TiL Pastoral Ordination- UMC

Welcome to the Truth in Love podcast. Thank you for joining us this evening. We are continuing in our series on pastoral ordination. Tonight, we have a special guest with us. He is going to share with us about the pastoral ordination process in the United Methodist Church.

Stick with us.

Good evening, folks. I'm Dan. This is Rob. As he said, we're interviewing our new friend up above us this evening. He's from the United Methodist Church. It's been interesting going through all these different denominations and seeing the different church polities and how they work together, how ordination works in different denominations.

Tonight, we're excited to see what the United Methodists have to say about things. Jonathan, welcome to the podcast. If you would, start us off. Just tell us a little bit about yourself, where you're from, where you're serving, what you're doing, how it looks.

Throw some titles, drop some names, however it looks for you.

Great. Thank you. I am Jonathan LeMaster Smith, although a senior citizen Sunday school class dubbed me Dr. J because my name was too long for them to pronounce. I am Dr. J to even some of my students now.

I am a certified lay minister in the United Methodist Church and pastor of two churches in Vail, North Carolina, which is outside of both Lincolnton and Hickory, depending on where you are. They are Reeps Grove and Macedonia United Methodist Churches, two great churches.

I'm also a professor of various things, including United Methodist Studies, Christian education, and rural ministry. I do that mainly right now for Kairos University, which is a traditionally North American Baptist, but it has several different denominations from across the world.

I live in Hildebrand, North Carolina, which if you've seen the Hunger Games movies is district 12 of the Hunger Games. Those mill villages they live in are across the interstate from me.

Oh, that's interesting. The closest thing I have to a TV story is they shot, I forget what show it was, in Gastonia. We had somebody try to pass off one of those fake $100 bills that a Taco Bell is working with.

Oh, wow. They got the guy. Our cashier took the money, and so we were in trouble, but it was interesting. I guess, Rob, why don't you start us off asking some questions from the list. Okay.

I'll start off with what you call my baby. It is your baby. I ask this question differently every time we have the podcast. Really, I think, I was trying to think about this today, really the reason why I think that I want to ask this question is because we get in a tizzy when we have theological differences with somebody else, and we don't know how to handle disagreements.

Somebody will claim this is biblical, or how I believe is the biblical view, and though you're quoting the same verse, you have a different interpretation. Your view is not the biblical view, and vice versa.

You'll say the same thing to me, and then sometimes we will claim something to be biblical and really want to hold people to the line on that biblical view when really it's more of a description in the Bible and not prescriptive.

With that being said, I state all that just so that people can, hopefully we can be an example of people who can relax and say, hey, look, we want to take some time, be patient, and examine things. In the heart of that, when it comes to pastoral ordination, do you find it to be biblical as something that we should hold to and practice?

Is it more just a descriptive thing? How do you view pastoral ordination?

So for me, I can answer both what my denomination says and then what I say about that. So I'll start with my denomination. My denomination does claim it to be biblical, and we actually cite in our Book of Discipline that we call it an ordination and an apostolic ministry, and we reference Acts 6, especially the calling together and assigning people to particular tasks and ministry and setting them apart for that.

And then we'll also go to Ephesians 4 and the different gifts and ministries that are given to all persons. As the United Methodist Church kind of sort of roots itself in that sort of apostolic tradition going back to the Church of England, back to the Roman Catholic Church, in that vein, and we rooted in the naming of this.

And in fact, we lift up the two orders of clergy that get mentioned quite a bit in the Book of Acts, the elder and the deacon, as our two main orders of clergy. Now, for me, I root it. For me, it is biblical.

I think it takes on different forms. I lean towards what John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, would call prudential means of grace or prudential forms of ministry. As needed, different forms of set-apart ministry can rise up as it happens throughout Scripture.

Sometimes there are prophets, sometimes priests, sometimes more pastoral figures that emerge in ministry. So I think we are to carry that further with us, but it may look different depending upon the needs of God's people at the time as part of that.

That's interesting.

Can you talk about that just a little bit more? Maybe flesh out just a fuzz more. It was interesting. I was liking what you were saying.

Which part? I mean, I can flesh out just the different forms of ministry for different times? Yeah, yeah, something like that. So I like the idea of priesting. One of the Methodist ideas is preaching Christ in all his offices and that Christ is a priest, prophet, and pastor, or that sort of reality.

And so we need to be in ministry in different ways for different seasons as part of that. So that we should, as denominations, as Christians, lift up different forms of ministry at different times, be that a teaching ministry, a caring ministry, a health ministry, and label leaders for that as part of that.

Now, in terms of ordination, we tend to focus primarily on the leaders of the church as part of that and what those leaders of the church might look like, be that elders and pastors, be that even youth ministers and certifying or licensing them, those sort of things.

Now, one thing we also have a problem with as denominations is often we lean on what society expects, not what is actually needed by God's kingdom as part of that. So we'll start expecting certain things out of our pastors.

So we only pick certain pastors that fit maybe a socioeconomic class. The United Methodist Church had a desire to have very educated pastors at one point. They wanted to send their pastors to the places like Harvard and Princeton.

And eventually then we get things like Duke and Vanderbilt emerging to help deal with that within our denomination as part of that.

I'm most familiar with folks who are pastoring in the United Methodist Church attending Duke University. Is that a requirement to be a pastor in the United Methodist Church, is that you attend one of these Methodist universities?

So it's complicated.

There are multiple paths. But to be an ordained elder or an ordained deacon, there are paths that we expect seminary education in some form out of people. That could be from one of our 13 United Methodist seminaries, and that includes places like Duke, Emory, Boston University, Southern Methodist, or it could be at an approved seminary within our denominational approving body called the University Senate that approves seminaries for pastors to attend.

Yeah.

I like hearing from all these different denominations and their emphasis on training. And that causes me to pause and reflect on my own denomination, and, you know, the Baptist church is more autonomous, and so therefore there's probably a desire in all Baptist churches for their pastor to have education.

However, you get to more of these rural churches, and they can't afford. Oh, exactly. Education in our denomination seems to be more about how much money you can make, the size of the church that you can be hired at, and the money that you can make.

And the rural churches just can't afford. That's not just your denomination.

That's not just your denomination. Gotcha. We do have churches that pay quite a bit more than others. Sure.

But as what you were saying and also reflecting on the Presbyterian church and some of the other denominations that we listen to, there's this more unified emphasis on education. Yeah, I think we as Baptists, we would emphasize it, but not as uniformly.

Yes, there's not as much of an expectation or demand that you have a particular master's degree from a particular university, that sort of thing.

Right. It's not necessary, but it's the emphasis on training. Yes. And you don't have to get that from a university with a master's degree. You can get that through discipleship and being underneath somebody else.

I believe in that. However, I love the emphasis on training.

Oh, absolutely, and I think some denominations are getting it right with having conference or convention or association trainings that train their pastors. So if they can't afford to go to one of the major universities, they can still get the training that will help them be in ministry for where they are.

Right. Yeah, our denomination, we have the Reformed Presbyterian Theological Seminary up in Pittsburgh. If you need more training or a class or some lectures, yeah, they'll get you right in there and make sure that you've got what you need to succeed.

Good stuff. So in the United Methodist Church, well, first, biblically. Yes. Do you see a biblical requirement that someone be ordained in order to be a pastor or elder in a church? In other words, on the flip side, could someone who is not ordained, biblically speaking, hold that office in the church?

Or should they? I guess could and should, maybe two different things.

That's an interesting question because I am not ordained. I am certified in our denomination versus ordained because we have different levels. But if we're thinking biblically, that is set apart by a group of people to do the work of God, then yes, I think there needs to be somebody that identifies a person as a person set apart for ministry.

Now, for us, that may be depending on where it's at, different levels within our denomination that do that. Now, to be on the higher levels, you need a larger body to affirm you through a series of processes.

But yes, I think there is a biblical expectation that someone be called to ministry and that ministry be identified by another body within our denomination, or in any denomination, really. I mean, there are people, I think, who are called but don't have a church.

They just kind of wander the kind of circuit ride and do that pulpit supply sort of thing. But it's that sort of sense of if you are called to ministry, there needs to be other people identifying those gifts and those fruits coming from you.

Right. No lone ranger pastor. Yeah. Yes. All right. So I'm going to jump out of order, Rob, because I think we should ask one out of order, and then I'll let you jump back in. Because I think it'll be helpful as we move forward.

Can you describe the church polity, the structure of the United Methodist Church, so that when we get into talking about the ordination process, the certifying processes, we can have some framework to go on as far as those structures go.

So just kind of describe the polity and structure of the United Methodist Church. As best you can, remember, we have to go to bed sometime tonight.

Yeah. Well, this is my job. So I teach full semester-long courses on it.

So I'll try to... You have a semester. Go on ahead.

Yeah. I'm happy to share. So the United Methodist Church is what we call a connectional system. It's sort of an idea that we made up that we are interconnected bodies with no real top or bottom, as opposed to, say, a more hierarchical structure like the Roman Catholic Church or a more autonomous structure like, say, the Southern Baptist Church that has loose associations and conventions as part of that.

So we have different... And when we became a denomination, we sort of... We were the Methodist Episcopal Church in North America, but every denomination changes their names 30 times over the course of the existence of the United States.

And we decided we wanted to base our structure on the United States government. At one point, John Wesley was trying to send us over rules to follow, and he was trying to set himself up as a pope, self-appointed pope, within our sort of denomination.

And our newly created bishops said no, and they created a democratic process for discerning what the future of the Methodist Episcopal Church in North America is. And so with that, we get, out of necessity, first a general conference that is the governing body for the entire denomination.

That sets the book of discipline for us. It meets usually every four years, and our next one that was supposed to meet in 2020, but COVID and global travel and wars and all of that set us back, is meeting in Charlotte in April.

So that is our next global gathering of that, and we send lay people and clergy, ordained clergy from around the world, go to that to help decide the future of the denomination every four years as part of that.

The general conference has set the structure for other processes. We actually have, within our denomination, general conference and jurisdictional conference is the next one, and jurisdictional conferences in the U .S., central conferences outside the U .S., are bodies that are regional, and these bodies mainly elect our bishops and appoint people to general agencies, which are the Board of Discipleship, Board of Missions, those sort of things that most denominations have some sort of idea around.

Are those geographical in nature? Are they linked by some other sort of...

Well, they are now geographic in nature. There was one that was created in 1939 that was race-related, and we decided to get rid of that one because we wanted to desegregate our denomination as part of that.

We created that... It was intentionally designed to be racist because when the churches re-merged in the 1930s, certain people refused to be part of it if they had the possibility of having an African-American pastor serving in their conference as part of that.

That has since been dissolved, and they are only... We have, in our discipline, the jurisdictional and central conference can only be regionally based, geographically based. They cannot be any other sort of thing.

Now, there has been discussions of affinity-based conferencing, but we have not gotten to have a meeting since 2016.

The ACNA, the Anglicans, have affinity dioceses, so that's kind of what spurred on that question. I heard them talking about that not too long ago.

Yes. I will say then, from there, we get into the annual conferences. The annual conference is what we call the basic unit of the church. The annual conferences were created to be the bodies that start and close churches, that ordain clergy, that move clergy around as part of their ministry.

So where most denominations say the church is the basic body of it, the local church is the basic body of it, we take it a step up to that regional body. Here in North Carolina, the western part, we are in the Western North Carolina Conference.

Since you are in upstate New York, you're probably in the Upper New York Annual Conference, regionally, as part of that. And this body is the one in which we send people to our district committees and boards of ministry in order to discern whether or not they are called to ministry and then to ordain and appoint them as part of that.

That meets, like it says, annually. So we meet every year. Mine meets at Lake Junaluska up in Waynesville every year as part of this. And that is where each year, every pastor could be reappointed each year by the bishop and the cabinet of the bishop, which are the district superintendents in the area.

So below, and stop me with any questions, because we are a complex system as part of this. But then we have the districts, which are sort of….

Does that happen very often? I mean, obviously, you'd have certain reappointment. Obviously, you'd have certain situations where it may be preferable or you may need to. Yes. But does it happen often?

It used to be mandatory every four years, the pastor had to do. We have since changed that to needs-based and context-based realities of that. So some pastors may be at an appointment one year. Some may be there 20 years.

We've gotten much more flexible with that. And each year, the church gets to say, we want to keep the pastor each year. The pastor gets to say, I want to stay there. But then again, the bishop and the cabinet could say, even if both are in agreement, I need this pastor to go here now.

That's part of that. But yes, it doesn't happen nearly as often. And smaller, more rural churches tend to have more turnover than, say, more stable, larger churches, say a county seat church or a larger church.

Like one of our big ones is Myers Park United Methodist in Charlotte, huge church. Their pastor's been there. Our largest denominationally is the Church of the Resurrection of Leawood, Kansas. And I think that's 40 ,000 members.

And he's been there since its inception, I believe, or very early before that. His name's Adam Hamilton. He gets floated around. I think he did the National Prayer Breakfast one year as part of that. And then we have districts, which are sort of sub-annual conferences that are really just regional-based bodies because our conferences are huge.

Like some of our annual conferences are the states of Montana, Wyoming, and parts of Colorado. And then other ones are, you know, Western North Carolina. There's a lot more Methodists and a lot more people in this state as part of that.

So those districts are set up with district superintendents, which are essentially deputy bishops. They are appointed by the bishop to serve. They are always elders in full connection in our denomination.

And that regional gathers for licensing of local pastors because we have a local pastor level below the ordination level, as well as approving candidates for ministry from local churches to go before the conference as part of that.

And then we get down to the local church level as part of that. And the local church is, of course, maybe in the United Methodist Church, which we sometimes put two, three, four, 25 churches together.

As part of the reality, we call it a charge or a circuit. That's part of that. So that's where we get down to. That's the basic structure. On the upper level, we have the council of bishops is the executive branch.

The general conference is legislative, and we do have a judicial branch called the judicial council.

Who makes up the judicial branch? Do they just rotate in different?

So they are appointed by general conference, and there are always nine people and sometimes it's five clergy and four lady, and sometimes it's five lady and four clergy, depending upon the cycle with alternates in case of sickness and those sort of things.

Sure.

Well, since we're on this topic, if you don't mind, if you would like to continue that conversation and tell us more about the more of the local level, the who is ordained, who's not ordained the different levels of licensing that we were talking about earlier, explain to us what's going on there on a local level.

All right. So I'll start at the top, the ordination level. So we have in our denomination deacons. Traditionally deacons were actually in the United Methodist church. You ordained deacon and then you were ordained elder.

That cause we grew out of the Anglican tradition. So you were ordained deacon for a provisional period. If you can show fruits of ministry, you would then approve to be an elder in full connection. That means you had full clergy rights within our denomination.

In 1996, we split it up to be deacons and elders as equal clergy within our, within our conference, within our denomination. Elders were called to are called to word service, sacrament and order. And deacons are called to word service, compassion and justice as part of that.

The role of the deacon is to be a specialized ministry that is focused on bridging the gap between the church and the world. So we have deacons in our denomination who are appointed. Occasionally they're appointed as the head pastor of a church, but they're only allowed to do that for six years.

Mostly it's you're going to be a specialized ministry, the minister of music, the minister of youth and children, minister of missions as part of that, or you can be appointed in outside the church and you have people who are lawyers and social workers, teachers, missionaries, those sorts of things that go about doing that and yet serve also in relationship to the church.

Now the elder is the more traditional pastoral looking figure of the denomination. That's the person who's upfront preaching most of the time doing communion, doing baptisms, that sort of reality. But in many of our churches we have, we have the level of licensed local pastor and we can get into the educational requirements of all of these too.

The licensed local pastor is a local preacher that is licensed to do sacraments only in their congregation and to do, and to do leadership only within their congregation. So they can do baptisms and communion within their congregation or for members of their congregation as well as weddings.

That's the other third one they can do as part of that. And they only usually move around within the district unless they request to move to another district as part of that. They have a lower, it's sad, but the elders and deacons have a minimum salary.

And then the local pastors have a lower minimum salary as part of that. And then I'm a certified lay minister, which I'm a lay person. So I have no sacramental rights. So I have clergy who will bless my elements for communion for me ahead of time.

And I have, if I need a baptism, I bring in another clergy person as part of that to assist with that because of the requirements within our denomination to do that. I, the reason I'm a certified lay minister, not clergy is because I've never felt called to ordination, but I have felt called to be in ministry as a lay person.

And it just happens that I make sense in this, in this situation as part of that. I have no idea how long I'll be here. It's been a year, almost two years now, since I've been here as part of that, but I make sense in this space and I'm able to connect with clergy to do the other parts for me because we are intentionally connectional.

So if I ask a clergy person to bless my communion elements for me, they essentially have to as part of that.

I know for myself. So if I'm thinking that there's probably many other people want to be thinking about why the complexity and then why, why does he have to call in someone else to, to bless, bless the Lord's supper or, or come and do a baptism?

Why does he need, why can't he do it himself? But in a positive light, I'm thinking to myself, you know, they are, they are safeguarding those positions. They are, they are protecting their congregation.

You can't just be any person off the street to administer those things. So there is some with the complexity, it sounds like there's some, there's some responsibility there. There's some protection there.

There's some care given to who holds these positions. And of course it's for the glory of God is for the, you know, service of the congregation. But, but that part I can really appreciate. It would be too long to ask the other part of that question.

What, how do you differ from the other denominator or other churches in your process? That would just take too long. So what was the question I was going to ask? I'll come back to it later. What are some of the distinctive in the United Methodist Church that make it unique from other associations?

So that, that's kind of a similar question. So what are some of the, some of the ones that float to the top for you that, that make you, make the Methodist Church distinctive or different than the other denominations that you, maybe you appreciate?

I think for me, the distinctiveness is our focus on connectionalism that there is no real top. There is no real body. Each rights are reserved for different levels of the church in different ways. So we all have to be functioning.

And I consider connectionalism, the process in which we are moved. Of course, people, pastors being reappointed, people going to servity in different places, money, because of course money moves back and forth.

That's a biblical concept. Money moves between churches, that sort of thing. And then of course resources. But then my final thing is it helps that we are connected through the Holy Spirit, of course, that we are connected as a church.

And we acknowledge sort of that we may be different. I'm very different. My denominate, my congregations are very different than say a West coast congregation, the United Methodist Church, an African congregation, a Norwegian congregation, but we have sort of this similar connectional structure and we root it in sort of the historical Methodist principles of grace and our particular understanding of grace, as well as our understanding of John Wesley's rules for ministry, particularly our rules for our societies is what we call them.

The do no harm, do good, and attend upon all the ordinances of God as the core of that, all of which is rooted in scripture is what we say about our work. But I think that that connectional reality of saying that, and also the accountability structure that we have in place, that to be, especially with an ordination, to be ordained, you go before many different bodies who you have to then show that you have produced fruit of ministry and that you were called.

And so that you move from the local church to the district, to the conference, to the educating bodies, depending on whether you do course of study for licensed local pastors and some elders do that, or a master of divinity type program as part of that.

And then it goes all the way up to the annual conference. The clergy of the annual conference decide whether or not someone is to be ordained. The clergy decide who gets to join their ranks as part of that.

And I think that's a unique thing. And all the clergy in the area and in the conference vote on that. All the ordained clergy get to vote on that.

Is there a questioning process, a theological questioning process, a character evaluation?

Absolutely. We have a long process. We actually have, I believe, close to 20 questions you have to answer in our book of discipline that shows for the first round of, because you become provisional first, and then you have to do a three-year residency period to prove competency and fruits of ministry before you are fully ordained.

And there is a questioning process. There's both a written as well as a, you have to turn in a sermon or a creative proclamation. If you don't plan on being a preaching pastor and you have to also turn in fruitfulness and ministry type projects, as well as letters of recommendation, psychological evaluations, those sorts of things.

And then you go before a board that asks you theological questions, both on the district level and the conference level. And then there are finally questions at annual conference. They're historic that John Wesley expected people to answer as part of that.

Nice. So I guess we came to that part where maybe we could walk through that process. Say you had somebody who was in the church and they said, I feel called to be an elder in the church. I'd like to go down the road towards ordination.

Just starting from square one, what would be the practical chronological steps that they would take to go on that journey? All right. I don't even think that's on the paper, but hey. I had already written it out for myself.

Yes. So we have the next 45 minutes to go over this process. Absolutely. Yeah. Until 730 tomorrow. Oh, gosh. Yeah. I don't have anything till 11. I don't have anything till 1130 tomorrow morning. So that's good.

So that is what we have is if you feel called to ministry, you are to approach the pastor of your church as part of that. And to the pastor of the church, you have conversations about what that might look like.

And then we have recommendations that pastors can use to talk with their people. And then if that person is feeling led to ministry, we have what we call a discerning your call process or an inquiring candidate process.

I like the one that's more discerning your call. Less sounds like a law degree and more like a ministry process. The discerning your call process, which we provide a one or two day, depending on your annual conference, there's usually a gathering of people who are inquiring in ministry as part of that.

And they go and they have what we call our director, what's actually our associate director of ministerial services. And they have people to present on the different orders of ministry and different possibilities within ministry.

And that is done for the annual conference. And then you are assigned to a candidacy group in which you go through over the course of six months or a year, they process and other places do it differently.

You may have a one-on-one mentor, but it's essentially a mentoring process to go through the expectations of the ministry process within the denomination, as well as doing gifts analysis, doing leadership expectations, doing, you know, understanding the financial realities of being in ministry, all of this, both the practical and spiritual realities of that.

And at the end of that, if you are still considering going on, you can go a few different ways. The first would be to, if you're considering being ordained as an elder or a deacon, and these have the same, these have parallel paths within that.

You would then say, I'm interested in becoming an elder or a deacon. And then you begin the education process, which is depending on what you're doing, either a master of divinity or a master's degree in a specific field with what we call the basic graduate theological studies, especially, this is for deacons who may not be serving in a church, but may be serving as a teacher at something.

But we have these educational requirements as part of that. And once you get towards the end of that and you are doing well, we require a certain GPA and certain courses that you have to take as part of that.

Denominational studies being one of those, we require evangelism missions and evangelism missions, Bible worship preaching, the ones you would really want to make sure your clergy have. You then would begin the provisional process where you would go before the district committee on ministry to, and, and hopefully you have developed a relationship with the district committee on ministry because they do want certain, I'm going to back up.

I skipped a step. You then have to go before your, after you go before that discerning my call and the mentors approve you, you then have to go before the district committee on ministry to be certified as a candidate for ministry.

And that district committee asks you to write a paper and interviews you and they vote on that. And then they can send you forward to the education process. Now let's go back to the education process.

You're done with that. Almost done with that. We begin what is called the provisional process in which there are papers, sermons, all of this paperwork to turn in. You go back before the district committee and then back then after that, if they approve you, you go to the board of ordained ministry, which is the regional body in which people will come in and ask you the theological, the ministry and the practical questions of life.

Once you are at that point, if they, they can either approve you or defer you. If they defer you, they will usually tell you what you have to do to make it up, to figure out what's next for you. If they approve you, you didn't go before the annual conference in June.

You have to stand up on stage in front of a thousand people. And depending on what set up the bishop will hold his hand over your head or her hand over your head and do that and say, do you approve this person?

And they vote yes. And then they are, there's a worship service as part of that where they are commissioned as provisional members of the annual conference. Then you go before what we call the residency and ministry process in which you are assigned another mentor to work with you in that two to three year period where you grow in ministry.

And then after that, you can then go to before the ordination process in which you go before your board of ordained ministry again, but this time having shown fruit in your ministry, writing a different set of papers, providing different sermons and projects.

And then again, they can defer you or pass you. And if you pass, you then go before the ordaining body of the annual conference to be ordained. And if they, you say, yes, you're now ordained. And that if you're ordained as an elder, you are guaranteed a church unless you fall out of good standing within our denomination as part of that.

And if you were a Deacon, you have support, but you are in charge with finding your own appointment. After that, there is your guarantee for, for life to the point of retirement to be in clergy.

Well, I, I just got really comfortable where I am in the Southern Baptist church when you said GPA. Yeah. Yeah.

So here's, here's another one that we don't have on, on the list. Say I was ordained with my denomination and now all of a sudden you've convinced me of provenient grace and the, and the, the goodness, the goodness of class meetings and, and all, all the other good Methodist stuff.

And I would like to transfer my credentials to the United Methodist church. How, how would that look?

Well, we do have a, because we're Methodist, we have a method for that. You are interested in converting to becoming over. So one of the things we have options for that you can be serving in our denomination on loan from another denomination.

That is one option. So you can be, continue to keep your credentials in your denomination if it is an approved denomination within that. And you have to then begin an educational process to stay within that or you, which is basically having your orders of ministry from another, another cup, another faith community recognized in ours as part of that.

Or you can transfer yourself to our, transfer your ordination to our denomination as part of that. And you then become a United Methodist pastor and forfeit your previous ordination as part of that. The process for that is an educational process.

Again, you have to get especially United Methodist history, doctrine and polity is what we call them as part of that. And that you will then just like other elders go before our board of order ministry to be approved to do that.

As part of that. So we have a process for that. Different denominations have different levels. If you're transferring over from one of the Wesleyan Methodist family denominations, it's a lot easier. Nazarene, AME, Wesleyan, any of that.

If you're coming from a reformed or a Baptist setting, it's going to be different. It's going to have more requirements and those sorts of things.