I HAVE heard of it.
It’s a sale product that somehow authorizes that person to term themselves now to be a CERTIFIED “Pastor”; and therefore QUALIFIED to be the one who alone has god’s truths.
It has added greatly to the proliferation of Protestant faith and churches.
Interesting
I have encountered, let us call it, an “internet credentialing” simply because someone was asking me what to make of the concept and actually I had to do research to understand what was even being asked as it was very foreign…in every sense of that word.
The search of “become a pastor” earlier suggested yielded many career sites on the educational and career path of one seeking to be a minister…and the online opportunity to become an “instant minister”, in the five pages I went through before stopping, were not only not Protestant, they were not even exclusively Christian.
With the most prominent, the first emblem I encountered in their “League of Nations” version of religions was the Yin Yang which was quickly followed, disturbingly, by the pentagram – and even more disturbingly to me personally a couple of emblems which I had never even seen before and that hasn’t happened in a very long time.
I once met someone who told me, almost as a point of a levity, that he had one of these internet credentials…which required no study and which he was able to instantly print out. He had obtained it simply to perform the wedding of a college friend in his younger days and it had no consequence in his life beyond that occasion. He did not seem to actually take the matter as more than a legal loophole that allowed him to perform the ceremony in whatever State it was where this occurred – and, years later, could benefit from it to be able to tell me over a cup of tea that he was a minister…at least after some fashion.
(I hasten to add that he was not Catholic, lest there by scandal; it was a comment he made in the lull of the conversation as he sought a topic to finish out a courtesy visit and his cup of tea.)
I have, however, met over the years interesting people from the United States who followed a singular path (well, from my perspective) to their ministerial engagement. It may involve minimal academic study and no life formation in the sense I would recognize relative to a Catholic seminary or a monastic novitiate or the formators of religious life.
They typically had a comparably unique approach to ecclesiology that was, essentially, a gathering of people declaring that they were now a congregation and, at their head, was someone who had an “anointing” from God (unmediated by any sacramental rite) that was acknowledged by those who participated and they obtained some space in which to meet. It was very interesting to converse with them. I was impressed by their sincerity. They seemed as intrigued by me and my background as I was theirs. I think both looked at the other across the table as a bit of a novel curiosity, if I may be pardoned for saying it so.
But, even in the more extreme cases like this, I have not actually met people who seriously posited that they were ordained over the Internet and that such was then the basis for them shepherding a congregation. Where in the United States does this phenomenon happen, since “It has added greatly to the proliferation of Protestant faith and churches”? It is a straight forward question. I wish to find out a bit more about this phenomenon, if it really exists, as I am genuinely fascinated by what has been brought up in this thread.
Most of the people I have met that were in a tradition somehow stemming from the reform were from more conventional backgrounds and practices. When the moment arrived to talk about how they or the one over their group was ordained, some ordinance was described to me that – however distinct it may be from Catholic theology – had elements the logic of which I easily grasped. (I have always found most interesting speaking with those who have a thought process that the ordination is actually effected by the believing community; that supposes an interesting ecclesiology and derivative concept of ministry.)
I remember once I was on a visit to a place in the United States. A group I had met with was also located there. They had invited me to visit them in their church, which they wanted me to see. Fascinated by the opportunity, I set aside a couple of hours to do so. I remember they were so proud of their worship space and showing me how it facilitated their form of worship service, which was very musically oriented. It is where I had an introduction to the terminology of “church planting”
They were also proud of the state of the art coffee shop they had in the narthex (really I should say lobby – the whole scheme all seemed modeled on an American concert theatre, actually). They assured me it was quite a tool for evangelising unchurched young people. I told them I found American Catholics very enthusiastic about coffee as well but that the basements I had visited were not so state of the art…and that the crypts and undercrofts in Europe typically have the dead of centuries past about and really do not readily lend themselves to such innovations of today as making them venues for partaking coffee.
Are these ecclesial communities with their internet ordinations unaligned, I assume? Who EXACTLY are they? Who constitutes their congregations? How, theologically, do they understand an ordination to be effected over the Internet?
