Scholarship • Serving • Ministry – Ian Paul
As numbers of clergy decline, before the growth in younger ordinands offsets this, there will be some pressure on numbers nationally. But that disguises the uneven distribution and ages of clergy across different dioceses. Some dioceses have more than 40% of their clergy over 60, and so will see a significant drop in clergy numbers …
As part of building a community of reflection related to the blog, I have previously hosted one-day Festivals of Theology, the first in January last year, and the second last October. On each occasion we had a great time of listening, learning, reflection and discussion, with around 100 people attending on each occasion. As a result …
The lectionary reading for Trinity 2 in Year C is Luke 9.51–62. It consists of a brief narrative of rejection of Jesus, following by a collection of three sayings about the challenge of discipleship—but the significance of this passage also derives from its place within Luke’s overall narrative. Luke 9.51 signals the beginning of Luke’s …
The lectionary reading for Trinity 1, Year C, is Luke’s version of Jesus meeting and healing the demon-possessed man in the ‘region of the Gerasenes’ (Luke 8.26–39). The account occurs in all three Synoptic gospels; in Mark (the shortest gospel) the story is in the longest and most detailed version; Matthew 8.28–34 is the shortest, …
Last month, behavioural scientist Paul Dolan from the London School of Economics claimed that unmarried women were notably happier than married women, suggesting that, if women wanted to live the most fulfilled life, they should stay both single and childless. We may have suspected it already, but now the science backs it up: unmarried and …
‘My brother Esau is an hairy man, but I am a smooth man’. For a generation (or two), Alan Bennett’s ‘Beyond the Fringe’ spoof of a pious sermon summed up everything that was dull about Bible reading and preaching in church. In this generation we have different challenges: dull monotone; or perhaps the ‘high rising …
I have been contributing to the Church’s Renewal and Reform stream on developing lay leadership, and one of the questions that has come up is: ‘What does the Church of England actually believe about the laity and lay leadership?’ I am not referring here to what some have called ‘ecclesial lay leadership’, that is, the …
Once more we come to Trinity Sunday. With the various debates about this on social media over the last few years, I dare to hope that the preaching on this Sunday is now better than it used to be—but I worry that I am mistaken here. It is worth reminding ourselves of some key things …
Is Christian faith about an affective encounter with God, or about becoming convinced about the case for Christianity? You will immediately be crying ‘False dichotomy!’—but it is worth reflecting on the balance between these two ideas in contemporary expressions of faith. There was a time when the tradition of rational enquiry was most influential, but …
As we come to Pentecost, our main text (in the lectionary and for preaching) is Acts 2. At one level the text is straightforward: the Twelve are completed by the addition of Matthias; they wait with other disciples as Jesus had commanded; the Spirit comes; Peter preaches; and the ‘church’ is born. But it is …
Martyn Percy, Dean of Christchurch, Oxford, has contributed to an ongoing series of posts on the Via Media blog setting out the view that the Bible is not clear in its teaching about marriage—or on anything else for that matter. It is an interesting series, in the sense that it points clearly to the idea …
