Ministry
Priests trained at the College of the Resurrection have served in a wide variety of settings over the past hundred years – from Africa to North America, from village to inner city, from parish to chaplaincy, from high church to low, from episcopal palaces to pioneer ministry. Our passion is the formation of tomorrow’s priests to serve the Church of England and the wider Anglican Communion in a wide range of ministerial and mission settings.
In the coming decades, increasing numbers of stipendiary priests in the Church of England will be asked to serve in multi-parish benefices, serving diverse communities and leading teams of ministers, both lay and ordained. Others are answering the call to serve in new and pioneering situations. These demanding tasks will require maturity from the clergy – the maturity to put aside our own preferences in order to serve those different from us.
Alongside this, priestly ministry continues to demand of us a whole array of practical skills – in the leadership of teams, conflict resolution, change management, and so on. Administrative proficiency is also not to be overlooked: it is no use saying that we love our parishioners in the abstract if we do not know how to apply for necessary faculties, or how to fill out the legal forms for a wedding.
Pastoral Studies at the College of the Resurrection is taught by specialists in practical and systematic theology and in a range of other disciplines. In this way, we ensure that the best of theological and secular thought is brought into lively conversation, and we enable students to bring together in their future ministries the emotional, the spiritual, the intellectual and the practical.
Students are equipped to integrate their experiences in a wide range of settings – classroom, chapel, parish, children’s mission, hospital and hospice. This integrated approach to the education of the whole person is one we have learned from the monastic tradition, as well as from contemporary pedagogical theory. It has informed Pastoral Studies at the College since our foundation, and it continues to inform it in new ways today.