In light of current debates and historical precedent, this article rejects polarized approaches to growth in the Church of England. Instead, it points towards the significant numerical growth experienced by English cathedrals as evidence for the fruits of a mixed practice approach. Analysing the growth experienced by cathedrals in recent years, it is posed that, combined with rootedness in place and local identity, a mixed practice approach could be a model for a well-functioning mixed ecology, and a growing Church.

All Christians are called to pray. The daily offering of Morning and Evening Prayer is a particular obligation of the clergy of the Church of England, as part of the ‘manner of life of clerks’ laid down in Canon C 26. However, despite the significant time devoted to these prayers by the clergy on a daily basis, there has been little detailed examination of this canonical obligation. This article explores the historical background to the obligation and its effect today.

The process of creating a Safe and Inclusive Church (SIC) Commission within the Anglican Church of the Province of SouthernAfrica (ACSA) is not unique in the Communion. This article seeks to explore ACSA’s specific journey to date, with a view to engaging the Communion in a learning partnership. While some of the process of establishing this ministry may be unique, there are places of commonality as we jointly grapple with the call of our Lord Jesus to continue to build the Kingdom of God in contemporary times. Most specifically, this process has highlighted a need for renewal of the Church in both our theological understanding and how we organize to best serve our call to preach the Good News. These theological and structural dimensions of ‘doing church’ speak deeply into our ‘being church’ and are at the heart of why dialogue is needed as a Communion. We offer this article as an invitation to continue discerning together how best to follow and serve our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ by being His Body to a broken and wounded world.

An extended homily or meditation that focuses on some aspects of the life and work of Percy Dearmer. Dearmer, in his pastoral attentiveness, irenic prophetic action, and practical Christianity, sought to continue a distinctive English Anglican tradition of faithfully fulfilling his vocation through a richly incarnational ministry.

Considering the importance of their role in the life of the Church of England and the Church in Wales, there is not much written about the role of archdeacons. In her recent article in the January 2019 issue of this Journal, Jane Steen focused on the legal aspect of the role of archdeacons, and reflected on how they play a key role in shaping the Church and its ministry, delighting in its beauty and rejoicing in its well-being. In this article, the recently retired training, development and support officer for archdeacons reflects on the nature of the role and, in the light of that, on the way in which it might best be carried out. Believing that process is at least as important as outcome, and that good processes lead to better outcomes, he argues that coaching provides a useful model to enable archdeacons to exercise their ministries most effectively and promote both the mission and the well-being of the Church. It is also, he argues, a better reflection of Anglican theology.

The Catholic Church cannot, at present, find sufficient clergy to staff its parishes and this is provoking a massive pastoral, and so a liturgical, reorganization. However, these changes are not primarily driven by the demography of the actual churches, communities of people, but are solely the result of a decline in clerical numbers. Most attempts to deal with this turn on seeking to increase the number of deployable persons in presbyterial orders (e.g. seeking clergy from Africa or India), making a wider use of deacons, and scaling up the size of liturgical communities, irrespective of the nature of that liturgy, so that areas are ‘covered.’ But this assumes that actual communities, when gathered for the eucharist, are a function of the number of clergy; but surely the number of ministers is secondary to the location and size of the communities who are in need of ministry? This paper seeks to ask fundamental questions about the nature of liturgical ministry in keeping with the conference's theme of ‘who ministers what to whom?’ What is the basis of liturgical ministry? Does it exist independently of a worshipping community? Is it primarily as an individual's ‘vocation’ to ‘be a priest’, who then ministers, or a community need provided from within that community in union with the larger church? This ‘bottom up’ approach affects how we see not only actual liturgical ministry, but the priesthood of the Christ, the priesthood of all the baptized, and our pneumatology of vocation within actual churches.

When it is misapplied, canon law can cause great unjustified unhappiness, but this paper argues that the content is basically, the practice of which is an authentic form of the church's ministry that is necessary for the structure and life of the church.

Pope Francis has brought a fresh style of ministry, including his own, to the Catholic Church. This reflects the accounts of ministry in the New Testament, which eschews privilege and position, and focuses on ministry on service and sees ministers as servants and slaves.

Since Vatican II the restored Permanent Diaconate in the Latin Church has played an increasingly important role in the life of the Catholic Church, particularly in Western Europe and North America. Is there a theology of the diaconate, and if so what are the contentious issues? How far is the diaconate really distinct from the priesthood and the ministry of laypeople? A way forward is to revive the subversive character of διακονία, both in practical pastoral ministry and in serious engagement with Catholic Social Teaching; this necessitates major changes to diaconate formation programmes. A clearly defined diaconate would be able to help the Church renew and reform its understanding of ministry.

Previous studies of archdeacons in this Journal defended their pastoral hearts in a ministry dominated by law. This article sees the archdeacon's pastoral and priestly ministry as created and enabled by law. It looks at the canonical description of the archdeacon's office before turning to the work of an archdeacon in such areas as visitations, parish and diocesan governance, faculty jurisdiction, care and discipline of clergy, conflict resolution and creative innovation. The article draws on relevant legislative instruments, including Acts, Measures and Codes of Practice; on case law; and on quasi-legislation such as diocesan handbooks. Its conclusions are based not only upon what is set down in these, but also upon what archdeacons actually do. Archdeacons across the Church of England and the Church in Wales, and a Channel Islands dean, responded to a short survey looking at archdeacons’ work in relation to the stipulations of the law. The article concludes that archdeacons occupy a pivotal position in dioceses, both because of what the law requires and because of what it does not prohibit. They play a key role in shaping the church and its ministry. With bishops and others, they delight in its beauty and rejoice in its well-being.

The Genevan Reformation was subjected to a trenchant ethical critique during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries by Roman Catholics, Lutherans, Anabaptists, and Radicals who identified both Calvin and Beza as unscrupulous, dishonest, and immoral. By contrast, modern scholars have paid little attention to such matters. They have either stated explicitly that both men were upright and honest in their lives and ministries or implied it. A handful of scholars have, however, alluded to dishonest conduct on their parts. The present article takes up this topic in detail, looking particularly at Geneva’s ministry to France. It contends that duplicity characterized Calvin and Beza’s French ministry between 1536 and 1563. It commences by examining their understanding of mendacity, which provides the standard for our analysis of their ministry. After outlining what Calvin and Beza did to support and strengthen Calvinist churches in France, the article sets forth and explains the system Calvin devised to hide their ministry from the French Catholic government and probably from the Nicodemites as well. This system depended on lies, deceit, and simulation.

The use of credentials in an ecclesiastical context is a means of assuring that a minister is who he or she claims to be and is therefore trained and qualified to exercise ministry within a particular church tradition as determined by individual denominations. The concept and use of credentials has developed over time. Using primary sources in the main, this article examines the use of credentials as a tool for ‘inclusion’ or a means of ‘exclusion’, or both, in the history of the largest Presbyterian church in Southern Africa and its predecessors. The research question under study is to what degree, if any, were credentials used to control ministers and to cleanse and purify the church of radical – such as anti-apartheid – elements?

An ecumenical group of experts in church law produced a Statement of Principles of Christian Law based on a comparative examination of the internal regulations of their respective churches. This article examines the detail of the Statement from the point of view of the regulations and practice of Quakers in Britain and concludes that, based as it is on a Trinitarian, sacramental view of ‘the Church’, while there is much in it with which Friends – and members of other non-sacramental, non-hierarchical denominations – would agree, there is also much which has little resonance for them.

This article seeks a fresh assessment of Paul's pompa triumphalis imagery at 2 Cor. 2.14–16a by probing a number of neglected aspects of both lexical and cultural background. Included are (1) an analysis of the use of θριαμβεύω in the Greco-Roman literature, with special attention given to claims made concerning the word's use with direct objects; (2) a lexicology of ὀσμή and εὐωδία in literatures of the period; and (3) a probing of the language of ‘salvation’ in the passage, with attention given to a feature of the triumphal procession parades that has until now failed to garner attention in investigations of the passage.

Matthew's story of the Canaanite woman is an unusual and disturbing story in the Gospel tradition. Alongside other Gentile stories in Matthew's very Jewish Gospel, it signifies the opening of the doors on the Gentiles and their inclusion in the community of faith. The woman's language and the silence of Jesus speak powerfully to the contemporary context within Anglicanism. The liturgical language she employs teaches us how to speak in worship, while Jesus’ silence addresses our own experience of suffering and the seeming deafness of God. In the end, the narrative, for all its exegetical difficulties, is a powerful story of communion and the ultimately gracious response of God. As Anglicans we need to recover the depths of our own speech, grounded in Scripture and the Book of Common Prayer, as expressions of the grace of an inclusive God who teaches us how to speak and how to wait in faith.