The Checklist and the Soul – Reflecting on Four Years of Discernment

If you had asked me four years ago what the Member in Discernment (MID) process would look like, my inner Enneagram Type 3 would have happily handed you a beautifully formatted, color-coded spreadsheet.

As an "Achiever" who spent three decades navigating the fast-paced world of technology marketing, I know how to get things done. I understand milestones, key performance indicators, and deliverables. When I officially entered the MID process and was presented with the MID checklist, my instinct was to treat discernment like a major product launch. I looked at the "Marks of Faithful and Effective Authorized Ministers" in the United Church of Christ and saw this carefully discerned system of personal development as a goal to achieve. Study theology and hermeneutics? Check. Learn UCC history and polity? Check. Complete CPE and a pastoral care internship? Check.

It wasn't that I was completely blind to the spiritual side of the equation. I always had a sense of the fact that I would undergo a process of spiritual growth and change as well; in fact I felt it happening from the beginning. But for me – and I suspect for anyone – that part is much harder to quantify. So, I held that part of my development lightly and let it develop organically, while I attacked my to-do list with corporate gusto.

And I must say, I am feeling more than a little satisfied with having completed everything I was asked to do! It was a LOT. And to my great surprise - I loved doing it ALL!

But the Holy Spirit also has a beautiful, sometimes irritating way of dismantling our spreadsheets – or, more accurately, transfiguring them.

Recently, as I have been moving through the final phases of this formal process, my mentor offered me a gentle, grounding reminder: that discernment is so much more than the completion of a checklist, and that the deeper work is the formation of the whole person God is calling into ministry, which unfolds in its own time and in community.

Reflecting on those words brought me great comfort, but it also sparked a profound realization. I used to think the path of discernment was divided: the rigid checklists on one side, and the deep, mysterious soul work on the other.

But I have come to realize that they are actually one and the same.

The Latticework of the Spirit

The truth is, executing each one of those structural tasks has formed the very latticework of a deeply profound journey of the spirit. River-deep work is hidden inside those practical requirements. While we are asked to do a lot as MIDs, each of those practical steps has transformed my way of being through deeply relational work undertaken in community. The checklist wasn’t a distraction from the spiritual formation; it was the scaffolding for it.

When I look back over the last four years, I can see how every single requirement was secretly a gateway to connection and transformation:

• The Classroom as Communion: Every course I took – whether with the Southwest Conference or through Pathways – exposed me to the wisdom of my elders and peers, creating a wider community of faith that has fed and sustained my spiritual and theological development.

• The Crucible of Peer Ministry: The intense, vulnerable reflections with my Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) cohort and supervisor, the weekly peer support shared with the three other MIDs at Cathedral of Hope, and my SWC MIDNet community have kept me in constant, active discernment about my path.

• Collective Discernment: My Project Proclaim cohort, my dedicated time in Spiritual Direction, and my monthly trips to Phoenix to meet with my Local Church Discernment Committee (LCDC) were never just boxes to tick. My LCDC, which began with more benign questions about the Marks, has become a group of confidants with whom I can bear my deepest soul, knowing I can be completely vulnerable in order to receive their deep support and counsel. These spaces were intentionally and lovingly designed to ensure my personal formation unfolded in collective spaces, challenging my assumptions and gently, lovingly inviting growth and change through authenticity and vulnerability.

• The Geography of Grace: The massive, unexpected shifts in my personal life over the past year – relocating our home from Phoenix to Dallas with my husband Wilbert, and navigating entirely new church environments – became a powerful, hands-on lesson in putting my faith in God’s plan. It gave me real-world practice in how to enter into, adapt, and build sacred community in entirely new places.

  
  

A Transformed Way of Being

Through all of this, the true miracle of these past four years has been a quiet, profound transformation of my very being.

I feel a fire in my bones that wasn't there before. My thirst for justice has grown so much stronger, and I find myself becoming bolder in using my prophetic voice in the public square in support of the marginalized and for making Earth as it is in heaven. At the same time, my heart has been softened. My recognition of the Imago Dei in every human being I encounter has deepened; I find myself stopping on the street to converse with the unhoused, offering whatever comfort and presence I can.

My compassion and empathy for my fellow humans have grown because I have learned to listen more deeply and center myself less. I see patterns of marginalization and supremacy more clearly now, no longer shielded by the comfort of my race, gender and class. And through it all, I feel the presence of God more closely in my life. My relationship with God has deepened, and I have found a profound, unshakeable faith in God’s plan. During these past four years, God has faithfully gotten me through some of the most difficult and fearful times of my life. Although I have always experienced God as “mystery,” in recent times I have directly experienced what it is like to walk with God as my “friend.”

Integrating Doing and Being

For much of life, survival and success meant performing. Growing up gay in Des Moines, Iowa, at a time when so much of the church vilified LGBTQIA+ individuals, I learned early on to shield myself with achievement. When I returned to my roots in the UCC – the very denomination that first spoke the truth of God’s liberating, fabulous, unconditional love to a fifteen-year-old boy – I brought that high-achieving persona with me. My corporate gusto was a comfortable armor.

But you cannot "achieve" a call. You can only receive it.

By allowing the practical requirements of this process to pull me into deep, vulnerable relationships, the Spirit has gently but firmly cracked open my polished exterior. Together with my quiet times of prayer, meditation, reading, and listening for God’s still, small voice, I feel deeply grounded in the deeper work of becoming who God is calling me to be.

I am learning that God is not calling a polished corporate executive into ministry. God is calling me – Christopher – with all of my humor, my flaws, my passion for justice, my broken parts, my own history of healing, and my penchant for a bit of holy mischief. I want to be a spiritual leader who can quote Marcus Borg and RuPaul in the same breath, celebrating both theological depth and radical, fabulous inclusion.

Entering the Dialogue

As I I reach the final steps of my discernment process, I no longer look at my MID requirements as a completed folder to hand over. I look at them as a map of where I have been broken open, put back together, and held by a beautiful cloud of witnesses as a new person of faith.

I no longer measure my readiness for ministry by tasks alone, nor am I dismissing the tasks as mere bureaucracy. I am holding this season with patience and openness, celebrating the latticework that got me here. All of this has led me to feel ready to confidently and humbly be the spiritual leader that God is calling me to be.

I look forward to entering into this period of dialogue with the Committee on Ministry and the clergy and churches of the Southwest Conference. I feel both excitement and fear at bearing my soul for their witness, but I know that this is a key part of the process and I entrust myself to their care. I am excited to share this journey of discernment – not as someone who has successfully completed a checklist, but as some whole person who has been lovingly formed by, and for, community and God.