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06 August 2008

The road to WBC ... continued

Many of you will know that today we had a kind of interview as part of our continuing process to training to be full-time ministers (Officers) in The Salvation Army. Having jumped through a number of expected hoops willingly, and having completed our application forms, we were then told the system has been upgraded (posh word for changed!) and we would need to complete a new set of application forms that had now grown to about 22 A4 pages!! It is no secret that we moaned a little bit (understatement) about this but agreed to completing the forms anyway. Its been a bit mad since we got them and they got left on the desk and what with doing the meeting last week they got left even longer! So they got started on Sunday night and just about finished this morning. I won't give much away and certainly don't want to put down a system that is there for a reason, but there are some bizarre questions on there!!

Anyway, this was leading to a kind of interview thing that was happening today. To be honest, we didn't really know what was to be expected of today other than that it was just with our Director of Personnel (DDP) and was to be held in an informal way at the Corps over a couple of hours of speaking with our Corps Officers and then with us. So our DDP arrived and spoke with our officers for about 45 mins going through our forms at the same time. We were then called in for a couple of en-masse questions before our COs left us to face what turned out to be 36 pre-prepared questions that are part of the whole process now and will be asked to every applicant! Again a bizarre mix of questions but all there for good reasons.

It took about an hour to go through the questions which we had to answer individually. Whatever - its done now!

The encouraging part of the "interview" was that our DDP said she and the divisional team would be pushing for us to be on an Assessment Conference this side of Christmas. For those who don't know, this is a weekend of interviews and tasks that will aid those in the know to see if we're suitable to be officers. It will be held at TSA's conference centre in Sunbury, Nr Kingston upon Thames - a nice place but we probably won't get much chance to enjoy the surroundings!

So thats the latest - i'll update you as we know more. In the meantime, thanks for all your thoughts and prayers as we crawl our way through this process to fulfilling the calling that God has placed on our lives.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

WOW what an ordeal. I bet you both felt completely drained afterwards? It probably, too, gave you a lot of things to think over and clarify - so, hopefully, in the long run it was beneficial. As it's a new process do you get a chance to give your opinion on the procedure?
You are both marked people and the children - your names are in the front of my Bible. with every blessing Judyx

Thank you, too, for commenting on my blog - very helpful.

caldjr said...

Yes Judy - we were a tad drained. Although I was quite drained before it with one of my special headaches! But as you say, it was beneficial in terms of examining our potential etc etc. I don't think we get to give an official opinion on the new procedure but I know our DDP is pretty much aware of most of our feelings!!

Thanks for your support and prayers Judy - you really don't know how much that means. Infact you got an indirect mention in the interview along with all our other Plurk buddies as we classed you all in as an extended support network which is really helping us just now.

So thanks Judy. Hopefully we'll meet one day!