Scholarship • Serving • Ministry – Ian Paul
The Church of England has just released two related reports on numbers in ordained ministry. These are not related to annual ministry figures; the last figures (from 2015) were released in June, and caught the headlines for a number of reasons. These reports are related more to the aims of the Renewal and Reform process, …
There is a small number of television programmes that I love to watch when they are on. The week is regularly bracketed by University Challenge on Mondays and Gardener’s World on Fridays, but there are two less regular mid-week programmes that I love. One is Michael Mosley’s ‘Trust me, I’m a Doctor’ which conduct pioneering …
I have benefited hugely from selective education. My parents were the archetypal middle class couple—mother a teacher, father an accountant working in the City—and we lived in the south-east London suburbs. My parents paid for my older brother and sister to be educated privately, but by the time my turn came they had run out …
Will Jones writes: Findings from the 2015 annual British Social Attitudes survey published this month sent secularists into a mild panic. Showing an increase in those identifying as Christian, from 42% to 43%, and a corresponding decrease in those of ’no religion’, from 49% to 48%, they seemed to confirm that the steady decline in …
Have you experienced disappointment in your ministry? If you even hesitate to answer ‘yes’, then I would wager that you have not been long in ministry, whether that is ordained ministry or some form of lay ministry. I say that not to sound cynical, but to be honest about the realities of ministry—but also as …
Over the weekend, two articles appeared in the Guardian by Harriet Sherwood, citing Martyn Percy’s disagreement with the direction the Church of England is apparently taking. The first cites comments from the conclusion to a forthcoming book, which appears to express Martyn’s overall discontent. One of Britain’s senior theologians has warned that the Church of England …
For the next three weeks, our TV schedules are going to be dominated by ‘the greatest spectacle on earth’ that we call the Olympic Games. There is no doubt that there will be extraordinary feats of courage and endurance, and inspiring stories of individuals winning against the odds. Clergy will be on the lookout for …
I have been at New Wine B this week, and at the early morning meetings Simon Ponsonby (from St Aldate’s, Oxford) has been reflected on verses from 2 Corinthians. This morning we reflected on perhaps some of the most challenging: I have worked much harder, been in prison more frequently, been flogged more severely, and …
Whenever I travel on the train, I have to think carefully about whether I wear my clerical collar, or whether I travel in ‘mufti’. It partly depends on what kind of meeting or event I am travelling to, but it also depends on whether I want to work quietly on the train, or am happy …
‘Gosh, I never realised….X’. ‘Really? I knew that ages ago—it’s pretty common knowledge you know!’
I wonder if you’ve ever had that kind of conversation—at work, or church, or amongst friends or family. You have assumed that things are as they were claimed to be, or presented, but all the time ‘everybody’ ‘knew’ that that wasn’t really the truth, and you were naive to assume it was. As I reflect back, I realised that it has
On today’s General Synod agenda, we were scheduled to discuss a report on ‘Nurturing and discerning senior leaders’. In the event, we ended up adding a debate on the EU Referendum and the consequences for our thinking about division in society, and the debate on leadership has been postponed (I am not entirely sure until …
