Followup: The long winding road of Ordination

You know there's never such a thing as a clear answer in church work, right?  Case in point: as a followup to yesterday's prayer request for my ordination interview, here's the results.

• I submitted 20 doctrinal questions and a sermon for review.
• I passed 17 of those questions and my sermon passed.
• The Board APPROVED me for Ordination BUT places that approval CONTINGENT ON me re-answering those errant three questions and those to be reviewed in the Spring.
• So, if I pass those three questions in the Spring, I'm approved for Ordination in the United Methodist Church.

Woohoo?  Yea?  Sorry?  Yeah, I'm honestly so fresh out of it that I can't really decide what my response is.  But given it's a few days past thanksgiving, here's what I'm thankful for:

• I'm thankful for passing 17 outta 20.  85% isn't a bad score in any profession...even Surgeons pass with an 85%!  But not Methodist pastors!  Ha!
• I'm thankful for the grace given to me by the Board that they have me rewrite 3 questions rather than submitting them all again.  That was in their realm of possibilities so I'm thankful.
• I'm thankful for good clergy friends who waited for 2 hours for me to emerge.  Love you folks!

So, in short: I've got another hoop ahead of me and have a few months to discern and wrestle with and study those questions.  I'll be talking about them on this blog, so stay tuned.  Thanks for walking this journey with me.

~UMJeremy