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Work Of The Diocese
Administration Council for Social Responsibility Agriculture Schools & Education Training & Development Communications World Development & Partnership Ministry Interfaith Community, Partnership & Funding The Tourism Project The Mothers Union Care of Churches
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The 2008-2009 CME Conference Programme
THE SMALL PRINT How to Book Places Choose your conferences. There is no limit to the number of conferences for which you can apply! For two-day conferences please indicate whether you would like to be: Resident at the BMC, or Non-resident. Return the booking form to the Office as soon as possible. If you do this now you will remember. Do it now while it is still fresh in mind. As soon as we can, we will confirm by letter the conferences on which a place has been reserved for you. We will also advertise those courses where there are still places available in Training Times.
If you pick this brochure up again in six months or so you can still apply. Give Fiona a ring at the office (01432 373309)
If there are other people in your congregation that might enjoy one of these conferences do encourage them to come. A day conference is £12.00 and residential is £28.00 for those not licensed or commissioned to minister. Colleagues from other denominations are also welcome to attend.
After you Have Applied Make a note of the dates in your diary, so you can keep the days free of any other commitments and attend the complete conference (see below).
Full details will be sent out about a month before the conference date. All CME conferences will be held at The Bishop Mascall Centre, Ludlow unless otherwise stated in the conference details. There is no charge for CME events (unless otherwise stated exceptionally in the Brochure) and tea, coffee and all meals are provided during the course of the conference. The Penalty Clauses! Places are provided free of charge at CME conferences to Clergy, Readers and Local Ministry Group Members on the basis that people will actually attend the conferences for which they have booked, and will attend the whole of each conference.
If you are unable to attend a conference, please inform the Ministry Development and Training Team Administrator (Fiona Brooke) at the Diocesan Office immediately, so that those on any waiting list can be contacted in good time. As the BMC charge us for late changes, a cancellation charge of £12 per day conference (£28 per two-day event) will be made against your CME Grant if you give less than 7 days' notice of cancellation (except for reasons of dire unforeseen emergency).
There has also been a significant increase in those who book places and then pull out of part of a conference, arriving late or leaving early. It disrupts the dynamic flow of an event, making it less fruitful for those who do attend the whole conference. Please therefore ensure before booking that you are able to attend the whole event.
FULL CONFERENCE DETAILS (In Date Order)
Sunday 21st September 2008 2.00pm—7.00pm Father Silouan (N.B. This conference was postponed from last year’s conference programme)
Father Silouan will explore the Eastern Orthodox Mystical tradition of the prayer of the Holy Name, turning of the mind, illumination of the heart, and union with God. There will be opportunities to practice the turning and the seeing, as well as for questions and sharing.
Father Silouan is a priest-monk living as a hermit in the South-West Shropshire hills, just under the summit of the Stiperstones. He belongs to the Eastern Orthodox Church. Born in India in 1945 of medical missionary parents, he was educated at Uppingham School, and the University of Nottingham and Glasgow, where he graduated Master of Theology and Doctor of Philosophy in 1970. Following a short period as a lecturer at Lincoln Theological College and Theologian in Lincoln City Centre Team Ministry, he spent a decade as Research Co-ordinator of the Islamic Environment Research Centre, studying the mystical tradition of Sufism in London. He then taught theology at Winchester College before becoming a monk in 1990, at the Monastery at Tolleshunt Knights. Archimandrite Sophrony tonsured him in 1990, and then made him a monk of the Great Schema in 1993, giving him the name Silouan. Since January 2001, he has resided alone in the Monastery of St. Antony and St. Cuthbert at Gatten, under the Shepherd’s Rock on the Stiperstones.
Communities in Mission: Do-it-Together Tuesday 7th—Wednesday 8th October 2008 Day One: 10.00am—5.00pm Day Two: 9.45am—3.30pm New Way—Rev’d Alister Palmer & Mr Stephen Rymer
New Way seeks to: work with church groups of any religious denomination or none who want to think about the nature of their life together. They strive to encourage people engaged in transforming into communities of hope, the places where they live and work and to provide resources and experience to individuals exploring the subject of new ways of being church
In this conference Alister and Stephen will talk about stretching the understanding of 'church' beyond the Team Ministry and Shared Ministry concepts often focused within church building and its outreach to parish - towards church as All member Ministry in Whole of Life Mission.
We envisage the seven sessions covering:- 1. Getting to know each other, Sharing our hopes and forming small working groups 2. Thinking through 'Whole-of-life' Ministry 3. Biblical Theological perspectives of Creation, Trinity and Baptism 4. Leaderful Communities: Leadership as a shared task in which everyone has a part to play 5. Calling and Gifts 6. Becoming learning Communities 7. The role of professional minister as Enabler of the ministry of others
It is our practice to use methods of sharing and reflection as well as teaching in order to create a learning environment in which all contribute.
Community Development: What is the Leadership Role of Priests and Readers? Tuesday 28th October 2008 10.00am—4.00pm Mrs Jenny Barnes
The purpose of this one day seminar is give priests and readers the opportunity to reflect on the nature of community and their potential for supporting community development, here and overseas, particularly but not exclusively in Tanzania, Europe, Nürnberg and the Holy Land. Jenny is the Adviser to the Council for World Partnership and Development in the Hereford Diocese. She is responsible for encouraging awareness of development issues and has experience of working overseas.
Thursday 6th November 2008 10.00am—4.00pm Gillian Oliver & Canon Paul Bayes What’s the number one myth which stops couples asking for a church wedding? How does the vicar make the difference to the welcome a couple receive? What proportion of people think the church should support marriage after – and not just before – their wedding.
Gillian Oliver, Head of Communications & Development, and Canon Paul Bayes, National Mission & Evangelism Adviser, from the Archbishop’s Council Projects Wedding Team will take us through new research into why people do and don’t choose a church wedding. We’ll take a look at the incoming ‘marriage measure’, what it means and what it could mean for the mission of the church.
There will be a session sharing how we do weddings well in ‘our’ church and how we might refresh our practices in the light of the recent legal developments. If the marriage laws have changed a representative from the registrars office will attend.
Seeing Ourselves as Others See Us Friday 14th November 2008 10.00am—4.00pm Rt Rev’d Michael Bourke
Hereford Diocese enjoys a lively and developing partnership with the Lutheran Church of Nürnberg in Bavaria. It offers opportunities at different levels:
Part of the challenge is linguistic. Many Germans speak good English, but we are not so good at other languages - yet without this we cannot see ourselves as others see us. Maybe there are special opportunities here for schools to share in the partnership, and for adults and young people to work together.
Mike Bourke has recently returned as Bishop of Wolverhampton and was for ten years chair of the Meissen Commission.
Thursday 20th November 2008 10.00am—4.00pm Rev’d Peter Moger
The Rev’d Peter Moger is National Worship Development Officer for the Church of England, working with the Liturgical Commission to enable good practice in leading and planning worship throughout the church. He is a regular speaker at training events organised by the Commission and Praxis, a contributor to Together for a Season, (CHP, 2007) Sunday by Sunday: Resources for the Second Service Lectionary (Canterbury Press, 2008) and co-editor of Worship Changes Lives: How it works, why it matters (CHP, 2008). Prior to his present post, he was in parish ministry near Huntingdon and, before that, Precentor of Ely Cathedral.
The day will focus on the subjects of presidency (how we lead worship) and how worship can transform us. It will be of interest to all who lead worship, both as clergy or lay ministers.
Providing a Service? ‘Selling’ Marriage in Contemporary Society Thursday 8th January 2009 10.00am—4.00pm Rev’d Dr Duncan Dormer
The proportion of people getting married in church has fallen rapidly especially with the introduction of the Marriage Act 1994 which made provision for weddings on `approved premises’. Four in ten weddings now take place in such venues. The day will provide an overview of the changes in patterns of marriage and relationship formation before reviewing recent research conducted for the Church of England which suggests that the Church should and could do more to actively promote marriage and welcome and support couples.
Duncan Dormor is Dean of St John’s, Cambridge and lectures in the Divinity Faculty on the sociology and anthropology of religion. A demographer by training, having studied in Oxford and London, he worked for the charity ONE plus ONE, Marriage and Partnership Research publishing in the area of marriage, cohabitation and divorce. He read theology at Oxford and trained at Cuddesdon before a curacy at St Peter’s Wolverhampton. He is on the Governing Councils of the Cambridge Theological Federation and Westcott House, is a member of General Synod and a Trustee of FLAME (Family Life and Marriage Education). His publications include Anglicanism – the Answer to Modernity (Continuum, 2003 – co-edited), Just Cohabiting? (DLT, 2004) a book re-evaluating the practice of `living together’ from a Christian perspective and (with J. Morris) An Acceptable Sacrifice?: Homosexuality and the Church , (SPCK, 2007).
Tuesday 3rd February 2009 10.00am—4.00pm Margaret Barker We need a theology of creation rooted in the Scriptures, and the Bible does give a compelling and sophisticated understanding of the natural world and of our duty to conserve it. Many Christians who work in the field, however, are using only material developed by secular environmentalists and then supplemented with texts from Scripture. We must offer a characteristically Christian position as the voice of the Church, one that relates our great themes of covenant and atonement to the current situation.
Margaret has, since 1997, been part of the symposium for Religion, Science and the Environment. She is a biblical scholar, a former President of the Society for Old Testament Study, and has written thirteen books. She is also a Methodist preacher, and, now, a very proud grandmother. Since it opened in 1977, she has been involved with the work of a women's refuge in Derby and has for some years now been chairman of that charity.
Re-examining the Morality of the Fourth Gospel Sunday 22nd February 2009 2.00pm—7.00pm Glen Lund
Throughout the history of Christianity, faith and morality have been intimately connected. It is startling, therefore, that the only clear ethical instruction in John's Gospel is Jesus' command to love one another. This lack of moral teaching has lead many interpreters to conclude that Johannine ethics are either severely inadequate or badly flawed. Given the important role that the fourth gospel plays in the life of the church, this negative perception of Johannine morality raises crucial questions about how we ought to use John in our ministry. Through close work with the biblical text, Re-examining the Morality of the Fourth Gospel will investigate the reasons why many readers have been deeply dissatisfied with the moral content of the fourth gospel but also consider why a positive view of Johannine ethics cannot be dismissed. It will explore the ethical values that the gospel communicates and seek to understand if and how the gospel can be used for moral formation.
Glen is concluding work on a PHD on the ethics of John. He has been a missionary in Malawi and Uganda and currently lives with his family near Bishop’s Castle
Tuesday 3rd—Wednesday 4th March 2009 Day One: 10.00am—5.00pm Day Two: 9.45am—3.30pm Canon Trevor Dennis 'There was a man who had two sons.' That is how the Parable of the Prodigal Son begins, and it is designed to bring to our minds the powerful stories in Genesis of Cain and Abel, Isaac and Ishmael, Jacob and Esau. Those narratives play a crucial role in the forming of the biblical story of the people of God, and they all speak of a younger son who is accepted and an elder one who is rejected. In Jesus' parable both sons are accepted, and that means that he invites us to go back to the beginnings and rewrite the whole story - a challenge which was not seriously taken up in the New Testament, and still is often avoided in the Church. In these two days together we will explore those Genesis texts and the parable in depth, and then ask the questions: what are the implications of Jesus' teaching for the Church's understanding of itself, and for the gospel we are now called to preach?
Trevor Dennis is Vice Dean at Chester Cathedral, and before that was tutor in Old Testament Studies at Salisbury and Wells Theological College. He is author of 12 books, including 4 on Old Testament narratives, a children's Bible, and, most recently, 2 on narratives in the Gospels, The Christmas Stories , and, The Easter Stories. He has led CME days in the Diocese several times before, and has always much enjoyed himself!
Tuesday 28th April 2009 10.00am—4.00pm Prof. Roger Grainger
Roger Grainger provides a new and adventurous way of studying familiar Bible stories. Arranged in a series of workshops, it encourages a vivid, imaginative involvement in learning about the Bible so that it is no longer an intellectual exercise in ‘getting the point’, but a living experience which relates to our own lives.
The things we read in the Bible have the power to move our hearts and enlarge our understanding, leading us into a deeper experience of what it is to be human. We can see this in the way that Bible narratives can get through to us in the new ways every time we hear them. This is because we don’t simply hear them in the sense of just listening to them – we hear them and make them our own, so that we can really take them personally.
Roger has already run courses in Yorkshire in Methodist and Anglican Churches and is backed by the Practical Theology Department at Manchester University.
Living Ethically as 21st-century Anglicans Tuesday 19th May 2009 10.00am—4.00pm Rev’d Dr Andrew Goddard Ethical issues increasingly pose as much a threat to our unity in the Church of England and the Anglican Communion as the doctrinal, liturgical or other differences which have traditionally been causes of tension. This day will seek to explore how we live ethically as Anglicans today. It will do so both in terms of how as Anglicans we develop our ethical thinking and also how as Anglicans we live ethically in our relations with one another as we engage with ethical issues. In relation to the first area it will focus on how our shared reading of Scripture helps us address contemporary ethical challenges and how we relate biblical teaching to our varied contexts and experiences. Then, in the light of the proposed Anglican covenant and the work of Lambeth 2008, it will explore how we live together - from the parish level to the global level - as faithful disciples of Christ in the midst of moral diversity and ethical debate
Andrew studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Oxford before completing a theology doctorate on the life and work of Jacques Ellul. Until recently Andrew taught a ethics at Wycliffe Hall. In recent years he has played a significant role in the Anglican Communion debates on homosexuality and the nature of communion. He is the editor of Anvil and a Fellow of the Anglican Communion Institute. He is on the Faith and Order Advisory Group of the Church of England. Andrew writes and speaks on matters relating to the Anglican Communion and to sexuality and with Elisabeth he is delivering the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity Lectures in 2006 on ‘Redeeming Family’, to be published by IVP in 2007. He is pursuing research on the ethical teaching of the Lambeth Conferences and the nature of development and diversity in Christian ethical thinking
What Future for Political Theology? Tuesday 16th June 2009 10.00am—4.00pm Dr Peter Scott
“Liberal societies have failed, Christian theology has failed, the West has failed” ( Syriana , 2005) The term, political theology, is in vogue. Philosophers, social theorists and even literary critics use the term. Why is political theology now popular? And what is political theology? This session explores new relationships between power and salvation that are emerging in religious understanding in liberal societies. Does the new visibility of political theology help us to interpret religious criticisms of liberal societies? In the interaction between the theological and the political, salvation and power, in what ways might political theology contribute to the ‘humanizing’ of present polities? Peter M. Scott is Senior Lecturer in Christian Social Thought & Director of the Lincoln Theological Institute at the University of Manchester. He is the author of A Political Theology of Nature (2003) and co-editor of The Blackwell Companion to Political Theology (2006). Engaging with John in the 21 st Century Tuesday 14th—Wednesday 15th July 2009 Day One: 10.00am—5.00pm Day Two: 9.45am—3.30pm Rev’d Dr Ian Paul
‘Shallow Enough for a Child to Paddle, Deep Enough for an Elephant to Swim.’ In the early Church John was the most popular gospel and it remains attractive and engaging for us today. However in the western world it also raises considerable questions of history, of ethics, of plausibility. Can we recover the transforming power of this gospel while reading the text with integrity.
Revd Dr Ian Paul is Dean of Studies at St John's College Nottingham, where he teaches New Testament, biblical interpretation, homiletics and media. He has been a regular contributor to Radio 2's Pause for Thought, and is currently working on a television programme all about the number 666. He is married to Maggie, a GP, and they have three young children. In his spare time he enjoys watching the stars and keeping chickens, and he is an inveterate chocoholic.
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