Finally… something to blog about!<\/p>\n
I just finished my psych testing for my entrance process. On Monday, I reported to Midwest Ministry Development Service<\/a> in Upper Arlington and spent the morning with 5 other people talking about ourselves and interpreting pictures that we’d drawn. We all went out to lunch together and took the MMPI (Minnesota Multiphase Personality Inventory) when we returned. That was a weird test! It was a bunch of true\/false statements like “people are trying to poison me” and “stealing things is how I keep sane”. After everyone had finished the test, Jay (who was leading all of this) went over the Enneagram with us and gave us our Meiers-Briggs readings. I’ve jumped from INFJ to ISFJ and I think it is mostly due to having studied theology.<\/p>\n On Tuesday, we were split in half. One half of the group went over questions we’d been given to talk about ourselves and the other half did a round robin of meeting with various people. I was part of the first round robin group and my first meeting was with the psychologist. I was really terrified going into it because of the fuss that had been made over my sexual harassment experience at my initial interview. Once I found out that it wasn’t going to be an issue for him, I calmed down and I told him about all the stuff he was pointing out on my medical history and in the results of my MMPI. I triggered the validity sensor which basically predicted that I wasn’t being truthful in order to present the best picture of myself possible. My over-controlled anger score was also pretty high, but that’s normal for clergy. After meeting with Dr. Bartha (the psychologist), I met with Jay and that seemed pretty un-productive other than getting my Enneagram reading. Then, I went with Carol and did the Glaser-Fox test (measuring critical thinking) and some other paper work. We all went out to lunch together again and in the afternoon, I was with Kristen and Jonathan (two other potential candidates who were my age). We went through the list of 10 questions and it was really eye-opening for me what my answers for myself were. (I’ll post them later.)<\/p>\n On Wednesday, we gave our answers to the 10 questions to the whole group and then went through some ministry scenarios. They were interesting and I answered a little differently than I think he wanted me to on two of them. Then we went to lunch. When we came back, we had a role-playing activity that was really nothing I would ever do, so it bombed for me. Then, Jay called us into his office individually to tell us his findings. Apparently, I bombed the Glaser-Fox test. (To be fair to me, it’s really only given to ministry candidates and we would probably score in the 90th percentile of the general populace. It’s also a left-brain test.) He said that he felt like I had a strong call to ministry but didn’t really know where to put me. It was news that was kind of good but also kind of bad since he couldn’t really see me in ordained ministry. (I think part of it is that I haven’t really developed a pastoral care identity since I’m not a parent and I haven’t had experiences like the ones Kristen had had the previous summer while working at a camp for 9\/11 victim’s kids.) So… in three weeks, I get the results and I’ll see how things are with the report. I get a copy first so at least I have that before I go for my panel interview.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Finally… something to blog about! I just finished my psych testing for my entrance process. On Monday, I reported to Midwest Ministry Development Service in Upper Arlington and spent the morning with 5 other people talking about ourselves and interpreting … Continue reading