This post is part of a series telling about my experience with the Board of Ordained Ministry. Other posts in the series are listed in the yellow box at the end of this post.
This committee pokes and prods at your mind. They have the benefit of having a complete psychological report that was comprised by the conference counselor, so they know what your buttons are and how to push them. I got the sense that they mostly wanted to make sure that I was aware of myself and had some sort of an idea how to deal with myself. For me, confronting conflict is tough, and they wanted to know that I had the ability to assert myself. There was a professional counselor sitting in on this committee, and she was not scared to push.
One of the committee members wanted to know how I handled someone coming to me in distress, so we acted it out. It was at that point that I relaxed. Basically, the role play allowed me to ‘pretend’ to be myself, rather than someone acting professional in front of a committee. That is what they wanted to see. They wanted to see the real me. As soon as they got that, I felt like I had passed that committee. It was my shortest meeting.
