Between Holy Week, work, and committees I serve on, it’s been about two weeks since I’ve been home at dinner time and the need for some downtime is growing. Last night, I had a meeting of the Discernment Committee at church. This is a small group of people from the church and committee that is meeting with me every couple weeks, following an outline from the diocese to help me discern what God is calling me to and to share their thoughts with the bishop about whether or not they think it I should seek ordination as a priest in the Episcopal church.

I often talk about the group as being part faith study group and part job interview. I like the faith study aspect because it makes the process about all of us, and not just about me. What can we all learn about our spiritual journeys, calls to ministry, prayer life, et cetera?

Last night’s topic was gifts. When I read the title, I was excited. I’ve been writing a bit about validation recently, and I’ve been thinking about how recognizing each other’s gifts is an important first step in validating others. What are the gifts of the members of the discernment committee? There are different gifts different people have. Hospitality. Perseverance. Compassion. Knowledge. It is a great group.

Yet when I read the questions in the discernment manual, they felt much more like interview questions.

“What specialized training has been done for specific ministries? How does he or she inspire others?”

In many ways, I feel inadequate to become a priest. To many of the questions, my initial response is, “Not enough”. So between fatigue and feelings of inadequacy, I headed off to the discernment committee praying that if God really wants me to be a priest, that God would sustain me, that God would give me words, that God would be present and touch each of us at the meeting.

We started off by talking about “servant leadership”, about different ideas of leadership. We talked about the washing of feet, about leaderful organizations, and about unconferences. We talked about different types of priests, dealing with projections placed on priests, on expectations made of priests, and of balancing work and life, especially for bivocational priests.

When I had met with my priest and bishop, my priest made a comment that is an important part of my journey. She observed that with all the challenges facing the church in the twenty-first century, we don’t know what the job of priest will be like in five years. That is what I am preparing for. Am I preparing for being a leader in a leaderful organization? How do leaderful groups work in a hierarchical Episcopal organization? How is my journey part of a larger journey of the church in the twenty-first century?

As I left, I felt particularly blessed. I felt blessed to have friends, members of the church and the community, gather together to talk about these ideas. I felt blessed that God was there, giving me strength to make it through yet another evening meeting. I felt blessed to be part of what our Presiding Bishop calls the Episcopal branch of the Jesus movement.

Instead of being a job interview where I struggled when asked about my inadequacies, it was more like a faith study group, a discernment study group, where we all talked about the gifts God is giving us which is far greater than any of our inadequacies, about the gifts God is giving us to be a leaderful church in the twenty first century.

Thanks be to God and the people God has brought together around me for this journey and our discussion at the discernment study group.