setting, if it is doing its work well, provides a powerful educational venue for a kind of learning that is crucial to effective ministry…. I also think that the multiple kinds of education that are needed are most effective when each educational setting deeply respects the contribution, educational capacity, and intelligence of the other.”¹⁸

The Transition into Ministry initiative was begun in 1999, when Lilly Endowment began supporting programs addressing the transitional time, as part if its larger effort to strengthen the preparation of pastoral leaders. The innovation that emerged in the TiM grants program was the move to actively develop partners and promote creative agency among those involved in pastoral formation beyond the context of formal theological education. Thus, the program funded entities in the domains of pastoral practice—congregations, denominational bodies (both regional and national), and other congregationally related organizations—with the hope to both strengthen their capacity to assume responsibility for this dimension of pastoral formation and to learn from how they approach this work.

In relating the learning for ministry that takes place in the setting of formal theological education to the learning through ministry that takes place in the setting of congregational life, Aleshire claims that:

Congregational and other ministry settings create the environment for a different kind of learning. They help students learn to think more clinically, administratively, organizationally, and interpersonally. These settings don’t teach novice ministers how to “apply” what they learned in school. Rather, these environments evoke different “intelligences” and students engage in a different kind of intellectual work. It is intellectual work that deals with the kind of wisdom that accrues from practices, from skills that get better with repetition and reflection, from perceptions that are informed and enriched by coaching. These lessons are not learned well in a classroom; in fact, they can’t be learned in a classroom.”¹⁹

Introduction to the Transition into Ministry Initiative

The initial TiM grants in 1999 and 2000 funded a handful of programs in congregational and denominational settings. In 2008, there are 30 programs (see page 24). When the initiative began, Lilly Endowment staff recall, it was informed by the following assumptions:

• The initial years of ministry contribute to a trajectory for pastoral development over the course of one’s ministry. Habits and practices (both good and bad) established in this period tend to endure.
• The experience of the transition from seminary 21 to parish, from classroom to congregation, can be abrupt, untutored, and haphazard. As a result, beginning pastors tend to feel isolated and unprepared, lacking crucial support and guidance when they most need it.
• Often in Protestant church life, recent seminary graduates can find themselves situated as solo pastors in struggling congregations, with limited collegial or institutional support. This can, and often does, result in a professional, relational, intellectual, and cultural isolation that can be detrimental to the formation of one’s vocational identity.
• A sustained, reflective, undivided engagement with congregational life and ministry is critical to the formation of pastoral identity and skill.
• The mentoring of new pastors by seasoned and excellent pastors is an important dynamic in the formation of pastoral identity.
• Learning with and from peers in ministry is a significant experience in vocational formation.

Working from these assumptions, TiM programs have developed an approach that is centered in congregational ministry and depends upon the close collaboration and interaction of congregations, mentoring pastors, and the beginning pastors. Strategies that integrate these three “players” in various ways have been devised. Some seminaries require a yearlong internship, either through clinical pastoral education or a local congregation, and these entail full-time immersion, but then only for nine to 12 months. The TiM programs, on the other hand, involve at least two years of such immersion and position the pastor as a called pastor in ministry rather than a student pastor in training. The key difference between this undertaking and the more traditional approaches to practice-centered pastoral formation found in seminaries—most notably field education and clinical pastoral education—is that the TiM program allows for a full-time, sustained immersion in the practice of ministry after graduation from seminary.

The central, organizing center of participants’ daily life is not the academy but the life of the congregation. The principal teachers of ministry are coparticipants in the practice of ministry. Since the first TiM programs were funded in 1999, Lilly Endowmentfunded programs addressing the transition into ministry have included almost 20 congregation-based “residency” programs and more than a dozen institutionor judicatory-based “first-call” programs. To highlight the distinctiveness of the TiM settings and their practice-centered pedagogies, this report will describe a sampling of the strategies and practices employed.

Congregation-Based Residency Programs

In the congregation-based programs, seminary graduates participate in full-time, two-year residencies in local churches. These programs are designed to give seminary graduates a sustained, reflective, and challenging encounter with the full range of pastoral roles, duties, and expectations within congregational life. In each program there are at least two and as many as four new pastors in residence, which allows for peer learning and shared reflection on the experience. Residents are paid full-time salaries, participate as members of the pastoral staff, and are mentored by a network of people, including the senior pastor, a program director (in many but not all settings), and lay committees. Here is how two congregations have embodied this approach.

Wilshire Baptist Church, Dallas, Texas
Wilshire Baptist is a large multiple-staff congregation in a Dallas suburb. As part of the TiM program, Wilshire has, since 2002, provided full-time twoyear residencies for newly graduated seminarians. The residents enter into an open-ended rotation system where six core areas are explored: worship and preaching, discipleship, fellowship, stewardship, witness, and ministry.

Residents also attend two weekly seminars. One, in homiletics, is led by the senior pastor and gives the residents the opportunity to evaluate worship and preaching, explore sermon preparation, and consider improvements in scripture reading, pastoral prayer, and worship leadership. The other seminar, on the life of the minister, is led by another member of the pastoral staff and explores topics such as staff dynamics, managing volunteers, family systems theory, and soul-care of the minister. These peer-learning experiences help to dispel the competitiveness that years of academic pursuit may have instilled; instead, the residents all go through their moments of success and instances of correction together and learn not only from their own performance but also that of others. In addition, the residents participate as members of the worship planning team that meets weekly to plan Sunday services.

The involvement of the congregation in the program is also crucial. Each resident has a faith partner to pray and reflect with regularly. Each has a host family that sees to his or her social and emotional needs during this young adult time of life that is filled with newness. Residents also meet monthly with a lay mentoring committee that provides honest and encouraging feedback on their ministry.

In the course of their two years, pastoral residents experience a supported and reflective immersion in the roles, duties, and challenges of pastoral life. Upon completion of the program, it is expected that the residents will seek placement in permanent pastoral positions. Of the seven residents to complete the program to date, one has stepped back from ministry for the time being, one is currently leading a church plant effort, another has enrolled in a Ph.D. program, and the remaining four have been placed in pastoral positions in established congregations.

Christ Church (Episcopal), Alexandria, Virginia
Christ Church is a large, historic, multiple-staff Episcopal congregation across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C. The program accepts three residents per two-year cycle and is coordinated by a part-time program director. There are four rotations through the ministries of the parish: stewardship and outreach; evangelism and pastoral care; faith formation for adults, youth, and children; and parish leadership development. Residents maintain an ongoing practice of preaching (usually weekly), weekly sermon feedback seminars, pastoral visitation, and teaching with children, youth, and adults. Careful attention is given to preaching and celebrating the Eucharist—rotating between Sunday and midweek services. Weekly peer group sessions and seminars include supervision, mentoring, spiritual direction, and other topics on the practice of ministry.

The program relies on extensive lay leadership through the admission and oversight committees, lay support teams, lay pastoral caregivers, and professional staff. The congregation has grown to see itself as a teaching congregation, one that helps to create the “conditions for success.”²⁰ The core of the vocational formation process addresses the identity of a deacon and a priest (Episcopalians are first ordained to the diaconate and then to the priesthood), especially through the key relationships at the heart of parish ministry: relationship to God in Christ, relationships among the people of God, and relationship with self. As their experience in ministry grows, the residents reflect upon the pastoral vocation around these key relationships.

Since the program began in 2001, 13 residents have completed it. All are now serving in parishes across the country.

Strengths of the Congregation-Based Residency Approach

• Makes pastoral residents and mentors coparticipants in a single community of shared practice, thus setting up the conditions for direct and unfiltered exposure to one another’s practice—from new clergy to experts.
• Directly incorporates laity and the ethos of the congregation into the fabric of pastoral formation, thereby reframing the lay/clergy divide as a constructive partnership.
• Takes seriously the congregation as a primary site for the practice, learning, and mentoring of ministry.
• Cultivates practitioners who are skilled at making expertise intelligible and accessible to new clergy through pedagogies of mentoring and coaching.
• Keeps in balance the demand of assuming the role of pastor with the experience of becoming a pastor, so that the new minister moves from “role play” to “role identification.”

Peer-Based Programs

Denominations, local judicatories, seminaries, and other church-related organizations operate the peer-based programs, employing a variety of strategies for convening, mentoring, and nurturing (in two- or threeyear cycles) pastors who are already ministering in first-call situations. The focal point for these programs tends to be interaction with peers and mentors in ministry—usually in a context beyond the actual ministry setting. Here is how some of the programs have pursued this approach.

A Seminary Peer-Based Strategy
Virginia Theological Seminary’s First Three Years program brings recent alumni together for peer learning, relationship, engagement with spiritual disciplines, and ongoing reflection on priestly identity and practice. Graduates are convened six months after graduation and each of the following three springs for weeklong residencies on campus. As part of the program, they are required to find a mentor and to form a pastoral peer group in their region; they are also provided funds to resource their continuing education.

The residency week has a reunion component as well as a retreat component. During residency week, mornings are often spent in classes and seminars exploring the ministry and mission of the church. The question-and-answer time in these seminars is always rich. The basic programmatic structure also includes case studies in small groups, which encourages theological reflection on the practice of ministry in areas of pastoral care, administration, preaching, and “engaging the world.” Tools for building self-care and self-awareness for leadership have included explorations of emotional intelligence, appreciative inquiry, family systems theory, and personality assessments. Also included are opportunities for participants to reflect on the context and culture of their ministry by attending public and cultural events in Washington, D.C., followed by a time for theological reflection.

Finally, there is individual time with the program directors and an afternoon for assessment and evaluation. In between the gatherings, participants meet on a regular basis with supervisors and mentors. They submit periodic reports that include reflections on personal and professional goals, and they receive encouragement from the program directors to take part in other forms of continuing education.

A Denomination Peer-Based Strategy
Company of New Pastors, convened by the Office of Theology and Worship of the Presbyterian Church (USA), is a covenant-based vocational formation and nurture program for candidates and newly ordained pastors. Participants gather regularly with colleagues for study, prayer, encouragement, and accountability under the guidance of wise mentors—first as seminarians with professors, and later as parish pastors with seasoned pastors. The covenant includes regular participation in group gatherings and specific commitments to a daily regimen of prayer, scripture reading, and study of the Presbyterian Confessions. During yearly retreats, participants engage in fixed-hour prayer, explore readings and participant papers, and share concerns of ministry.

In 2008 there are 19 cohort groups of 10 each, from eight Presbyterian seminaries, plus one at Fuller, an independent seminary with a large contingent of Presbyterian 25 students. The peer groups are formed at the end of the penultimate year, and they meet with their faculty mentors monthly through graduation for table fellowship, prayer, and study of the ordination vows they are preparing to take. Following graduation, they are reconfigured into quasi-geographical groups (by place of call) that gather for six four-day meetings over the course of the four years following graduation. These meetings are convened by mentoring pastors. Together the group shapes the agenda, timing, and reading list to fit its particular needs, following a basic curriculum framework established by the Office of Theology and Worship. Begun in 2000, the program has involved 250 participants to date.

An Interdenominational Peer-Based Strategy
First Parish Project at Hinton Rural Life Center is a program that takes on the dissonance many new pastors feel as they are thrown into the cultural realities of small membership church life—often a congregational reality alien to their prior church experience. Hinton, a mission agency of the Southeastern Jurisdiction of the United Methodist Church located in southwestern North Carolina, seeks to provide a space apart with peers and mentors where the skills for ministry in a small membership congregation and the formation of a strong pastoral identity can be explored and cultivated. The program is open to clergy of all denominations.

Within a four-year grant cycle, the program is designed to convene three cohorts of 25 participants each and is centered around retreats at the Center three times a year. Each retreat lasts five days and includes sessions on the practice of ministry (led by experienced pastors, pastoral counselors, and professors of pastoral ministry), formation of colleague groups (which are maintained throughout—and hopefully beyond—the program), table fellowship, worship, and free time. A cohort will continue for two years, with three weeklong meetings each year. The participants are divided into colleague groups of five to seven members each. The cohorts run in overlapping years.

A vital part of the program is the annual consultation visit by a Hinton staffer to each parish. Six consultants have made over 40 on-site visits to date. There is also an Internet support system, directed by the new clergy participants. Begun in 2003, the program has involved 78 participants to date.

Strengths of the Peer-Based Strategy

• Because the participants are already placed, they feel the full weight of pastoral responsibility, which often gives an urgency to their readiness to learn.
• Participants’ salaries are paid by their congregations, not the programs.
• When seminary-based, these programs build upon the learnings and ties developed during the seminary years, thus creating a reflective and relational bridge between the domain of schooling and the domain of congregational practice.
• The interaction with those in other congregations cultivates the skills for developing communities of practice among peers in ministry.
• The gatherings heighten the new ministers’ sense of being incorporated into a wider, often ecumenical professional community.

Transition into Ministry Programs *

Residency-Based Programs
Approximately 150 new pastors have participated in residency-based programs.

1. Bryn Mawr Presbyterian Church, Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania
2. Central Christian Church, Lexington, Kentucky
3. Central Presbyterian Church, Atlanta, Georgia
4. Christ Church (Episcopal), Alexandria, Virginia
5. Church of the Servant (Christian Reformed Church), Grand Rapids, Michigan
6. Community Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), Kansas City, Missouri
7. Concord Baptist Church of Christ, Brooklyn, New York
8. First Presbyterian Church, Ann Arbor, Michigan
9. Fourth Presbyterian Church, Chicago, Illinois
10. Historic Charles Street African Methodist Episcopal Church, Roxbury, Massachusetts
11. Hyde Park Union Church, Chicago, Illinois
12. National City Christian Church, Washington, D.C.†
13. Plymouth Church (United Church of Christ), Des Moines, Iowa
14. Plymouth Congregational Church, First Congregational Church, and Mayflower Community Congregational Church, Minneapolis, Minnesota
15. St. James Episcopal Church, New York, New York
16. St. Paul Lutheran Church of the Quad Cities, Davenport, Iowa
17. Trinity Lutheran Church, Moorhead, Minnesota
18. Wellesley Congregational Church (United Church of Christ), Wellesley, Massachusetts
19. Wilshire Baptist Church (Cooperative Baptist Fellowship), Dallas, Texas

Peer-Based Programs
Approximately 575 new pastors have participated in peer-based programs.

1. Bethany Fellowships, Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)
2. Company of New Pastors, Office of Theology and Worship, Presbyterian Church (USA)
3. First Parish Project, Hinton Rural Life Center
4. First Three Years Program, Virginia Theological Seminary
5. Institute for Youth Ministry, Princeton Theological Seminary†
6. Making Connections, Lewis Center for Church Leadership, Wesley Theological Seminary
7. Ministry Residency Program, Cooperative Baptist Fellowship
8. New Clergy Excellence Program, Massachusetts Conference, United Church of Christ
9. Office of Pastoral Formation, Nashville Episcopal Area, United Methodist Church†
10. Peer Learning as a Pathway to Excellence Program, Institute for Clergy Excellence, North Alabama Conference of the United Methodist Church
11.  Vocation of First Call Congregations Project, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America

Hybrid Programs
Approximately 30 new pastors have participated in hybrid programs.

1. Congregational Immersion Project, Disciples Divinity House, Vanderbilt University
2. Making Excellent Disciples, Episcopal Diocese of Chicago
3. Northern Indiana Conference, United Methodist Church†
4. Pastoral Residency Program, McAfee School of Theology, Mercer University

* See www.transitionintoministry.org.
† Program no longer active.

A Hybrid Strategy

[Several programs combine aspects of both residency-based and peer-based programs. In these hybrid programs, beginning pastors are placed in teaching parishes for two years, much like those in residency-based programs. However, because this is happening in parishes around the diocese, the new pastors are also able to convene regularly with other program participants in their area, much like those in peer-based programs. The participants continue this peer-based interaction after they have left the teaching parishes to lead congregations on their own.

The Episcopal Diocese of Chicago: Making Excellent Disciples
The Episcopal Diocese of Chicago has developed a program that combines aspects of both residencybased and peer-based programs. Seminary graduates are placed in teaching parishes as curates (assistant pastors) for two years, after which they are placed as rectors (pastors) in midsize developing congregations (“mustard seed” parishes) within the same diocese. During the first two years, beyond the daily practice of ministry in their teaching parishes, they convene periodically with curates from other teaching parishes and develop a strong peer-learning network, as do their mentor priests. As the curates move on to assume their roles as rectors, they continue to connect with mentors, peers, and lay leaders. By accepting these new clergy, the congregations commit themselves to a period of self-assessment and redevelopment, including their learning partnership with the mentoring congregation.

The heart of the program is the mentoring done by the rector of the teaching congregation, which continues after the participant has moved to the new congregation. Mentors and their new clergy meet weekly; peer groups of all participants meet monthly for reflection and skill-building; and all participate in an annual continuing education conference. The curates also participate in the diocesan Fresh Start program of yearly retreats, which serves both newly ordained clergy and those new to their current positions. Begun in 2002, the program has involved 18 newly ordained clergy, 10 mentoring clergy, and 19 congregations to date.

Strengths of the Hybrid Strategy

• Brings pastors, congregations, judicatories, and seminaries into creative collaboration around pastoral formation and congregational development.
• Makes constructive use of existing collegial ties between clergy within a diocese to build a learning community around the teaching and learning of ministry.
• Generates collaboration between congregations as ties between mentoring congregations and developing congregations continue after curates are placed.
• Provides a strategy for recruiting high-quality priests for hard-to-place parishes with appropriate support from the wider ecclesial community.

Common Features of Practice-Centered Pastoral Formation

A common feature of all these programs is what we have begun calling “reflective immersion”: the provision of structures and processes that allow new pastors to learn from the immersive nature of first-call situations. There are three key players who help create the conditions for reflective immersion: mentoring pastors, peers-in-learning, and congregation members. The balance of these three catalysts—whether contact with the mentor is daily or occasional, whether peer groups are gathered or scattered, whether congregants are part of transition committees or just part of the congregation the participant leads—varies between the programs, but their presence and their care for the transitioning pastor distinguishes reflective immersion from the more common sink-or-swim style of immersion.

Reflective Immersion
Immersion, for our purposes, results when one is wholly situated in the daily responsibilities and rhythms of pastoral work in the life of a congregation. The beginning pastor inhabits the time, space, relationality, activities, and expectations intrinsic to the role of a pastor. The practice of being a pastor is no longer a part-time, episodic excursion but a full-time occupation. Being identified with the domain of practice sets up an essential, albeit incomplete, condition for pastoral formation. As crucial as immersion is to pastoral formation, immersion requires a structure that will allow for reflection. Only by being immersed in practice, then stepping back to reflect upon judgments made, can the goal of developing a spontaneous capacity for “reflection-in-action” take place.²¹

By contrast, unreflective immersion in the experience of ministry has as much potential to truncate and arrest pastoral formation as it does to foster it. Over the course of the past five years, the coordinators of the initiative have gathered large and small groups of beginning pastors who are participants in the TiM program. On these occasions, those present have been asked how many of them have one or more peers with whom they graduated who are struggling to find their way into pastoral life—to the point of seriously questioning their call or actually choosing to seek an alternative vocational path. It is not uncommon for every hand in the room to go up. Sarah Griffith, as noted earlier, wrote about one friend, whose “situation-induced depression consumed her, and the work became unbearable.”

Reflective immersion allows space for observation and critical reflection along with full participation. This reflective space allows a new pastor to enter the initial experience of immersion in ministry with a dual identity: as a pastor and as a pastor-in-training. The new pastor takes on the pastoral authority that is conferred by the congregation and/or denomination and, at the same time, enters into a shared understanding with the congregation that he or she is a pastoral apprentice-in-residence.²² This duality provides an ideal setting for the formation of a pastoral identity. By providing a calibrated, graduated, reflective initiation into the pastoral life and the pastoral office, assuming the role of being a pastor is integrated with the emerging experience of becoming a pastor. One moves from “role play” to “role ownership” and identification. One resident described his experience as a “slowly coalescing understanding—through experience—of the multifaceted, multidimensional work of ministry.”

When the framework for reflection is gradual and calibrated with ministry involvement, a series of layered learning and support experiences move new clergy toward a new identity as practitioners. Lee Shulman of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Learning claims that learners need this careful, calibrated support: “Learners are scaffolded—that is, supported, legitimated, and nurtured, in the process of activity, reflection, and collaboration with a community or culture that values such experiences and creates many opportunities for them to occur and to be accomplished with success and pleasure.”²³ Without such scaffolding, the pressure to demonstrate one’s competence often overwhelms the freedom to learn from and through experience. Another TiM pastor describes her experience as being given the room for “intentional learning and room to make mistakes and learn from them; opportunity to forge and develop friendships that encourage accountability and foster nurture and care. The opportunity to be engaged in practice of various types of ministry has been helpful in identifying both areas of giftedness and growing edges.”

When one’s sense of legitimacy is acquired through the course of one’s actual experience of ministry, it creates the conditions for a deeper resonance between role and identity. As one resident put it, she experienced a growing sense of ‘this is what I do’ and ‘I belong’ in these settings, when at first I felt like an imposter, someone pretending to be a pastor.” Over time, as the community of practice calls on the new pastors to take on this new role, mirrors their performance back to them, and tests or confirms them, the new pastors internalize that community feedback into fashioning that role as their own.

This interplay between role and identity is not a short-lived process. It is a dynamic negotiation that is essential to pastoral formation over the course of a lifetime of ministry. However, if in these initial years there is no context for sustained reflection on the integration of role and identity, the formation of a healthy pastoral identity is imperiled. How one learns ministry in these early years is as important as what one learns. If being a beginner is regarded simply as something to be overcome, this sense will undermine one’s ability to learn from those occasions when even an experienced practitioner encounters the limits of his or her skill or “know-how.” The movement from novice to expert is not a path once traveled; it is a pathway traversed again and again—always breaking open a fresh encounter between role and identity. Ongoing pastoral formation requires the capacity to re-engage the experience of being a novice without being intimidated by it. If the initial experience of being a novice is generative, it sets the stage for embracing the need for learning that one encounters in the course of a lifetime of ministry.

Reflective immersion also seems to set the stage for an increased capacity to interpret congregational culture. Several programs are intentional about teaching congregational discernment skills—neighborhood walks, community timelines, small group interviews, and the like—to help new pastors gather as much information about the culture and character of their congregation as possible. One young pastor said his experience of reflective immersion allowed him to develop “a new hermeneutic for congregations, a new lens through which to see both myself in ministry and to see into and beyond the activity in congregational dynamics.”²⁴

The strategies discussed earlier provide at least two versions of reflective immersion: congregationbased and peer-based. In both versions all the players are involved—pastoral mentors, peers-in-learning, and congregants—and the center of gravity is the actual practice of ministry. The strategies diverge on where and when the reflection on ministry takes place. In the residency-based programs, the daily interaction between peers and mentors and congregants takes place in a single context. In the peerbased programs, the specific context of one’s immersion tends be one step removed from the context of explicit reflection, while remaining immersed in a community of practitioners.

All of this requires a readiness for learning by the new pastor. What reason do we have to believe that practice-centered teaching and learning is well-suited to the new generation of pastors coming up through the ranks? The responses by new pastors to these experiences have been overwhelmingly positive. This kind of learning experience is welcomed by those who participate in it and yearned for by those observing it. It seems to answer the question of what is needed to move from the context of formal education to the world of practice where professional identity and competency are forged. In all of the contexts, new pastors have expressed deep appreciation for the opportunity to network with peers and mentors (lay and ordained) and the reflective engagement this makes possible as they take up pastoral life. The beginning pastors value their seminary education; they also recognize the importance of being able to step back and reflect upon their unfolding experience as they step into the role of pastor.

In order to explore further the conditions essential to reflective immersion, we will take a closer look at the three key players: pastoral mentors, peers-in-learning, and congregants. The ways these players are engaged in the reflective process vary according to the model. The fact that they are all in play, to one degree or another, is crucial to creating the conditions for reflective immersion.

The Importance of Pastoral Mentors

Seasoned practitioners who have learned to communicate to others the wisdom they have gained through practice are crucial catalysts in creating the conditions for reflective immersion. The strength or relative weakness of a TiM program often turns on the effectiveness of mentoring pastors.

One of the key learnings in the TiM initiative has been the way coparticipation shapes mentoring. The relationship between mentor and new pastor is experienced differently when mediated through the experience of being coparticipants in a community of practice. This allows for a freedom of modeling, imitating, and experimenting on one’s own in a shared ministry. This does not diminish the importance of experience or the wisdom of the seasoned practitioner, but it does create the conditions for that wisdom and experience to be shared in a spirit of collaboration, mutual discovery, and service to a shared community. The following three reflections from TiM participants illustrate how the proximity of mentor and mentee to a shared field of practice greatly enhances the learning that comes through mentoring.

• [My mentor, the senior pastor] welcomes reflection on his own work and he knows how to and feels comfortable talking through his work and ours. I know his work will always be a solid foundation for me to adapt my own practices. When he is present, he totally is present with you and understands your needs and concerns.
• What has been most helpful is that I feel as if, by watching [my mentor], I’ve gained a new “language.” I have learned how to talk about things in new ways. Many days I watch myself thinking, I’ve only worked here for eight months and I’m turning into a little version of him. It is extremely helpful to have a positive role model you respect.
• I feel like I’ve learned so much through conversations with [my pastoral mentors] as well as by watching them “in action.” I appreciate their willingness to share their own ministry experiences or even the thinking behind decisions they’ve made. I’m constantly learning in ministry—learning about myself, the congregation, God, and the community.

When mentor and mentee are both situated in a shared community of practice, there is a level of exposure to one another’s practice that incorporates a more indirect, informal type of learning into the mentoring relationship. What is learned by the new pastor in relationship to seasoned practitioners cannot be limited to occasions of explicit instruction. There is a whole range of tacit learning as one observes up close and over time the life and world of the pastor. In essence, the new pastor is drawn into the habitus, or mode of life, of ministry in and through coservice to a community of practice. Two prominent learning theorists describe the range of tacit learning that is available within the context of apprenticeship:

What everyday life is like; how masters talk, walk, work, and generally conduct their lives…what other learners are doing; and what learners need to learn to become full practitioners. It includes an increasing understanding of how, when and about what old timers collaborate, collude, and collide and what they enjoy, dislike, respect, and admire. ²⁵

One young pastor in the program identifies the range of learning about pastoral energy and performance when describing the impact of working alongside a gifted mentor:

Pastoral ministry is a juggling act. I knew that (in theory), but I now understand (in reality) just how many balls a pastor has to keep in the air and keep moving, all the while having a performative positive energy about her. This continues to be a growing edge for me as I learn how my own energy and personality match with the daily demands of ministry. I need more down time than most—so finding key minutes in the day to recharge away from people has become essential. The ministry takes a stamina that I am still working to develop.

In many ways, this relationship becomes the nexus of negotiation of one’s pastoral identity. In relation to seasoned practitioners, new pastors are able to see what expert practice looks like and thus more gladly undertake the pathway of formation required for their own maturing.

It is also true that wherever identity is being negotiated there is an intensity that is certain to engender conflict along the way. Stories of this intensity and of related occasions of conflict are not uncommon. However, as coparticipants in a shared community of practice, it is equally common that these conflicts become a constructive part of learning for both mentor and mentee. Jean Lave and Étienne Wenger, the learning theorists, argue: “Shared participation is the stage on which the old and new, the known and the unknown, the established and the hopeful, act out their differences and discover their commonalities.”²⁶

A senior pastor in one of the TiM programs recalls the first time he met in seminar with his residents. He was anticipating it as an occasion when he would be called upon to draw from his reservoir of wisdom distilled from years of pastoral practice. Instead, when he opened the floor for conversation, he was confronted with an array of suggestions for how the practice of ministry in his congregation could be improved upon. His skill as a mentor was expressed in his capacity to utilize their perceptions as a pivot point for reflection on their shared engagement in ministry rather than to become defensive or threatened. The effective negotiation of continuity and change in the life of a congregation is a crucial dimension of mature pastoral leadership. A good mentor/mentee relationship provides an indispensable context for growing one’s capacity for this kind of negotiation on an intensely personal, less public level.

Additionally, the experience of a shared community of practice establishes the conditions for noncompetitive collaboration among pastors. When identity is formed individualistically, centered around authority figures and involving little peer reflection, the practitioner is less open to critique and collaboration. In the context of schooling, learning is often measured and rewarded as an individual achievement. The kind of teaching and learning that can take place for new clergy through their participation in a community of practitioners increases their capacity to learn ministry through the performance of ministry.

The Importance of Engagement with Peers-in-Learning

The importance of peer relationships to the learning of ministry has been a consistent and dominant theme in the feedback from participants themselves. Too often the significance of these relationships has been overlooked because of an emphasis on the mentor/mentee relationship as the principal relational context where learning takes place. Peer relationships have tended to be viewed as supportive of such learning but not essential to it. Others see it differently. Lave and Wenger assert that “where the circulation of knowledge among peers and near peers is possible, it spreads exceedingly rapidly and effectively.”²⁷ The experience of the TiM program strongly echoes this view of the importance of peers to learning.

“Eighty percent of what I’ve learned has come from working with and observing the four residents one year ahead of me,” said one resident, reflecting on the importance of peers. This comment was especially noteworthy in light of the high regard this resident had for her relationship with her pastoral mentor. As important as relationships with mature practitioners are to the learning of ministry, being incorporated into a community of maturing practitioners is equally important. As another pastor remarked, “It is important not only to learn ministry with veteran pastors who are well ahead of me on the learning curve, but also to learn from new pastors who are just ahead of me on the learning curve.” The TiM program has intentionally cultivated the conditions for the mutual learning of ministry. The shared risk and anxiety the participants experience, as well as their mutually discernable growth in skill and identity, establish a deeply formative experience of collegiality.

Increased self-knowledge is a common refrain in the benefits of peer engagement. One young pastor expressed this well: “I have learned how to discern my strengths and weaknesses. I believe part of this is the ability to put myself beside equally well-trained resident peers and see where their gifts are. I have been able to appreciate the diversity of ministry more easily.” Peers are often able to hear things from each other that they cannot from mentors because of the solidarity they feel in this new learning environment.

Some programs are very intentional about using peer-learning formats in their programs. Presenting case studies and ministry reflections (written and oral) to one’s peer group for common reflection and feedback has been widely used. Skilled facilitators use the group’s own process to develop a “community of learners” that is trusting, honest, and mutually supportive. Several peer-based programs also use peer groups as the primary venue for a mentor’s feedback, reflections, and guidance.

Engagement with peers goes a long way to countering the social, cultural, and generational isolation new pastors are prone to experience. In the voice of one pastor, “Being a pastor is a relatively odd thing to do for a living, and if you feel like the only one from your generation taking it on for miles around, it could get quite lonely. I was blessed with terrific peers in this program, who taught me a great deal and provided a wealth of understanding and good humor.” The generational solidarity among pastors in the program was widely viewed as an asset.

The Importance of the Congregation

These programs have helped to clarify the difference lay involvement makes to pastoral formation. The response of congregational members to these programs has been striking. Where lay committees have been formed to participate in the formation process, members have been energized by the experience, finding themselves caught up in a new understanding and regard for pastoral leadership and their relation to it. The dual identity of pastor and pastor-in-training intrinsic to these programs creates the conditions for a more open-ended encounter between pastor and laity. The typical division of labor that so often characterizes congregational life is reframed as a partnership of collaboration and coparticipation in the teaching and learning of ministry.

Reflecting on how his experience of congregational life had changed, one young pastor said that “the lay leadership is very active in many ways, and mentoring me is just one example. It is encouraging to know that this kind of community can and does exist, and to be mentored by an entire community is truly a living out of everyone’s baptismal call.” As long as new pastors stay open and “teachable” in their attitude toward the congregation, an unusually strong learning relationship can be formed. Maintaining this kind of mentoring relationship between laity and clergy is sometimes more difficult to do when laypersons are confined to roles as the beneficiaries of skilled pastoral leadership.

In the residency-based models especially, laypersons have been intentionally incorporated into the process of pastoral formation. Through the development of lay committees, interactions between pastors and congregation members are structured into the programs, adding another dimension to the reflective immersion they encourage. Pastors and laity become acquainted with each other’s lives both in and beyond the context of congregational life. These new pastors are immersed in the life-worlds of everyday Christians. This experience challenges the tendency to generate a clergy culture as a form of protection against the overwhelming demands of laity or a lay culture that is structured as a protection against the power needs of clergy.

This sustained, close encounter between congregants and clergy around the teaching and learning of ministry sets the stage for pastoral identity to be shaped and mediated ecclesially. Seminary graduates sometimes are schooled into an identity that is often more reflective of the clinical world and its client/patient typology than it is of the congregational world of mutual ministry. In the TiM programs, pastors come to experience themselves and congregation members as coparticipants in Christian community, partnered in making their way together in the world.

Situating the TiM Initiative within the Larger and Longer Story of Theological Education

The question of how to integrate practice-centered pastoral formation into formal theological education is an enduring one. Following each major study of theological education in the United States, new strategies were developed: settlement houses, ministry specialization, field-based learning, professional skills development, and clinical pastoral education.²⁸ Those who are familiar with the historical narrative of theological education in mainline Protestantism over the last century will recognize aspects of these within the TiM models, as there were numerous episodes of experimentation with practice-centered, field-based pastoral formation.²⁹ Many such experiments tended to run out of steam, in part because they were separate from wider ecclesial institutions, practices, and funding.³⁰ Only supervised field education and the clinical pastoral ducation movement survived in force, partly due to creative funding partnerships with local churches, hospitals, and clinical settings.

One of the principal findings in the TiM effort has been that when practice-centered teaching and learning of ministry is situated in the domain of congregational practice rather than the domain of schooling, a whole new range of innovative possibility opens up. Furthermore, the communities and practitioners who take on the challenge of teaching and learning in the midst of practice begin to develop the necessary confidence and competencies that resource their capacities for continuing innovation. Denominations, judicatories, congregations, and seminaries come out of the “blame game” mentality for failed pastoral formation to join hands in developing new strategies of collaboration.

Cultivating the kind of approaches we have described in this report has a way of awakening and developing the wisdom intrinsic to congregations and their leaders. We are not suggesting that this wisdom is inevitably present in each and every congregation or pastor. However, we are proposing that it is present in many congregations and pastors (albeit in varying degrees) and that initiatives like these can help such wisdom become evident and transferable.