Orientation & Equivalency Intake

OEI at a Glance

What This Course Is Not

It is not a guarantee of incardination. Completing the OEI is a requirement, not a promise. The decision rests with the Rector and, once constituted, the Mission Council, and it weighs your orders, your standing, your safeguarding record, your documentation, your honesty, your suitability, and the Mission's own capacity. This course is only one part of that. You may complete every element well and still not be received. It is said plainly here so that you are never surprised by it.

It is not an assessment of whether you are a good minister. Many candidates arrive having served faithfully for decades. The OEI takes no view on that. It asks only whether you and this Mission can walk together honestly.

It is not a formality. The Mission is not an ordination mill, an incardination mill, or a title factory, and the OEI exists partly to make that true rather than merely to claim it.

Who May Be Invited

The OEI is by invitation only. Places are offered by the Institute, at the Rector's direction, following consideration of your initial enquiry. You may be considered if all of the following are true.

You have been validly ordained as a deacon, priest, or bishop, through the physical laying on of hands by a bishop in valid apostolic succession, using an authorised rite with proper intention. The Mission does not recognise online, remote, postal, proxy, or certificate-only ordination, and no such ordination can be bridged by this or any other course.

You are twenty-one years of age or older.

You have submitted an initial enquiry through the Mission's vocational readiness process, and that enquiry has been reviewed and advanced.

You are willing to provide the documentation set out below, including a criminal record check and evidence of your orders.

You accept, without reservation, the Mission's inclusive commitments: the ordination of women to all three orders, the full welcome and affirmation of LGBTQ+ people, and the celebration of Holy Matrimony for same-sex and opposite-sex couples alike. These are settled doctrine in the Mission, not open questions, and a candidate who holds them provisionally or privately dissents from them will not be received.

On Experience, and Why It Earns You Nothing Here

Candidates for the OEI range from the newly ordained with almost no preparation to those with thirty years of ministry and a doctorate. All complete the same course in full, and there are no exemptions for experience.

This is not a failure to respect what you bring. It follows from what the course actually teaches. The OEI does not teach ministry in general; it teaches this Mission's way of doing things, and no amount of service elsewhere conveys that. Long practice under different assumptions is very often the thing that most needs attention, precisely because it has become invisible to the person holding it.

Equivalency, in the Institute's use of the word, can only add. Your prior formation is assessed at enquiry so that the Rector can determine whether anything further is required beyond the OEI. It never reduces what must be completed.

Structure and Workload

The OEI is assessed at 25 Formation Hours. A Formation Hour is one hour of organised study, reading, reflection, practice, or assessment. Elsewhere this is described as Continuing Professional Development or Continuing Education Units. The Institute is not an accredited provider of either and says so plainly, though some learners are able to log these hours with their own body, and the certificate carries a unique verification number for that purpose.

These hours include your reading of the Mission's core documents, which is substantial and is timetabled rather than assumed. They also include assessment. Twenty-five hours is a genuine estimate rather than a marketing figure. Some will take rather less and some rather more, and reading speed varies considerably. If you find yourself at forty hours, that is not a failure. If you find yourself at eight, you have not done the reading.

Mode and Schedule

The OEI is individually scheduled and tutor-paced. It is not a cohort course, because incardination enquiries arrive throughout the year, and it is not a self-paced course, because self-paced study in practice means unfinished study.

You begin on an agreed start date, and from that date you have twelve weeks to complete the course, working to a published weekly schedule issued at enrolment. The Rector may extend this to eighteen weeks where there is good reason, on written request. The course sits inside, and does not replace, the reception and orientation period of between three and twelve months provided for in the Statutes.

Delivery is online. You will need reliable internet access, a device capable of video calls, and the ability to record and upload a video to a third-party service.

Entry Documentation

Before enrolment is confirmed you must supply certificates or formal equivalent documentation for each ordination and any consecration, with full dates, places, ordaining or consecrating bishops, and jurisdictions; apostolic succession information sufficient for the Rector to verify your line; a letter of good standing from your current or most recent jurisdiction; and a letter of release or excardination where one is available.

Where a release is not available, you must explain why, honestly and in writing. The absence of a release is very often not disqualifying. Concealing the reason for its absence is.

You must also supply a criminal record check, police clearance, or lawful national equivalent issued within the preceding twelve months. Where your country has no reliable process, the Rector may accept a sworn affidavit together with declarations, references, additional supervision, or external assessment, as provided in the Statutes.

Evidence of completed safeguarding training is required: the Mission's own Safeguarding for Clergy (A1) course, or an equivalent approved by the Rector in writing and in advance of your relying on it. If you have no current training, take the A1 course; it is the simplest route and is designed for exactly this purpose.

Finally, a completed Vocational Readiness and Ministry Suitability Questionnaire and a signed Formation Covenant. Documents are uploaded as PDF files, and the Rector may ask to see originals by post, at your expense.

Assessment

Roughly four hours of the twenty-five are assessment. Deacons submit Morning or Evening Prayer, or the Liturgy of the Word including the proclamation of the Gospel; priests and bishops submit the Liturgy of the Eucharist from the Offertory to the Ablutions.

There Is No Fee

The Orientation & Equivalency Intake carries no fee. You cannot enrol on it or buy a place on it, and there is no separate application for the course itself. A place is offered by the Institute, at the Rector's direction, only after your initial enquiry has been received, considered, and advanced. Where no invitation is issued, no fee arises, because no place existed to be purchased.

The Mission is deliberate about this. A course standing between an enquirer and incardination, charging for the privilege, would sit uncomfortably close to the practice this Mission exists to avoid. Money must never buy sacraments, ordination, influence, or access, and the surest way to keep that principle clean at the point of entry is not to charge at the point of entry.

You do remain responsible for your own costs in obtaining the documents listed above: criminal record checks, safeguarding training taken elsewhere, certified copies, and postage of originals where these are requested. These are paid to third parties, not to the Institute or the Mission. If any of these costs is a genuine barrier for you, say so at enquiry. The Mission would far rather have that conversation than lose a candidate to embarrassment.

Since a place is given rather than bought, declining an invitation, withdrawing, or being unsuccessful costs you nothing financially. It also means that a place is a real act of trust on the Mission's part, and the Institute asks that you treat it as one: begin when you say you will, keep to the schedule, and tell us early if circumstances change.

Certification, and What Follows

On successful completion you receive a certificate recording the award of the Orientation & Equivalency Intake, carrying a unique verification number checkable through the Mission's certificate verification page. The certificate records that you completed a course. It does not record that you were incardinated.

The Rector then reviews your assessments, your documentation, your mentor's report where a mentor has been allocated, and the viva voce. Where the outcome is favourable you are invited to sign the Incardination Covenant and the Code of Conduct and Clergy Covenant, and Faculties are issued separately, specifying what you are authorised to do, where, and under what conditions. The Covenant is belonging; the Faculties are permission. They are not the same act.

Clergy received by incardination may not be nominated to the Mission Council or vote on Council matters until they have been fully received for no less than one year. This is not a probation on your character. It is a recognition that belonging takes time, and that a body governed by unanimity must know its members well.