Info: How the Imperial Church Works
You are right about the mix of local clergy and laity electing their local ministers and at the next level up as well.
Bishop and Archbishop openings will eventually (note eventually) see several nominees from the lower level chosen by ecclesiastical and laity representatives (all need to fulfill various educational requirements, be acceptable to the local leaders etc.) of whom one nominee is put forward by the Church Council (or whatever subcommittee they set up for it) who is then either accepted by the Emperor (or his representative). A lot of this plays into how the administration of the Empire will eventually develop.
For the time being the high church positions are still largely appointed according to political expedience, the aforementioned shift will happen as the church moves from land ownership to running on taxes (another thing that the Imperial Church will help spearhead in the Empire), but until then appointees will continue as in the Catholic Church in Germany for the time being, though current bishops/archbishops are much more strongly policed by the Doctrinal Council and the new appointees need significant educational qualifications. We will see this with a pair of very young appointees who replace Albrecht von Hohenzollern having "regents" until they can undertake all the required educational supports they require.
Sorry if that is confusing, I can try to explain it differently if necessary.
The Doctrinal Council is initially made up of Zwingli, Melanchthon, Bucer, Justus and Bullinger and their closest supporters - numbering some 20 in total - with much of its work done by correspondence. After this the Doctrinal Council evaluates nominees put forward by any of its members and votes on their inclusion - requiring two-thirds for to get the seat - before presenting them to the Church Council who must have two-thirds majority to veto the pick. The Emperor can ofcourse veto in either council if he wishes, but will usually refrain from acting on it.
The Church Council is filled by all the Archbishops (or their representatives) and most of the more prominent Bishops (precisely who is a matter of debate and constant adjustment) for a total of twenty. There are twelve laity representatives, four from the Imperial Cities, four from the Imperial Knights/lower nobility and four from the upper nobility (mostly representing Lay Electors, there is a bunch of stuff here related to restructuring here). The Doctrinal Council also provide five members alongside five Imperial representatives. A final, Forty-first, member is the Emperor.
The Doctrinal Council is the one which sets out Church Doctrine which is then presented to the Church Council for a majority vote.
I think that covers it. Let me know if there are any other questions, helps me fill it out. Damn that took some thinking, I had some of this thought out but lacked the details before now
.EDIT:
The subcouncils' presidents are chosen by the Doctrinal Council, and are often members of the council, who then fill out the council with further members from their followers. They in turn decide a representative who leads a sub-subcouncil on a lower level with oversight from the level above. A seperate institution building on inspiration from the Inquisition, the Streltsy and Witch Hunters will be set up at a later point to enforce doctrinal adherence because of a problem with this system.
A theological career usually starts following a seminary education where you stand for election at a lower level or become a theological scholar (then you need to get a university education) who presents writings to the subdoctrinal councils - they send some particularly good texts on to the doctrinal council for evaluation.
An administrative career starts with a seminary education followed by more education at univeristy if you want to be a missionary or entry into the lower level through election. There you work your way up to the second level and from there can take administrative university education for a bishopric. Then an archbishopric if you are lucky.
You could also be lucky and come to the Emperor's attention and have him appoint you somewhere directly, but that is going to be a rare occurence.
There is of course a lot of wiggle room in here and if you have the right patron you can skip certain parts of it. The only thing completely certain is that you need seminary school if you want an ecclesiastical career, you need a theological university degree if you want to have anything to say on doctrine and if you want to become a bishop you need an administrative university education.
EDIT 2.0:
It is a complicated and cumbersome system that will go through multiple iterations as it develops. Keep in mind this is the mid-sixteenth century. The main part is securing that everyone has the education needed to accomplish the job. You also have various iterant lay preachers and the like moving about outside the system but they are liable to find themselves dragged before a doctrinal comittee.
It is far more centralized than the Lutherans and Calvinists, with the Lutheran church basically being dozens of interrelated churches who move between supporting a range of different Lutheran reformers, though they are usually organized under a regal head - like the Imperial Church ITTL.
Calvinists IOTL and ITTL and the OTL's Reformed churches are built mainly on councils of clergy in prebytiers to my knowledge. The council aspect of it shares quite a bit with the Imperial Church's structures but to my knowledge there was a quite clear separation between Laymen and Clergy in regards to power to develop doctrine and the like. That said, the OTL huguenots were led by lay nobles so I am not quite sure how that plays into all this. The election process borrows a lot from the Calvinist/reformed tradition of OTL, that is accurate.
The Emperor does share a lot with the role held by particularly Henry VIII IOTL, though there is far more of a give and take between the Emperor and the Church than with Henry who imo seems to have mostly done whatever was politically expedient and kept everything as close to the catholic church as possible. Edward VI might actaully be a better comparison tbh.
The Hubmaierist church is perhaps notable for its lack of structure at this point in time. It consists mostly of a bunch of preachers and reformers who take their guidelines from Hubmaier's writings and sermons and then run with it. It probably has most in common with OTL Lutheranism in the way people took the message and ran with it in a wide variety of ways with Hubmaier then writing out to correct misinterpretations and the like. It won't stay that way in the long run if Hubmaierism is to have a chance of survival but the creation of church structures and the struggle against that move will be a core source of conflict for the Hubmaierists alongside the split between Elite and Populist branches.
The Hubmaierists are viewed as something of a benevolent aberration since it has largely protected the Müntzerites, Hutterites and more, but they are all pretty sure that the Hubmaierists are all going to hell. They do view the Hubmaierists as more insidious than the rest of the magisterial reformation because of their embrace of spiritualist elements, active christianity, adult baptism etc. which allow them to sweep through regions in much the same way as Anabaptist movements generally.
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