In order to be a CLM, the majority of persons must simultaneously be a Certified Lay Servant. The person isn't one or the other...they are BOTH. Persons need to continuously and simultaneously maintain their Certified Lay Servant requirements (complete Lay Servant Annual Report and minimum of 10 hours of Lay Servant Continuing Education once in every 3 years) along with their CLM requirements (complete CLM Annual Report, minimum of 10 hours of Continuing Education EVERY year, and meet with DCoM). For those coming to the program as a Certified Lay Servant, it is being a Certified Lay Servant that continues to qualify them to be a CLM when they are working in an assignment under a covenant.
The Lay Servant Annual Report each year doubles as a re-application form. The Book of Discipline, Para. 266.4, continues to require that in order to be renewed and recognized as a Certified Lay Servant, the person must submit "an annual report and renewal application to the charge conference or church council and to the district committee on Lay Servant Ministries, or equivalent structure, giving evidence of satisfactory performance as a certified lay servant."
In the IGRC we have chosen not to use 3 separate forms for each of the Lay Servant Ministries categories...Certified Lay Servant, Certified Lay Speaker and Certified Lay Minister. Instead we are using the Lay Servant Annual Report (which reflects questions related to the Certified Lay Servant and Certified Lay Speaker) in conjunction with the CLM Annual Report. For CLMs it is actually BOTH the Lay Servant Annual Report and the short CLM Annual Report together that constitute the full CLM Annual Report in any given year.
Any CLM in the Conference who came to the CLM program having completed License School for Local Pastors or one year of seminary studies and later the CLM Training Modules, having never been a Certified Lay Servant, does not complete a Lay Servant Annual Report but is still required to provide information in a separate report much like the Lay Servant Annual Report.
Those CLMs who are considered Certified Candidates for ministry by their DCoM will not be required to complete this annual reporting while in the Candidacy process. If, for some reason, the Candidate is unable to complete License School and proceed in that given year (i.e. health reasons), then we expect them to return to the normal schedule the following fall with the CLM reporting requirements until licensing is complete. CLMs in the Candidacy process may still choose to complete their annual reporting voluntarily.