THE IEMELIF ASSESSMENT PROCESS

The Recruitment

          The IEMELIF Church has a well-crafted religious Book of Discipline. For the information of the greater majority of Evangelical Christians in the Philippines, a proposed bill, before it reaches the Annual General Conference, takes its form from a local church conference which is held annually every 1^st week of January. Then it is submitted to District Conference for further hearing. If it passes, it finally reaches the Annual General Conference which is attended by delegates from all over the world. It is here that, again, the merit of the bill is debated then approved, rejected, or referred to a committee for further study. Among the long lists of agenda that need the approval of the General Conference is the report that comes from the Division of Ordained Ministers (Kagawaran ng Ordinadong Manggagawa). It is in this particular Division that this article would like to focus.

             The DOM performs a very delicate position during this time of the year. Let’s look at how a candidate (examinee) is carefully handled. The person is sent by a Local Church Conference to District Conference for assessment, interview, and approval. This interview is handled by able district leaders who determine the authenticity of the person’s “ministerial calling” as well as finding-out whether credentials have met or not the minimum required standard which was pre-set by the Church Discipline. If grounds are sufficient, an applicant is then endorsed, this time, by the District Conference to National Level. Here, a candidate is handled by DOM through its Board of Examiners (BOE) to take exam two weeks prior to the General Conference. In many cases, a review material is made available to all candidates so they could start reviewing the topics which would be the scope and limitation of exams.

            The written exam is in the form of some essay questions and choices in which a candidate is expected to answer substantially by citing correct doctrinal position, accurate church-discipline provision, acceptable ministerial ethics, historical knowledge, and hymnological understanding. In addition, administrative and management skills, hermeneutics and homiletics skills, and other such exam related to the affairs of the IEMELIF Church are given. The written exam lasts for about 4 to 6 hours. On the other hand, the oral exam which is excerpted from the same category is given by requiring examinees to make a defense in front of a panel, as if having a theology review or defending a research or theses. Each candidate is called to a boardroom and faces the Board of Examiners who are composed of more or less nine members. Each of these members will ask question(s) to a candidate and should answer them with full confidence and readiness. It is such an honor to experience this.  Questions are asked to candidates for Deaconess (female worker), PNS (Probationary Pastor), Deacon, and Presbyter (the highest rank among female and male pastors). The questioning (interrogation) may reach from one hour or more. Then, a candidate is requested to leave the room to allow for BOE to reach a decision. It is here that the second stage of the test ends. The Board of Examiners will then vote in favor or not in favor for a candidate. After a while, the examinee is then called back to receive the consensus. If they are in favor, the candidate is congratulated with a warm handshake and everybody in the boardroom rejoices.  If they are not in favor, a candidate gets further advice and encouragement to try having the test again for next year. It was a tedious process that to fail is quite a setback. 

         The result is then submitted to the Chairman of the Division of Ordained Ministers, who is also a member of the Highest Consistory of Elders of the IEMELIF Church. In the list is written those who passed and those who did not pass. Of course, along with it are the corresponding scores and justifications. In most cases the Chairman of the Division of Ordained Ministers is “hands-on” in leading the members of the Board of Examiners.  Through the Chairman, the result will then be reported to the General Conference for final approval. This report is a permanent agendum annually.

           During the General Conference, each candidate is presented in front of the delegates from United States, Canada, Middle East, Asia, and Philippines. There are about 400 to 600 in attendance and everyone has the right to raise questions practically on anything they want to know about the person. You can just imagine the intense pressure and stress where lawyers, teachers, doctors, engineers, professionals, common members, etc., are all there to vote unpredictably. If you are “lucky”, no one will dare ask question and the floor would move for acceptance and approval of the candidate. If it’s seconded and none would go against the motion, the mallet is hit by the Chairman, the Bishop and General Superintendent; sealing the acceptance of the candidate and ending the journey of test. What a relief! The bishop congratulates each successful candidate; the delegates clap their hands; relatives share their tears; each worker comes to share the joy. Some offer a handshake and congratulatory remark. What a wonderful site to see; an unforgettable moment. These candidates receive love and acceptance. Then, an ordination is given and eventually, they are installed to office and received their respective assignments.

            To this, we must commend the effort of DOM and BOE for their skills, time, and effort. But the work is not over yet. Only time could tell, whether the process of recruitment has been successful or not, that is, if these workers perform as expected. The work of HRD should come in which it is entirely a different issue to discuss. The DOM and BOE are the second best qualifiers of the Church and should not stop getting the test-process improved. Therefore, it is hoped that the following suggestions be taken into consideration. The 12-point suggestions are:

1. Each member of the Board of Examiners (BOE) should represent expertise corresponding to the number of proficiencies of the candidate that they assess during the oral exam. This will avoid redundancy of tasks among  members.

2. There must be a combined pure objective (scientific) and subjective exams to be given. It seems that the written and oral exams that are being used today are not balanced; thus, they are not scientific.   The Church  should ensure the use of accurate assessment tools to minimize if not eliminate "hit and missed" attempts. 
3.Questions to essays must be pre-approved together with their model answers to avoid "considerations"; to avoid suspicion; and seeming discretization that may lead to corruption of collected data and numerical value.

4. Test-takers should only receive official test papers with control numbers on it. They should answer the test inside a controlled environment - a room that is well ventilated,  free of distraction,  and behavior is observed.

5. Before the test, examination rules must be read and queries are answered carefully with authority.

6. During the oral exam, the proceedings must be videoed. This will help the BOE address the queries on suspicion of asking “personal” questions, probably irrelevant during the interrogation. Again, questions must be pre-approved together with the model answers. This will disallow the examiner(s) to just raise a question at will.

7. In case a petition is raised of those who would fail or by those who sent them, the request, through a formal letter of Petition for Review (PfR) is sent and reviewed by a Committee for Review and Petition (CRP) - presently not installed. Here, the CRP would know who made the mistake by viewing the video and reading the transcript – Was there really an error in the manner of questioning? Was the questions raised irrelevant? Was the candidate not able or able to answer the questions? Who made the mistake - the examiner or the examinees? It is best that the one who crafted the question should be part of the  committee.

8. The BOE should only act as an invigilator – a facilitator; and not be the one to entirely determine who would pass and who would not pass so as not to dominate the entire proceedings. Thus, there are two assessment bodies - the Invigilators (50%) and the CRP (50%).

9. There must be time for appeal, probably 5 to 10 days before the General Conference. This will give ample time for DOM to revisit the petition.

10. We must remember that the objective (scientific) result must be given more weight than the subjective outcome of the test. If the subjective outcome is too low, then there must be something wrong. Thus, petition for review is acceptable when this happens (cf.no.7). 

11. BOE must have formal training on how to conduct examinations – Assessment Methodology or Training Methodology.

12. Revisit the percentages that are allocated to each area. Only a person who is psychometrician can be the best source of “percentile allocation” and interpretation. If this is not possible, an assessment and training assessor is an alternative.

        The IEMELIF Church is a global religious institution with international affiliation and membership; thus she must all the more struggle to attain excellence in many ways.  Many would look closer to the quality of  her workers and it all starts from the recruitment process. The Lord said, "Be ye perfect, for I am perfect." The Bible tells us to "Examine ourselves and show the proper fruits of it..." (1 Cor. 13:5). In addition Paul said to "...Let every person carefully examine and test his own work." (Gal.6:4). The IEMELIF has proven time and again that she is an able religious organization, if it's not true, she would have not reached this far. +
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