Resourcing Ministerial Education: a tasty curate’s egg
The Church of England does not have a skilful track record of thinking strategically near theological and ministerial education.
In 1977 the imaginatively named ACCM Paper 22 swept away the General Ordination Test, and instead asked each training institution to articulate its agreement of ministry and its approach to training. In the post-1960s liberal brume, perhaps that looked like a good idea—and it might even have been necessary to jiff some life into grooming in a rapidly changing earth. Simply it saddled ordination training the ludicrous state of affairs (still in place) of widely diverging syllabuses for ordination, so that those preparation curates could take almost nothing equally common in prior grooming.
Around the time when I entered training, in the late 1980s, someone had the bright idea of asking prospective ordinands to 'go away and get some more life experience'. The entirely obvious and equally entirely unanticipated consequence of this is the crisis of ministry we are at present facing, with a whole accomplice of clergy retiring at the same fourth dimension. It is probably the biggest self-inflicted wound the Church has visited on itself, and a serious impediment to mission.
Not long afterward, Robert Hardy, then Bishop of Lincoln, chaired a group which recommended closure of Lincoln and Chichester theological colleges (which duly happened) and Oakhill, to which there was uproar and a revolt. Ten years after, John Hind (who had been primary at Chichester just earlier its closure) chaired a further review. This report offered the harbinger man of a national primal training college, and when that was (predictably) rejected, offered in its place Regional Training Partnerships (RTPs) none of which ever functioned effectively. Apart from provoking heated (and at times acrimonious) contend, the main achievement of the Hind report was to turn theological education into a competitive market; instead of existence partners in didactics and grooming, colleges and courses now became rivals competing for a share of the ordinand marketplace.
So the news of a new review of training, nether the mildly Orwellian championship of 'Resourcing Ministerial Education', did not fill me with joy. This sense of foreboding was confirmed when I read the 'Results of Consultations' with those involved in delivering training from October 2014. At that place is a shortish list of things that resonate, quite a long list of things that 'don't sound correct' and an even longer list of 'things missing'. Near the summit of the missing list is 'theology and spirituality'!
But when the report for Synod was published last week, I was pleasantly surprised. The 12 specific proposals at this stage under the last major heading of 'How should selection and grooming be reimagined and reshaped?' (paragraphs 34 to 45) are mostly marked by the kind of sensible, can-do approach perhaps inspired by Justin Welby. They are:
one. Review the selection criteria and the selection process for ordination grooming. Although the criteria were reviewed adequately recently (so what went incorrect with the previous procedure?) most will agree that this is necessary.
2. Supervene upon Bishop's Regulations with guidelines and personal learning plans. If done well, this as well looks eminently sensible.
3. Introduce a national fund for special training needs. Some volition insubordinate confronting the hint of Green-way management speak in talk of 'resourcing gifted individuals in grooming to fix for strategic roles', merely these include not simply hereafter theological educators, but also 'missional leaders' and 'those committed to serve in poorer dioceses', which looks adequately comprehensive.
iv. Move ordinations to September. This is a particular interest of Steven Croft, Bishop of Sheffield and chair of the group, who wrote a paper proposing this when he was Warden of Cranmer Hall in Durham. Information technology is eminently sensible, will eliminate the ridiculous stress for ordinands of completing course, moving house and getting ordained, and has only been blocked so far past collective institutional stupidity.
5.Invest in candidates after ordination, post-obit the model of 'Teach Commencement' type grooming. This is a sensible break of the unhelpful stranglehold of funding being limited to pre-ordination grooming in the current system.
6. Have a standard level of grant for tuition. This follows proposal in the work leading to Common Awards, and raises a very big question about training in collaboration with 'expensive' universities like Oxford and Cambridge. There will be much angst here.
7.Abolition of pooled funding of maintenance grants for families. OK, here we reach the first really bad idea. There is a resurfacing of Green/Orwellian language that 'this will requite the dioceses freedom to determine how much of their training budget should be invested direct in ministerial education'. But in reality it will mean closing the door to residential training for ordinands with families in many diocese. Bad motion. Really bad motility.
8.Candidates over 50 will not be funded and will be locally selected. Since the aim is for this grouping to diminish in size, this will not take a big impact, and is the logical consequence of aiming for ordinands to be younger overall.
nine. Possibility of transfer of sponsorship, perhaps to poorer dioceses. This is interesting, and could be a proficient way to resolve the imbalance of vocations which arises for demographic reasons—London Diocese generates twice as many ordinands as the next most 'productive' diocese, largely considering this is where many young people are. It was proposed a couple of years ago that 'conditional delivery to a title parish' should be settled prior to training, which was daft and predicated on the notion that training doesn't actually change anyone. But this proposal looks a lot more sensible.
10. This recognises that 'the quality of IME Stage 2 and CMD provision demand significant overall improvement' and therefore investment. Here the report is saying ane of the things everyone knows, simply no-i dares to mention. Yet, there is a big proviso here to which I will render.
11. The norm for curacies should be 3 years, not four—which is good—but 'the length of curacy should exist determined by the time the candidate needs to run across the Formation Criteria.' This looks like a great idea in principle; the claiming will be defining the criteria fairly, and finding a way to ensure it is practical consistently across dioceses.
12. Additional national funding to education for lay ministry. This looks interesting and of import, but is a whole surface area for consideration on its ain. I am non sure that the post of Lay Reader functions effectively or consistently across the Church, so I feel ambivalent about introducing a new lay category for which there is a national pick process.
And then much for the specifics, which at this phase are mostly positive (the notable exception being proposal vii). The before sections of the report are a more than mixed bag, and hold some of the bigger questions.
The department on growing vocations is excellent, blowing a much-needed fresh wind through a vital area of the Church's life.
The Church of England as a whole needs to make a pregnant shift from a passive approach to vocations work to a proactive approach to seeking the numbers and quality of candidates the Church requires.
This will involve both diocesan initiatives by bishops besides as 'significant restructuring inside the Ministry Division then that staff resource is dedicated to proactive leadership in vocations work.' The lack of a key, coordinated national approach to vocations has long been a major omission, so 3 cheers here.
The issue of funding all the changes is more than opaque. The figure of £10 meg is floated in paragraph 15, and farther work is being done. When the Hind report came to Synod, I was on a subgroup looking at how we might enhance an extra £1 meg to enhance qualifications in training. But when nosotros looked carefully, the figure had been arrived at by the crudest back-of-an-envelope calculation, and it was clear we were wasting our time even thinking about it. Then the sums will need to be done really advisedly.
And of course the funding question relies entirely on the prior question of how you measure effectiveness of ministry. This is where the written report gets actually interesting—or perhaps really ambiguous. A mere two-thirds of a page (paragraphs 26 to 32) are given over to this question, but the comments are on the basis of 'a major research programme to explore the outcomes of the several forms of ministerial pedagogy'. Click on the link, and you will find a 66-page report from the Constitute of Teaching in the University of London, which all looks very impressive. I read it with some anticipation; after all, surely 'effectiveness of ministry' and its training correlate 'effectiveness of training' are the Holy Grail of church leadership and theological teaching. Wouldn't identifying these things resolves differences and requite the states a clear focus for the significant expenditure on ministerial training? Of course it would.
But it isn't there.
What is there is 'perception' of effectiveness of training, and that perception is non of those looking on at ministers, but the ministers themselves. At worst, this is like request clergy whether they expect back fondly on their time in grooming. At best, information technology is the equivalent of using the about unreliable measure out of the effectiveness of training. (It is well documented that student evaluation of didactics is either no measure or a negative measure of effectiveness of learning.) This is a massive methodological hole correct at the eye of the inquiry, and therefore of the whole review.
I don't think that it is the mistake of the research team. It is the inevitable result of the arroyo of the group. In the opening department on 'What ministry building does the Church of England demand?' (ironically, ane of the questions included in the ACCM 22 process), information technology offers this 'vision':
Our vision equally a Task Group is of a growing church with a flourishing ministry building. Nosotros promise therefore to see
- every minister equipped to offer collaborative leadership in mission and to be adaptable in a rapidly changing context
- a accomplice of candidates for ministry who are younger, more diverse and with a wider range of gifts to serve God's mission
- an increase of at least 50% in ordinations on 2013 figures sustained annually from 2020
- the rapid evolution of lay ministries
- a continued commitment to an ordained and lay ministry which serves the whole Church both geographically and in terms of church tradition.
This is all skilful stuff—actually it is excellent stuff—merely it is not a vision. It is a programme. It is a good plan, and one that is 'widely' shared, but it is a plan and not a vision. And the reason for agreeing on a plan (rather than annihilation else), is that the group fabricated a conclusion from the outset:
Nosotros have not therefore sought to articulate a single ideal theology or description of ministry as the basis of our proposals other than that independent in the formularies of the Church building of England.
I can sympathize why this decision has been made. With difficult proposals to push through, the terminal affair we want right now is an inter-tradition fight about what ordination means. But I still think it is problematic. Is information technology really the instance that the ordinal does not ascertain what ministry building is, at least to some degree? And could the content of the ordinal really not lead to the defining of a syllabus for training? So all those years when the Church building had a General Ordination Exam (GOE), it was fooling itself? And those churches around the world which still operate something similar are wasting their time?
The current situation of grooming is inexplainable to many looking in from the exterior—and inexplainable because of this i failure, to accept an agreed pre-ordination syllabus. I was once tasked with explaining, concisely and in an engaging way, the Common Awards process of give-and-take to the support staff (administrators, cooks and cleaners) of the college I taught at. I asked a question: 'Given that anybody is training for the same ministry, do you think we should all cover the same things?' Every person in the room thought the respond was 'Yes'! It is baffling to most who look at the system equally a whole that some ordinands spend twice every bit much time studying the Bible equally others, or that people can be ordained without having had any education on how to preach, or that church history might be an selection (rather than compulsory), or that it is possible to complete training without having engaged with Paul'due south letter to the Romans.
Failure to talk nearly a common syllabus was a major missed opportunity in the Common Awards procedure. And it came most (essentially) because of mistrust within the system. Evangelicals thought they would have a liberal syllabus imposed on them; liberals feared an evangelical syllabus. And those in the heart had neither the free energy—nor probably the authority—to knock heads together. (You might then inquire the purpose of Mutual Awards, and the enormous amount of work information technology has involved. To salvage money? That doesn't look as though information technology will happen. To simplify assistants? Not in the institutions I am aware of. To coordinate syllabuses? Nigh are continuing to teach what they taught before, merely 're-badged'. To link colleges with courses? However, every bit an external examiner, I volition be looking at colleges only. And then what has been gained?)
Without a common syllabus, I recollect it is going to be difficult to achieve some important gains the written report is aiming for. But what will happen is the shrinking and eventual closure of residential colleges—which will be a major loss to the Church. By avoiding actually asking the question of 'effectiveness of grooming', the report has concluded that
[T]he findings prove no stardom between college and course pathways in relation to effectiveness related to numerical and spiritual growth and other measures. (para 31)
It is quite hard imaging whatsoever C of East report proverb annihilation different, of course. But if that is the case, why should the national church fund residential training? It might have 'distinctive benefits', but if 'effectiveness' is not one of those, why worry? And if training decisions are pushed to dioceses, equally is proposed, why wouldn't financially-difficult-pressed bishops opt for the cheapest path, the local selection, the one over which they take nearly control? And if nosotros demand to increase the numbers in training past l%, there are farther financial incentives. And when maintenance funding for married candidates is pooled (proposal seven above), the pressure will increase. (A number of dioceses take refused to allow married candidates to train residentially for several years now, merely out of misunderstanding the existing pooling machinery and thinking nosotros were already in the state of affairs that is being proposed.)
We do need a plan, merely nosotros also need a vision. If vocations are going to increase by 50%, this will not exist in response to practiced direction, nor in response to the cry that (in the words of Pete Broadbent, Bishop of Willesden) 'the Church of England is in last gamble saloon'. They will increase by people capturing a theological vision—that is where renewal comes from. And it is theological vision which needs to be at the centre of thinking well-nigh future ministerial training.
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