Besides my training, preaching, and pastoring for 5 years (before I was
ordained), a day of examination was scheduled. Several area pastors and
deacons of sister churches of like faith and practice set up a council by
invitation of the ordaining church (ordaining if all went well) to examine
me concerning "everything" as no area was off limits. I actually don't
remember all the questions or even the areas but it went on forever (it
seemed) but was probably about an hour or so. Afterwards they retired (for
another eternity it seemed) to talk among themselves and consider
recommending ordination or not recommending ordination to the local church.
They returned a positive recommendation to the church. Sometime during the
afternoon of the same day, the church ordained me.
D Warner
-----Original Message-----
From: Derick Dickens [mailto:Derick@...]
Sent: Thursday, January 18, 2007 8:33 PM
To: pastorsforum@...
Subject: [PastorsForum] What was required for you to be ordained?
Today, two other Pastors and I went out to lunch. They were recounting
what they have to go through in order to become ordained. Here is a
synopsis of what they did.
1. Be a Pastor of a church
2. Pass five exams. The exams tested on the following. All five had
to be passed.
a. Church history
b. theology
c. the confession (what they believed
d. Church Polity/Ordinances
e. Bible Knowledge
3. Examination Q/A that they said often lasts 2 hours.
4. Had to preach a message or a series of messages and be examined
afterwards with another Q/A session that could include any topic, not
just the sermons.
The other pastor said the same thing except they made him do two more
examinations. The two additional ones included Apologetics and I
believe, but not sure, they had one entire test on the ordinances.
What did you do. Mine, well, was rather simple. "Derick, do you
believe the Bible?", then they lectured me about being minister and
ordained me. It was more than that, but it wasn't very indepth. What
about you, what did you have to do?
Derick