The formation program of this church exists as prescribed courses of study on paper, with assessment that can be failed. Three tracks run from congregant formation through leader certification to the long path toward holy orders. Nothing has a fee, and enrolment is open.
The first reason is institutional. A real church has a prescribed course of study, and an examiner — a grantmaker, a receiving bishop, an accreditation body, a court — asks to see it. A formation program that exists as an informal understanding between two people is not a formation program; it is an intention. What is written can be inspected, taught by more than one person, and improved without being reinvented.
The second reason is the ugly one. Putting an unprepared person in front of vulnerable people is how harm happens. Not usually through malice — through a well-meaning volunteer who does not recognise a psychiatric emergency, who takes a disclosure and freezes, who counsels past their competence because referring feels like abandonment, or who runs a room where one participant’s crisis swallows six other people’s evening. Every one of those failures is preventable with training that takes hours.
So this church writes the course down, teaches it, assesses it, and re-certifies it annually. Coursework does not make anyone safe on its own; it makes the difference between a person who has thought about the hard moment in advance and a person meeting it for the first time with someone else’s crisis in front of them.
Formation here is also formation in a specific pastoral reality. Many people arriving at this church were injured by clergy, refused a sacrament, told their body was a disorder, or handed a verse instead of help. Being ready for that is a competence, and it is taught rather than assumed.
You write, and the Ordinary answers personally. What you want, what you already know, and what you are actually looking for get named out loud. Some people leave this conversation having found what they needed without enrolling in anything.
Congregant formation, leader certification, or the path toward orders. Tracks are not a hierarchy and most people never move beyond the first, which is the normal outcome rather than a lesser one.
Any track involving contact with congregants or vulnerable people requires a criminal background check and current Safe Environment and Mandatory Reporter training before coursework begins.
Required — not waivableThe written course of study for the track, worked through in sequence with reading, conversation, and practice. Pace is set to the person; the content is not.
Written and oral, against the published course of study. It can be failed, and failing it means repeating the material rather than losing your place in the church.
No one leads, teaches, or ministers alone before working alongside someone who has done it. Supervision is a stage of formation, not a probation.
Training currency, boundaries review, and a conversation about how it is actually going. Certification lapses if renewal lapses.
Scripture, the Roman Rite of 1962, the sacraments, and the shape of the liturgical year, for anyone who wants to understand what is happening in front of them. No commitment to office of any kind, and no fee.
How to enrol → IIFacilitation, boundaries, confidentiality and its limits, religious trauma, and crisis recognition and referral. Two non-waivable gates, supervised co-facilitation, and annual re-certification.
Read the path → IIIMeasured in years. Scripture, canon law under the 1917 Code, sacramental theology, the books of 1962, pastoral practice, and examination before the Ordinary. Open to every baptized person found fit.
Enquire about orders →On the two gates
A criminal background check and current Safe Environment and Mandatory Reporter training precede any role with contact with congregants or vulnerable people. Neither is waivable by anyone, including the Ordinary, and neither is satisfied by a reference, a relationship, or an urgent need for help.
On cost
No track in the formation program carries a fee, at any stage, including the background check and the training. A church that charges for formation has selected its leaders by who could pay.
On assessment
Assessment is real and can be failed. An examination nobody fails is a ceremony, and a ceremony does not protect the person sitting across from a leader who is out of their depth.
Faith in Bloom is a ministry of Bloom Ministries, a nonprofit organization tax-exempt under section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. EIN 39-4922713 · Salem, Oregon. Contributions are tax-deductible to the extent allowed by law.
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