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The Company of New Pastors
Providing Vocational
Nurture for Ministry Candidates and New Pastors
Company of New Pastors is a vocational
formation program designed to foster excellence in new pastors by deepening and
sustaining the cultivation of their theological vocation. It invites and
integrates candidates and newly ordained pastors into Theology
and Worship’s churchwide Company
of Pastors. Focusing on the critical period of vocational
formation beginning in seminary and continuing into the first
years of ministry, Company of New Pastors promotes faithfulness,
fruitfulness, and fulfillment in ministry by establishing and
nurturing a sustained habitus of theological exploration
and spiritual formation. This habitus richly funds the
energy and wisdom necessary for sound, creative engagement with pastoral ministry’s
multifarious challenges, expectations, and opportunities.
The Company of New Pastors engages participants in specific
disciplines that shape and nurture good ministry. The Company
of New Pastors national staff recruits seminary faculty leaders
from each of the PC(USA) seminaries, who in turn recruit from
each seminary class a cohort of 6-12 student participants. Participants
adopt a covenant of daily prayer and study, and commit themselves
to participate regularly in vocational formation peer groups,
in which they encourage and admonish one another in their deepening
engagement with their common calling. In order to be eligible
for inclusion, students must be inquirers or candidates in the
PC(USA) ordination process.
Faculty leaders convene their “company” monthly,
to engage in common prayer and theological study of their ordination vows. Upon
graduation, participants are configured into regional groups, which are convened
and led by veteran pastors, who themselves embody vocational excellence in ministry
that is grounded in a sound pastoral habitus. These pastor-groups meet for
four-day sessions at least once a year.
Both seminarian and pastor gatherings
are patterned after the well-honed model of Theology and Worship’s Pastor-Theologian
Program consultations, in which pastors meet for sustained
study of common texts, within the framework of shared engagement in the “daily offices” of
morning, noon, and evening prayer. Meetings are usually accompanied by extended
table fellowship. Thus these gatherings intentionally embody the ancient Christian
wisdom that growth in ministry is fruitfully nurtured within the nexus of a community
gathered around teaching, fellowship, breaking bread, and prayer. (Acts 2:42)
Between gatherings, participants’ daily
disciplines follow the covenant of the Company of Pastors, which includes
Scripture reading following the ecumenical daily lectionary,
prayer, and immersion in the confessional heritage of the Reformed tradition.
Members of the Company also commit to read assigned books together, and to gather
with peers for mutual admonition and encouragement in their common calling.
The Company of New Pastors extends
and deepens Excellence From the Start, Theology and Worship’s pilot program
focusing on transition into ministry. Excellence From the Start has provided
significant benefits to approximately 80 graduates from the classes of 2001 and
2002 at five seminaries. Company of New Pastors will eventually serve students
and graduates from all PC(USA) seminaries, plus
Fuller Theological Seminary. Company of New Pastors receives
its major funding from the Lilly
Endowment through 2006, with funding gradually shifting
to various church agencies, to the end that Company of New Pastors becomes woven
into the ongoing fabric of the church’s
life and culture.
Like Excellence From the Start, the Company of New Pastors
focuses especially on enriching and deepening the specifically
theological vocation of pastors. The Company of New Pastors
is anchored by the conviction that the many social, personal,
organizational, and managerial skills and virtues of good pastoral
practice are funded and sustained for the long haul from a core
of deep, persistent engagement with the God who calls forth
pastoral ministry.
Being a good pastor is more than the
aggregate of good ministry actions in a particular field of call. What one does
as a pastor flows from who one is as a person called by God. It is crucial
that pastors nourish a sense of vocation that both antecedes
and transcends their current job obligations. Only then will they have both the
freedom and the resources necessary to engage ministry over a lifetime in fullness
of “energy, intelligence,
imagination, and love,” in accordance with their ordination
vows. [Book of Order, Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), G-14.0405
b.8]
The Company of New Pastors affords candidates for ministry
and new pastors a concrete path to nurture this core vocational
vitality. Regular prayer and theological study keep heart and
mind vitally engaged with the faith; doing this in company with
peers assures that pastors will encourage one another to disciplined
maintenance and expansion of these practices. |
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The relationship
of Company of New Pastors to other Entrance-Into-Ministry initiatives
Numerous seminaries, congregations, and church governing
bodies have in recent years attempted to address the pressing need
to strengthen candidates as they complete preparation and move
into the practice of parish ministry. Early attrition from parish ministry continues
to deplete the church’s supply of good
and faithful pastors, while many of those graduating with Masters
of Divinity are now choosing vocations other than parish ministry. Seminaries
are mounting new efforts to identify, matriculate, prepare, and graduate a more
robust supply of candidates for ministry, while governing bodies and congregations
are exploring various strategies that might offer deeper encouragement and
support for those entering parish ministry. Many of these initiatives
have sought to add new components of spiritual formation and direction that have
typically been lacking in the lives of Protestant pastors.
Most efforts to strengthen entrance
into ministry are focused either on the seminary experience, or on the first
call experience. Company of New Pastors is distinctive in that it engages those
entering ministry while they are still in seminary, and continues with them well
into their first years of call. It is shaped by the awareness that seminary and
first call environments are inextricably linked in the formation and nurture
of a pastor’s
vocational understanding and practices. The question is not
whether seminaries and first call experiences together shape a vocational identity,
but what sort of vocational identity they shape. Company of New Pastors seeks
to inculcate and nurture the distinctively theological vocation that forms the
core of robust pastoral ministry.
In recent years a number of congregations
have undertaken programs of pastoral residency, where newly ordained ministers
are afforded opportunity for extended supervised parish ministry. Meanwhile,
governing bodies and seminaries have sponsored continuing education events specifically
designed to assist newly ordained clergy engage their vocation more faithfully
and fruitfully. Beneath these various efforts lies a deep conviction that much
in pastoral ministry can be learned only from within the context of immersion
in that ministry. Company of New Pastors shares this assumption fully, with the
added observation that many pastors’ patterns for regular vocational nurture
are set already in their seminary experience. The Company of New Pastors
is rooted in the conviction that to wait until after seminary
to nurture specific practices that form and sustain the pastoral vocation is
to wait too long.
The Company of New Pastors is both
a stand-alone program, administered by the Office of Theology and Worship, and
a cooperative program, that provides patterns, staffing, and support for entrance
into ministry programs being undertaken by other agencies. It offers a foundation
to new pastor support that will stay in place for the duration of a participant’s
vocational life. While many other initiatives for new pastors seek primarily
to address the needs that are particular to the first years
of pastoral ministry, Company of New Pastors initiates new ministers into a life-long
pattern. As such, it offers a framework into which other programs can merge their
efforts to address the special needs of new pastors. Those special needs will
pass, but the relationships and vocational nurture launched in the
Company will continue. |
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How the Company
of New Pastors extends and solidifies the emerging work of the
Office of Theology and Worship to shape and sustain the theological
vocation of pastors in the PC(USA)
Ten years ago the Office of Theology and Worship began
convening groups of 10-20 pastors into “pastor-theologian
consultations.” These three-day consultations brought
pastors together for sustained study and prayer. Participants
were themselves the primary theologians at the table —
no external “experts” were imported. In preparation
for their gatherings, they read significant literature and wrote
papers in conversation with their readings, all of which issued
in extended sessions of lively theological conversation, framed
by the offices of daily prayer each morning, noon, and evening.
Many reported that these consultations reconnected them with
their original sense of God’s call. Engaging colleagues
in intensive study and disciplined prayer over several days renewed and sharpened
their vocational identity as ministers of Word and Sacrament.
Theology and Worship discovered, however,
that a single pastor-theologian consultation, inspiring as it may be, does not
by itself correct the course of a pastor’s vocational trajectory. It became
clear that, if they were to get back on track and stay on track,
pastors needed to engage one another regularly this way. This
insight led the Office of Theology and Worship five years ago
to launch a national network for pastors, in which pastors are
extended the opportunity to think and pray together in an ongoing
covenant. The Reformed tradition offers a compelling model for
such a network, namely John Calvin’s “Venerable
Company of Pastors” in Geneva, and so this new initiative
was launched as the PC(USA) Company of
Pastors.
Over the past five years, the Company
of Pastors has enrolled nearly 1200 pastors. Many have found in the Company of
Pastors’
covenant an urgently-needed anchor for personal cultivation
of theological and spiritual vitality. But it has become increasingly clear that
unless pastors periodically meet to encourage and admonish one another, they
find it all too easy to set aside the commitments of the covenant due to the
press of demands they face in their day to day labors.
It is very difficult for pastors who
already have already carved out established vocational patterns to change deeply
entrenched habits midstream. Slowly but surely, a pastor’s
life of study can taper down to little more than the necessary
minimum for preparing sermons and lessons, and a pastor’s
life of prayer can devolve essentially into a tool for pastoral care. Deeply
habituated in such vocational patterns, pastors often struggle in vain to pull
themselves out of well-worn ruts to embrace new commitments to study and prayer.
All too easily pastoral ministry becomes
primarily a matter of getting a job done, rather than an abiding vocation that
is regularly nourished quite apart from the current demands of particular local
ministry situations. For vocation-sustaining habits of regular study and prayer — quite apart from
job responsibilities — to be faithfully maintained, pastors
need to gather regularly to encourage one another in such practices.
The vision of the Company of New Pastors
has emerged from these various discoveries. The Company of New Pastors seeks
to situate and habituate pastors in a rhythm of rigorous study
and disciplined prayer, in regular company with colleagues under the oversight
of wise spiritual directors, from the very outset of their vocational journeys.
The Office of Theology and Worship’s
Pastor-Theologian, Company of Pastors and Excellence From the
Start programs have demonstrated that such engagements do in fact renew and nurture
the theological vocation of pastors. So, while the precise configuration of Company
of New Pastors may look different in various places, its core will remain faithful
to this pattern of vocational nurture that is firmly rooted in deep experience
with pastors far and wide. |
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Company of
New Pastors Program Highlights
Meeting agendas
Group gatherings focus on study framed by common prayer, seasoned
with table and social fellowship. Participants prepare for gatherings
by completing specific reading and writing assignments. Leaders
frame agendas for the gatherings and assure that gatherings
stay on task, but group members all share equally in leadership
assignments, both for study and for prayer.
Study themes
Student groups examine theologically, in detail, the ordination
vows participants will be making when they enter pastoral ministry.
First call groups grapple with the theological foundations of the successive
rubrics in the Service for the Lord’s Day.
Mentoring and spiritual direction
Campus groups and first call groups alike include intentional
mentoring and accountability dimensions, which seminary and
pastor mentors will be responsible to establish and maintain.
This both shapes group gatherings and includes maintenance of
contact among group members and leaders between gatherings.
Group covenant
Participants in the Company of New Pastors covenant to meet
together regularly for study and prayer, and between meetings
to practice daily disciplines of Bible reading, prayer, and study of the church’s
confessional resources, beginning during their seminary years, and continuing
four years beyond graduation.
Significant group autonomy
While the Company of New Pastors covenant is consistent across
the entire program, and the themes, frequency, and durations
of gatherings will be common to all groups, specific choices of readings, shapes
of group discussions, specific paper assignments, dates of gathering, and ongoing
intra-group contact are left to the discretion of each group’s leaders.
The Office of Theology and Worship provides meeting models and recommended
reading lists, but these are suggestive rather than prescriptive.
Central administrative support
Administrative program staff in Louisville coordinate Company
of New Pastors hospitality contracts, reimbursements, supplies,
travel arrangements, and the like.
Flexible design
Particular Company of New Pastors groups determine much of their
gatherings’ particular patterns and agendas. However,
the essential core of the program — that it be a place
where pastors in company with one another, under the guidance
of wise mentors, nurture their theological vocation —
remains consistent for all groups.
Paired leadership
Theology and Worship found that having pairs of leaders for
post-campus Excellence From the Start pastor groups was crucial
to its value. In the way they work together, co-leaders model
what it means to walk with colleagues in accountability and
encouragement around shared disciplines that nurture a common
vocation. Company of New Pastors builds this learning into the
design of its seminarian groups, as well as its new pastor groups.
Seminarian groups are led by two PC(USA)-ordained professors,
or by one PC(USA)-ordained professor together with a nearby
pastor. Their leadership in Company of New Pastors is rooted
in their identity as ordained ministers, rather than as academicians.
The Office of Theology and Worship will recruit Company of New
Pastors seminary leaders, in consultation with local seminary
officials.
Annual national consultation
All seminarian groups gather together each fall for a national
consultation in Louisville. Connecting with one another nationally,
and with national church leadership, is a critical component
for building a sense of the collegial character of pastoral
ministry.
Post-graduate pastor gatherings
Post-graduation pastor gatherings are convened regionally at
the seminaries. When they gather as new pastors, Companies
of New Pastors will ordinarily convene at the campuses that originally
sponsored them. Seminarian group mentors have the option to
attend Company of New Pastors pastor-gatherings, at no cost to Company of New
Pastors or to them. In this way, seminaries continue to support the Company of
New Pastors by contributing their facilities as gathering places. This also serves
the seminaries’
aims to be centers for life-long theological learning for pastors.
When new pastors take calls closer to a seminary other than their own, they will
ordinarily meet with the group that meets at the seminary nearest their place
of call, though that may be negotiated case by case.
Grant funding for expenses
All initial expenses for Company of New Pastors materials and
gatherings will be paid from grant funds. After the first post-graduation
year, participants will be expected to purchase books for group study, and to
pay their own Company of Pastors membership dues. Beginning in the second post-graduation
year and increasing incrementally, participants will also contribute toward a
socialized travel and lodging/meals budget that spreads costs of travel
evenly to the entire group. Since many of these costs will
come from participants’ continuing education allowances, these
contributions will be considered joint participant/congregation
contributions.
Meeting schedules
Post-graduation pastor groups meet semiannually at first, then
annually for the final three program years. Company of New Pastors
groups meet for a 48-hour gathering the fall after graduation
for group-formation purposes, then meet for a full 72 hours
in their next gathering, in the spring a year after graduation.
All remaining meetings will last a full 72 hours, spread over
four days and three nights.
Participating Seminaries
The Company of New Pastors will be incorporated at each PC(USA)
Seminary. Seminaries that took part in Excellence From
the Start— Austin, Columbia, Fuller, Pittsburgh, and Princeton
— get the ball rolling in 2004 with the first cohort of
Company of New Pastors. The remaining seminaries — Dubuque,
Johnson C. Smith, Louisville, McCormick, San Francisco, Union-PSCE
— will be added to the mix in subsequent years.
Commitment to diversity
Company of New Pastors seeks to be aggressively multi-racial
and multi-ethnic. PC(USA) mission funds earmarked for racial-ethnic
church development will be sought to assist in supporting racial-ethnic
mentors and participants in Company of New Pastors. Racial ethnic
church leaders will advise Company of New Pastors how best to
proceed in providing a program that truly benefits racial ethnic
candidates and new pastors. |
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From “Demonstration
Project” to “Seed Project”
Excellence From the Start was
constructed on the premise that the core of vital ministry
is rigorous, sustained attention to the distinctively theological
vocation of pastoral ministry, in community with colleagues.
Theology and Worship’s hypothesis, based on years of experiences
with its Pastor-Theologian Program, was that gathering around
serious study and disciplined prayer funds pastors with the energy, intelligence,
imagination, and love necessary to respond effectively and faithfully to the
various technical, managerial, and interpersonal challenges that pastoral ministry
poses. Three years later, evidence is accumulating to confirm the hypothesis.
But now the question arises: How can an experiment that was conducted outside
existing ecclesiastical systems be woven into those systems?
If we are to make a beneficial difference
in the church system’s
approach to preparing people for and nurturing them in the pastoral
vocation, we must work with others who are laboring in the same
field. Company of New Pastors moves from demonstrating an alternative
model for vocational formation, to sowing seeds that allow it
to germinate and take root widely within the church’s
systems.
The name change
The new name itself discloses that this proposal serves to strengthen
an existing church system, namely the Company of Pastors. It
also signals that this initiative seeks to grow beyond the narrower
scope of Excellence From the Start.
The funding pattern
Since Excellence From the Start was a temporary demonstration
project, there was no need to go beyond Lilly and the Office
of Theology and Worship budget to secure sufficient funding.
Company of New Pastors is designed to be sustained into the
future, as it gradually becomes less and less dependent upon
Lilly
financially. Information for contributions can be found under Extra
Commitment Opportunities (ECOs).
Relationships with other church agencies
With Company of New Pastors, Theology and Worship will gather
to its board key representatives from all the various stakeholders
in preparation for ministry — congregations, presbyteries,
seminaries, and the Louisville offices of churchwide personnel
services, theological education, racial-ethnic leader development, and constitutional
services. |
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Download the Company of New Pastors
Calendar  |
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