Ordination Frustration

I've been reading and hearing conversation surrounding the long and cumbersome path to ordination in the United Methodist Church for a while now (I serve on my District Committee on Ordained Ministry, so I see a fair amount of that stage in the process). But discussion really started to kick up in June at Bishops' Week, and I've been part of more conversations since then, both in-person and online.

We have a commentary from Dr. Rebekah Miles coming up in our August 31 issue. At 47, Beka is the youngest person(!) on the Ministry Study Commission appointed by 2004 General Conference. Can't put a snippet of her op-ed on this blog yet, but I've seen the draft and it had me hollering "Preach it, Beka!" at my computer monitor.

To tide you over, here are some links to related conversation: Reporter columnist Andrew Thompson takes it on at his Gen-X Rising blog, and Gavin Richardson has some observations, too.  Feel free to jump in here, too, and please use the comments field to link to anything you've posted on the subject.