Scholarship • Serving • Ministry – Ian Paul
Though it is Advent which has passed, and we are now in the Christmas season proper, because of the front-loading of most Christmas activities, it is now the season when most church leaders are breathing a sigh of relief and finally putting their feet up—assuming they didn’t on Christmas day itself. It might be a …
Angela Tilby, Canon Emeritus of Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford, managed to upset just about everyone with her recent column on Christmas ‘family-olatry’ in the Church Times. Christmas’s falling on a Sunday this year is bound to be awash with family services. I have heard of clergy cancelling the regular eight o’clock, on the grounds that they …
How much should I share of my personal experience in the context of preaching? This is a perennial question facing anyone in ministry in the local church—and relevant to speaking on other occasions too. My first encounter with the issue arose when I was a teenager. I remember one of the lay preachers in the …
In the summer, and after a year’s delay, Bloomsbury published That Was the Church That Was by Andrew Brown and Linda Woodhead. Woodhead is professor of sociology of religion at the University of Lancaster, and Brown has been a religious correspondent for a national newspaper for many years. So you might expect them both to know what they are …
The latest Grove Pastoral booklet makes a surprising proposal: that local churches should consider employing a nursing professional as part of their staff as an integral part of their missional engagement with their local community. The author is Helen Wordsworth, who is the Founder Director of Parish Nursing Ministries UK, a charity set up in 2006 …
In a guest post, rural minister and General Synod member Tiffer Robinson writes: “Rural churches have experienced falling congregations for decades” or so says the Guardian article about the Church of England proposals to remove the need for weekly Sunday services. The Church in the countryside is seen as being in the last stages, the …
Three years ago, Trinity College Bristol were looking for a new Principal, and for some reason several people drew this to my attention. So I looked at the ad, and this is what I found they were looking for: a person of integrity, humility and wisdom; a leader of leaders, who thrives on the sharing and multiplying of leadership; …
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, …
Many people in public ministry find that preaching is one of the most demanding things they are involved in. To put yourself and your theology on the line, to seek to offer an illuminating and life-transforming insight, week in, week out, is very tough! But why exactly does it feel so hard? There are some …
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 …
Last weekend I preached at the church where a good friend is curate, on the occasion of this person’s presiding at Communion for the first time. I am going to label this church as ‘liberal catholic’, since that is how the vicar described it when I asked him, though he did say that not all …
