Our Commitments
Life at the College is founded on our key commitments:
- Formation and training
- Sharing responsibility
- Deepening and broadening experience
- Collaborative ministry and mission
- Catholicity and hospitality
- Freedom for ministry
Formation and training
Formation for ministry is partly about gaining new knowledge and acquiring proficiency in a range of skills. Equally important, it is about learning to be ourselves in a new way – about the formation of our characters.
For this reason, life at the College brings together worship, academic study, supervised practical ministry, and reflection. Programmes at the College seek to deepen the Christian lives of our students and to prepare candidates spiritually, intellectually, practically and emotionally for their future ministries.
Sharing responsibility
Primary responsibility for the work of formation lies with the candidate himself or herself. At the same time, no part of Christian life is ever undertaken in isolation from the rest of the Church. This is particularly true of the ordained ministry which is at the service of the Church and which seeks to strengthen her communion and mission.
We place an emphasis on personal responsibility and self-motivation, while at the same time holding a vision of formation as a collaborative and interactive process. The College staff seek to encourage, enable and challenge students in order to assist the process of formation during their time here and to equip students to continue that process in new ways once they are ordained.
Deepening and broadening experience
In undertaking its own distinctive task of training and forming ordinands, the College lives alongside a religious community and continues to learn from the insights of Christian monasticism.
Living alongside a monastic house with elements of shared life between College and monastery means that the College’s students have a unique opportunity to engage deeply with a particular living tradition of prayer and prophetic Christian service. Together with that depth of engagement, students here are encouraged to explore the breadth of the Christian traditions of worship and thought, and to find their own place within our Anglican heritage.
Collaborative ministry and mission
As a theological college, we are a community of men and women being called by God to serve and lead others in ministry and mission.
In addition to learning to serve one another in a residential community, ordinands at the College engage in supervised ministry in a wide variety of settings. In term-time, students minister in both parish and ‘sector’ ministries. Out of term, students have opportunities for placements in the UK and overseas.
Ministry. We seek to nurture in our students:
- a love for others, and for self, grounded in and motivated by Christ’s love for each person;
- an ability to care for others and for self;
- an understanding of the changing nature of parish ministry.
Mission. We seek to nurture in our students:
- a dedication to the joyful task of proclaiming by word and loving service the purposes of the God of love in creation and redemption;
- an ability to live pastorally and prophetically as Christian ministers in the world;
- confidence to engage in mission in new ways and in challenging contexts.
Collaborative service. We seek to nurture in our students:
- a vision for collaborative service;
- an ability to lead, inspire and animate ministry and mission among all God’s people;
- a capacity to receive in their own lives the ministry of others.
Catholicity and hospitality
The College of the Resurrection seeks to form in its students a vision which searches out and celebrates the work of the Risen Christ throughout his world and his Church.
With its characteristically rich sacramental and liturgical life, its deeply-rooted engagement with Scripture and Christian tradition, and its own open catholic tradition the College is proud to attract students from many traditions within the Church of England – liberal and conservative, evangelical and catholic. For many years, we have also been delighted to welcome as students Anglican ordinands and clergy from continental Europe, Africa, the United States and Asia.
A particular emphasis in the life of the College is the biblical virtue of hospitality. As a community, we seek to be hospitable to one another and to welcome guests in the name of Christ.
Freedom for ministry
During their time at the College, students are blessed with the opportunity to live with others and to share a common life. As a college community, we are committed to a common life in the refectory, in chapel and in everyday life together. In a commitment to serving one another in undemonstrative ways in these settings, many of us discover a new freedom for ministry.
Most importantly, we are committed to a common life of prayer. By setting time aside each day to pray alone and in community, we learn to rest in the love of God. It is the growing knowledge that we are loved by God in Christ which ultimately frees us to serve others in Christian ministry.