By Charles Cochran, DisciplesWorld contributing writer

INDIANAPOLIS (8/1/09) — Beginning in 2011, prospective Disciples ministers who are candidates for ordination may have earned a Master of Divinity degree from seminary — or not.

Following a brief and sometimes spirited debate Saturday morning, the General Assembly of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) approved a new Order of Ministry, opening the door for ordination through a non-seminary “apprentice track.”

Richard Guentert, a member of the General Commission on Ministry and a former regional minister for the Upper Midwest Region, said the final document is the product of hundreds of meetings over many years, and that it reflects more than 300 pieces of feedback this year alone.

The “intense and fruitful labor” that went into developing the new order of ministry reflects “seismic changes” that have occurred in church and ministry, Guentert said.

It establishes 16 competency areas for ministers seeking ordination on the apprentice (non-seminary) track, compared to the absence of such standards currently for licensed ministers.

It replaces licensed ministers with the new — and broader — category of commissioned ministers. Beginning in August 2011, all licensed ministers will become commissioned ministers. Among commissioned ministers, a few may be expected to attend seminary and some will seek ordination through a non-seminary route. Many will remain non-ordained, much as licensed ministers currently are.

Search and Call papers will indicate whether a given ordained minister attended seminary, or obtained ordination through the apprentice track.

James Brewer-Calvert, minister of Decatur First Christian Church in Decatur, Ga., and a former member of the Georgia Commission on Ministry, said he had feared the new order of ministry would pit regions against seminaries and lower the educational standards for ministers. But then he read the document.

“It’s an excellent order of ministry, and it will guide our church in meeting the demands of ministry in the Twenty-first Century,” Brewer-Calvert said. “…Whereas I had feared it would lower our standards, this proposed order of ministry in fact raises them.”

Regional commissions on ministry have been concerned about the lack of educational requirements for licensed ministers – “and this proposed order of ministry addresses that,” Brewer-Calvert said.

The proposal’s opponents did not go quietly. After the time expired for floor debate, opponents attempted to have the resolution referred to the Committee on Reference and Counsel — and brought back to the full General Assembly in 2011. That motion failed.

Then, a motion to extend the debate, which would have required a two-thirds majority, failed. Finally, Moderator Newell Williams called for a vote on the resolution. It was adopted.

Among the new order of ministry’s opponents, some worry whether regions will have the resources to manage the educational requirements that have been established for commissioned ministers.

“We have great concern,” said Mark Denton, who chairs the Commission on Ministry for the Southwest Region. “It’s a challenge for our region already to sustain the educational program we have in place already for licensed ministers,” Denton said, adding that it’s not clear how the region will meet the new, tougher standards.

“We don’t see how we can pull that off,” Denton said. “And if we in our region — the largest in our denomination – don’t see how we can pull it off, I don’t believe that bodes well for elsewhere.”

Others, including Fran Schnarre, director of the Missouri School of Religion — a lay ministry school in the Mid-America Region — said that burden won’t fall entirely on regions. There are many routes available for training, including online distance learning, Schnarre said.

And some of the responsibility for training commissioned ministers will fall on local congregations, said Ken Crawford, pastor of Forest Grove Christian Church in Lucas, Texas. “There are congregations and groups of congregations that do training for ministry — and do it very well,” Crawford said.

C.J. Latham, an ordained minister serving the Chariton Christian Church in Chariton, Ind., echoed a sentiment shared, perhaps, by many of the ministers in the crowd. “I fear many things about this proposal,” she said. “On first reading, it made me feel I had wasted seven years of my life at college and at seminary getting an M.Div. I know that was not intended, yet it’s there,” she said.

And it raises a new potential obstacle for female clergy, Latham said. “There are some churches who will take a man who has no M.Div. over a woman who has an M.Div.,” she said.

Zane Wharton, a licensed minister serving the Jacksonville Cairo Unity Christian Church in Cairo, Mo., worried that ministers who seek ordination through the apprentice track will still be viewed as “not good enough.”

Wharton said there is a “vocal segregation” now between licensed and ordained ministers, and he worries that the new order of ministry will not eliminate the distinction — but merely silence it. “I can handle that segregation when it is a vocal one,” Wharton said.