MFC Prep
My mission is to provide you, the MFC candidate, with a safe container in which you come to know yourself better: to understand and articulate your strengths, vulnerabilities, and growing edges, so you can minister as well as possible, while reducing the anxiety that is often inherent in the process of preparing for the MFC.
If you’ve already heard about my coaching and would like to chat about working together, let’s talk!
When I was preparing for the MFC, I felt so keenly how much was riding on this work, and I didn’t feel as though I had a lot of support. I was full of anxiety, and I honestly felt as though a lot of that anxiety was built into the system. Not everyone is as anxious as I was, but many of us feel that support in a process like the MFC could be very helpful.
Of course, there were generous people willing to read my packet when it was done and give me feedback. But that was after I’d already put hours and hours of work, sweat, blood, and tears into it. Were they going to give me vague feedback I didn’t understand or couldn’t work with? Was I going to get an evaluation, a number, I didn’t want?
The reality is no one can guarantee that you will get any particular number in your MFC meeting. There is an alchemy between the candidate and the panel that can never be entirely anticipated.
But that doesn’t mean that there’s no help. There is help, and I can provide a bunch of it. There are so many things I wanted help with, and maybe you’d like some too. There were things that would have made me feel more confident and calm about the process leading up to and include my MFC panel interview.
If you sense you’d like to chat with me about this, click here to schedule a time for a complimentary consultation.
About MFC Coaching
The concept of MFC Coaching was born of a recognition that, throughout my preparation and even after my panel interview, I had yearned for greater support leading up to the meeting than was available at the time.
After speaking with other MFC candidates, who voiced similar desires for support through the entire process of preparation, I launched a beta-test. This beta-test was successful: the concept proved to be viable, helpful, and even fun for everyone involved. MFC Coaching clients treat our time just as you might do in time with a tutor in any other context. All the folks who worked with me in those first months have said that our work together helped them develop self-trust, self-awareness, and self-understanding.
MFC Coaching is customized to your needs and can include, but is certainly not limited to the following:
- Meeting remotely to discuss your concerns and go over your materials
- My giving you feedback on your writing and helping make it concise, clear, true and reflective of your call, and compelling to your other readers
- My offering accountability with staying on top of the reading list, and discussion about how you’re using your study time
- Our talking through your anxieties related to preparing for the MFC
- Your sharing with me and our discussing how you are choosing (or have chosen) folks to write you letters of recommendation
- My reading evaluations, letters of recommendation, and Career Assessments to offer suggestions about where questions may come up during your interview
- My strongly supporting you with the sermon process and presentation, including the details of writing and delivery
- My providing help with clarity, explanation, concision, and formatting of areas of ministry pages
It’s great to have people willing to read your packet. It’s really wonderful, in fact, especially since it’s such a commitment to read through all that stuff. And you should have more people than I look over your materials. The thing is, it just wasn’t enough for me to have a minister or two look over it all at the end of my work. I needed help along the way, and you may too.
Do you need any of the above? I can help you. I can offer support and challenge. I can offer close reading and a preacher’s eye and ear. I can offer clear critique as well as encouragement and praise. I will make suggestions and you decide whether or not to take them.
I also commit to you that I will stay in touch with the good people at the Ministerial Credentialing Office and the UUMA to make sure I’m as up to date as possible on the status of MFC requirements and expectations.
Whatever you need to prepare, I am here to help you do it with structure, confidence, clarity, and a sense of well-being.
No one can promise anyone else a particular result from the Ministerial Fellowship Committee, but I do promise to answer any question you have via email or on our calls, to be accountable for our time together and the time that I spend with your documents, and to charge a reasonable hourly rate for our time.
Schedule a complimentary, no-obligation call with me, and let’s see if we are a great fit for working together!
Nuts and Bolts—What I’m NOT Doing and What I Am
One-on-one tutoring for professional development, credentialing, and testing can be very expensive. As a former test prep tutor, I know that as well as anyone.
For example, at the test prep company for which I worked, 1:1 coaching for the GRE—a test you take before graduate school—starts at $1800, and that’s not including going over test results, doing any reading, or any other additions to the work besides actually meeting time.
I think $1800 is unfeasible and unreasonable for most Candidates for UU ministry. Furthermore, trying to pay that kind of money upfront while you’re in an internship or CPE residency is just a really rough proposition.
So that’s what I’m not doing.
Instead of charging an exorbitant amount, only covering face-to-face meetings, I have another plan.
For all the services detailed above, as well as any specific shifts you and I negotiate, your investment is $1200, in 4 payments of $300, 30-days apart.
This method (and my stating it clearly here) allows to you budget in advance for what you will need, pay a much more reasonable price than what I mentioned above, and receive far more support than corporate 1:1 testing prep. Our work is tailored to what you need.
Looking at my existing and past clients, I’ve come to a sense of what most people need and find helpful.
As a result of my analysis of those needs, here is my customized, detailed offer to you:
- I will make a detailed, close, initial reading of your packet, along with concrete notes (usually 30-40 notes for each person's packet).
- We will share a meeting (or two) to go over my notes, get to know one another, ask and answer questions regarding your packet, and really begin to dig in, so I can come to know you and your work as deeply as possible.
- We will have regular meetings to discuss whatever is most helpful at the time, whether that's about your essays, sermon, first question, study habits, choices of recommenders, timeline, feelings, concerns, and questions about the interview itself.
- We will spend as much time as is necessary with your essays to make sure they are clear, concise, answer the questions well, and show your strengths while also acknowledging your growing edges.
- You may have 15-minute "laser sessions" with me if you need them, when you just need a few minutes to manage anxiety or ask quick questions. I will make room unless I am absolutely stuck for time.
- On the day of your panel interview, I will talk with you briefly over the phone, offering a blessing and moral support.
- In the week or two after your panel interview, we will meet for forty-minutes or so to discuss your experience with the MFC, as well as the thoughts and feelings that have come up since you saw your panel.
- Throughout the duration of your preparation, you will have all the support I mentioned above. All the close reading, all the experience, all the knowledge, and all the commitment I can bring to your process.
Who am I?
- I am an ordained Unitarian Universalist minister. My ordination was in April 2015 at All Souls Church Unitarian in Washington, DC. I worked at All Souls as the Pastoral Care Coordinator during my time at Wesley Theological Seminary, also in DC.
- I am a teacher, trainer, and developer of curricula in various subjects.
- One-to-one and small-group ministry really makes my heart sing, and that’s why I started this website to hold and shape my ministry. It allows me to offer one-to-one support, classes, retreats, and writing to help people develop and deepen their spiritual lives in a way that also nurtures me.
- I have a particular love for the study of world religions, including Pagan traditions of various cultures, African Diaspora traditions, Islam, Judaism, and Christianity. I maintain a regular blog on this site, as you may know. I also guest blog on such sites as Tiny Buddha and Sivana Spirit.
- Finally, I have been enthusiastically complimented on my preaching by ministers like Rev. Bill Sinkford “That was the strongest first sermon from an intern minister I’ve ever heard.”, Rev. Dr. Rob Hardies, (To the congregation after a sermon of mine, “Well she surely can preach!”, and early on, Rev. Dr. Susan Newman “You’re the best seminarian preacher I’ve ever heard.”. Even before I was ordained, I was asked to help seminarians and ministers in Preliminary Fellowship alike make sermons tighter, more compelling, and clear.
Who am I?
- I am an ordained Unitarian Universalist minister. My ordination was in April 2015 at All Souls Church Unitarian in Washington, DC. I worked at All Souls as the Pastoral Care Coordinator during my time at Wesley Theological Seminary, also in DC.
- I am a teacher, trainer, and developer of curricula in various subjects.
- One-to-one and small-group ministry really makes my heart sing, and that’s why I started this website to hold and shape my ministry. It allows me to offer one-to-one support, classes, retreats, and writing to help people develop and deepen their spiritual lives in a way that also nurtures me.
- I have a particular love for the study of world religions, including Pagan traditions of various cultures, African Diaspora traditions, Islam, Judaism, and Christianity. I maintain a regular blog on this site, as you may know. I also guest blog on such sites as Tiny Buddha and Sivana Spirit.
- Finally, I have been enthusiastically complimented on my preaching by ministers like Rev. Bill Sinkford “That was the strongest first sermon from an intern minister I’ve ever heard.”, Rev. Dr. Rob Hardies, (To the congregation after a sermon of mine, “Well she surely can preach!”, and early on, Rev. Dr. Susan Newman “You’re the best seminarian preacher I’ve ever heard.”. Even before I was ordained, I was asked to help seminarians and ministers in Preliminary Fellowship alike make sermons tighter, more compelling, and clear.