WOMEN proceed to outnumber men in ministerial training, the Principal of St Padarn’s Institute, the Revd Professor Jeremy Duff, told the Governing Body on Thursday of last week in ICC Wales, in Newport. The college currently has 24 candidates training for stipendiary ministry, 16 of whom are women. The ratio of girls to men is even higher in those training for non-stipendiary ministry: 21 candidates out of 28 are female.
One third of those training for stipendiary ministry are under 30 — something the faculty particularly attributes, in its annual report, to the Church in Wales’s investment in Resource Churches. Professor Duff acknowledged that, while the variety of stipendiary ordinands was barely increasing, “It doesn’t match the number we’d like, especially as mission funding may increase the variety of posts available. The variety of retirements over the subsequent ten years also creates a spot.”
The report gave a glimpse of the outstanding work St Padarn’s continued to do, and the way committed it was to high-quality ministerial formation and training, the Bishop of Monmouth, the Rt Revd Cherry Vann, said.
The Theology for Life course continued to be an enormous success, and last 12 months had produced 154 leavers from across the Province, including “a cohort of individuals deepening their faith for its own sake, and likewise providing a possible pipeline for vocations into lay ministries. We are going to wish a gentle stream of NSM and LLM candidates to hitch us in the long run,” she said.
She expressed pleasure on the increasing numbers taking over the Master’s programme, and praised the continuing emphasis on the Welsh language for “a Church that proudly describes itself as bilingual”.
Professor Duff acknowledged “a scarcity of racial diversity and the preponderance of middle class ordinands. . . We’re trying to handle that.”
The Revd Kate O’Sullivan (Monmouth) described herself as “a working-class girl from a council estate, with no academic background. The Church educated me, and I thank the province for locating a option to accept me on the Master’s programme. I actually have spent my life believing myself to not be clever enough, and I praise St Padarn’s for locating me a option to study with them. They do wonderful work.”
The Revd Dr Kevin Ellis (Bangor) described St Padarn’s as “one in all the crown jewels as a training institute that greater than rivals others within the Anglican Communion”.
Hannah Rowan (Co-opted) would love to have seen demographic data shared within the report. Canon Jan Gould (Llandaff) found much that was positive in it, but suggested that the statistics didn’t tell the entire story. An NSM ordinand of her acquaintance had felt that stipendiary trainees had opportunities that NSMs weren’t given, and that they weren’t as valued and affirmed as those going for full-time ministry. “I feel it’s imperative that they’ve the identical spiritual, pastoral, and theological understanding,” she said.
Professor Duff acknowledged that the info on ethnic diversity was available, but the problem was that numbers were so small that folks can be personally identified.
He reflected on the suggestion of a distinction between opportunities for stipendiary and NSMs — that there was an issue of how each was trained and supported, given the difference between the cohort doing 50 hours per week training, and people who were training alongside full-time jobs. “One of the actual worries about NSM and LLM training is what may be achieved, and the way much may be expected in training.”
The meeting noted the report.
