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1 The academic year began well with Associate Director Revd Dr Catherine Middleton fully back in post after lengthy and severe medical treatment for cancer. We had an 8 day Induction Session for the 8 new ordinands. They fitted in quickly with little difficulty. We are very pleased with them. The usual round of courses, activities, placements, personal sessions, group meetings, coffees and bar-time took place. Academic work is often daunting but we are privileged to be part of a world class university with exciting people and developments all around us. We use hospitals and community development projects for placements and we are also blessed with good urban and rural as well as suburban churches for experiencing ministry. There are 19 United Reformed Church ordinands, 1 student sponsored by the Congregational Federation, 1 Erasmus scholar from the Swiss Reformed Church, 15 undergraduates reading theology, 6 MTh students, and approximately 300 students in the college in total. There are 9 teachers of theology in the college [not all for ordinands but around when needed], and a University Theology Faculty of 100 that we call upon for special subjects. There are 35 college teachers in total at Mansfield. There are 4 leaving ordinands for United Reformed Churches this year.

2 The Revd Charles Brock is the Chair of the Oxford University BTh Revision Committee involving the 12 theological colleges in the Oxford Partnership for Theological Education and Training Scheme. Some 300 ordinands are involved and we hope to make the degree and Certificate in Theology more in line with current methods of teaching and reflection. We still retain the tutorial system at great expense, but we believe it enhances students at all levels. The University is planning wider access to the UK; Mansfield has always believed in this policy.

3 The tradition of the College has been highlighted by the new Religion and Democracy Programme that has the enthusiasms of the Principal, Senior Tutor, Bursar, Professional Fellow in Politics, and Fellow in Oriental Studies, who are all on the Committee. In addition we have the enthusiastic help of the Gladstone Professor of Government from All Souls College. To date we have four well-known speakers this year and we plan workshops for next year with a view toward publications. We were very pleased to welcome the first speaker in the series. Dr Alex Boraine, an old college member, who is currently Deputy Chair of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Committee.

4 Our Associate Chaplain, Revd Flora Winfield, left in April 1997 to take up a position at Church House, Westminster. The Revd Dr John Muddiman, our New Testament Fellow, has taken her place. We have also appointed David Elliott, a United Reformed Church graduate student, as Junior Chaplain, two undergraduate chapel assistants. Revd Dr Susan Durber, Minister of St Columba’s Oxford, has been appointed as Chaplain to Ordinands. We have begun an Inter-faith Meditation keeping silence together for a half hour each week.

5 A personal note from Charles Brock:

Having been home in the USA during the past summer, we noticed that my mother [age 92] is failing, and missing us a lot. That is a burden of being an only child I suppose, but it did bring a lot of benefits. It was a tough decision, but we have decided to go back for three-quarters of the year each year. We bought a little place in Oxford close to the college [oh, poor souls] and will help with the Religion and Democracy Programme and teach a few courses, and in the Autumn start up a religion and ideology project at Penn State that I have been asked to do called Institute for the Analysis of the American Dream. It will be really painful to give up Wheatley, my Fellowship, and the Chaplaincy. It has, however, been going swimmingly for 35 years. And at last I will have a chance to write some books that have been on the boil for 25 years and do a bit of new intellectual explorations. Pray hard for me.

1 There are twenty-seven students on our roll, twenty-five of whom are preparing for stipendiary ministry in the United Reformed Church. Of the eight who joined us last September six were under thirty years of age thus making it the youngest intake for many a long year. They have brought with them a great deal of enthusiasm as they have displayed a high level of capability and a refreshing openness to questioning and critical enquiry.

2 The Revd Frances Ward left the staff at the end of the 1996-97 session to add to her family and return to her ministry in the Church of England. She had made an excellent contribution to developments at Luther King House, particularly concerning placement learning and the End of Session Student Review process. In her place, we have welcomed the Revd Jan Berry from work in chaplaincy at Sheffield Hallam University. She is already making an impact in our teaching programme in the areas of counselling and liturgy.

3 Our overseas student for l997-98 was the Revd Johnson T Arue who came to us from the Kiribati Protestant Church to study for the MA in Contextual Missiology. I use the past tense since Johnson had to return home shortly before Christmas due to the tragic death of his wife. We are trying to find a way of enabling him to complete the degree via some form of distance learning.

4 The ‘Faith in Living’ course once again generated an excellent set of results. In comparison with the undergraduates I teach in a University setting I am continually impressed by the commitment and motivation the course generates in our participants. Our results when compared with the standard of work I have seen from other institutions suggest that few of our participants under achieve. We feel affirmed in what we are doing by the excellent reports we have received from our External Examiners.

5 Our two taught MA courses in Contextual Ministry and Missiology have attracted good year groups. Three United Reformed Church ministers are reading for these degrees as part of their programmes of continuing ministerial education, hopefully blazing a trail for others to follow. One important feature of these courses is the vast amount of Christian and ministerial experience at home and overseas which is on display in the year groups. Amongst the twenty-five or so participants we have people who have experienced work for the church in nine different countries.

6 Perhaps the single most significant development during recent months has been the outcome of the Northern Federation for Training in Ministry’s review process. The Federation is to be disbanded and replaced by the Partnership for Theological Education, Manchester. This new body will be made up of the existing Federation members augmented by others involved in theological education in the churches and beyond. The aim will be to become a focus for theological education at every level - lay, ministerial (full time / part-time, stipendiary / non-stipendiary) and continuing ministerial - in the north of England. The new Partnership will be an ecumenical response to the challenge to churches to equip themselves for mission and ministry at a time of great upheaval but also tremendous opportunity. We need to develop in all our members those gifts and graces God has given them for being the Church today; that will involved a focus on lay education beyond what we have hitherto envisaged. We also need a stipendiary ministry equipped to lead and serve the Church in these times; that will involve thorough and stretching foundational and continuing ministerial education programmes. Northern College, through the new Partnership, is committed to playing its part in making these things happen. Luther King House soon will be managed by a new ecumenical Trust body. The stake-holders in the Luther King House Trust will be developing the buildings and site into a teaching-conference facility that will enable the far reaching aims of the new Partnership to be met.

7 The report of the l996-97 Northern College Review Group, Enhancing Effective Ministry - The Next Steps, was presented to the Board of Governors in the Autumn. Its proposals dovetail neatly into the plans for the new Partnership, with a renewed emphases upon diversifying the role of Northern College. In collaboration with those already involved we want to try to put more of emphases and resources upon lay-education and continuing ministerial education - without in any way compromising our commitment to prepare able stipendiary ministers. A further thrust of the report is a commitment to enable all involved at Northern College to gain an enhanced understanding and experience of the wider world church family. We warmly support Belonging to the World Church as one means of fulfilling that commitment.

8 Preparing people for stipendiary and non-stipendiary ministry is a partnership between the College and the churches. Throughout their courses participants are not only involved in learning at college but also engaged in reflection upon their work in local churches. We are grateful for the members and ministers of those churches who are prepared to devote precious time to our ordinands in their period of foundational preparation for ministry.

9 As a lot of our recent thinking and plans suggest we are trying in the Federation to respond to the emphases on life-long learning emphasized by the Dearing Report on Higher Education. Other innovations in Higher Education to emerge from the new government are awaited in a spirit of guarded optimism given the approach to which we are now committed.

10 Dr Elaine Kaye has now finished her work on the history of the college. We hope that it will be published in early 1999.

11 The speaker at the College Lunch at the 1998 Assembly will be the Revd Dr John Harrod, the Principal of the Hartley Victoria Methodist College. John will speak about the recent developments which have given rise to the plans to create the Partnership for Theological Education, Manchester and the Luther King House Trust.

12 The College wish to congratulate two of its former students who have recently been recognized by the Victoria University of Manchester: The Revd Dr Alan P F Sell, now Professor of Systematic Theology at the United Theological College, Aberystwyth, was awarded a DD for work submitted and the Revd Alan Gaunt has received an honorary MA for his services to hymnology.

1.1 Last year we were in the throes of change – new staff appointments, new structure of government. This year has been a time of ‘bedding down’. The Board of Governors and their committees have been grappling with the ways in which they must exercise their responsibilities, particularly in areas of financial management and stewardship of resources. The new staff have been growing in friendship, theological understanding and collegial ministry. These two processes are, of course, essential to the creation of college community life, and they have deserved our energy. This has been a year of laying foundations. We hope that much will be built on them in future years.

1.2 We have welcomed two new sub-committee conveners – Mr Don Taylor to the Management Committee, and Mrs Valerie Burnham to the Board of Studies. That, of course, means that we have said farewell to two friends who have served us with dedication and faithfulness over many years – the Revd Dr Stephen Orchard from the Board of Studies and Mr Des Davies from the Management Committee. Mr Davies has been involved with the management of the college for over twenty years. The college, and the rest of the church, are indebted to those who give of their time and gifts with such generosity. We have also said farewell to the Revd Elizabeth Brown, who serviced the Board of Studies with singular efficiency as its secretary.

1.3 We congratulate Peter McEnhill on his election by the Church of Scotland to give the Kerr lectures in the University of Glasgow 1997-2000. It is a great honour to be invited to give these lectures – the rest of us are basking in reflected glory!

1.4 The college community is in good heart. There are 28 URC ordinands / non-stipendiary ministers transferring to the stipendiary ministry amongst our 32 students. It is our hope and our prayer that eleven of them will proceed to ministries within the United Reformed Church at the end of the 1997/8 academic year. As usual, we have been enriched and enlarged as a community by students from overseas, and by ministers taking sabbaticals through the generosity of the Cheshunt Foundation.

1.5 Our Commemoration of Benefactors had a Celtic flavour in 1997 – rightly so as British Christians gave thanks on the 1400th anniversary of the death of Columba on Iona and the arrival of Augustine at Thanet. The Commemoration lecture, ‘Columba in contexts’, was given by Professor David Dumville, Professor of Palaeontology and Cultural History at Cambridge. We were also delighted to welcome the incoming Eastern Province Moderator, the Revd Elizabeth Caswell, as our preacher.

1.6 Westminster confounds the computer acronym ‘wysiwyg’ – ‘What you see is what you get.’ Our students see Westminster, but what they get is the magnificent resources of the ecumenical Cambridge Theological Federation. This has been another year of growth for the Federation which has offered ‘Associate Institute’ status to the Centre for Jewish-Christian Relations. This new centre is unique in Britain, and we look forward to working with them. Elsewhere in the Federation, Ridley Hall are partners in a new course for the training of professional Christian youth workers. This is available to all denominations, and adds yet another dimension to the resources the Federation offers the churches.

2.1 Some dreams eventually become reality. 1997 saw the launch of the ‘Cheshunt Institute for Reformed Studies’ at Westminster - the realisation of a dream which began more than five years ago. Dr David Thompson gave a paper entitled, ‘United or Reformed? Twenty-five years of the United Reformed Church’ to a pleasingly diverse audience drawn in equal numbers from the church and our university partners. Dr Peter McEnhill acts as the Centre’s Director, and an exciting programme of lectures and conferences are being planned. This year’s programme has also included a paper by Professor John Hick, one of Westminster’s most distinguished alumni.

2.2 The Institute’s first major conference will be in September 1999, entitled ‘Whither the Reformed tradition?’ when the keynote speakers will be Professors Jurgen Moltmann, Brian Gerrish and Colin Gunton. More detailed information is available from Dr McEnhill at the college.

2.3 The United Reformed Church History Society Library and archive are being moved to the Institute at Westminster as these reports are being prepared. We are now well on our way to establishing the Institute as a significant international centre for the study of the Reformed tradition.

3.1 As one dream becomes a reality, others begin to take shape, as the Governing Body turn their eyes to look at the college building and begin a process of reflecting about how it might best be used in the service of the church into the new millennium.

3.2 This year’s leavers were Delia Bond to Hythe, David Dones to Clare and Wickhambrook, David Featonby to Ross on Wye and Newent, Simon Franklin to Portslade, Geoffrey Haigh to the West Sussex Group, the Revd Jacqui Knight to Heavitree, Exeter and Pinhoe, the Revd Ted Landon to the Dartford Group, Kathryn Taylor, Michael Whitfield to Taunton and Bishops Hull and the Revd Chris Willis to Hertford.

3.3 We also said a partial farewell to Dr Robert Pope who left us to take up an appointment in the School of Theology at the University of Wales, Bangor. We are, however, delighted to be sharing with the Province of Wales in Robert’s continuing preparation for ministry.

The full-time training of ordinands in the College is now taking place in the wider context of the Foundation, in which part-time training (the West Midlands Ministerial Training Course) and Research are equal partners. This year the total number of students in the Foundation has risen to 114. While full-time student numbers (60) have remained on a par with last year, there has been a significant increase in part-time students. Only two United Reformed Church ordinands are in training this year: events and developments in the United Reformed Church at large during the course of 1997 did not make it easy to recruit new students.

For the first time the College has recruited part-time students (seven in all) to its BA and Postgraduate Diploma/MA programmes, most of these are experienced ministers and priests, one being a United Reformed Church minister. This means that the Foundation is beginning to play a significant role in clergy in-service training. Anyone interested in completing honours degree studies part-time or taking a part-time postgraduate course in Applied Theological Studies is encouraged to contact the College for details.

The satisfactory conclusion of recent validation agreements with the University of Birmingham for the West Midlands Course and for the College’s part-time programmes means that the Foundation now has a coherent structure for academic programmes, running from Undergraduate Certificate to Postgraduate MA. At each level these qualifications can be gained by part-time or full-time study. The heart of theological education lies neither in the course structures nor the qualifications, but it can be helpful to have a skeleton as well as a heart.

The policy pursued by the Council in creating a tri-partite institution can be seen to have born fruit in the creation of an exceptionally strong and varied team of academic staff. The Foundation does more than simply consolidate the staff of its constituent parts; it also affords a net in which ‘divers kinds of fish’ may be caught. We were fortunate this summer to land Nicola Slee (completing her doctorate in feminist theology after seeing the Aston Scheme to its sad conclusion, as Director of Studies) and Philip Sheldrake (fresh from the staff of Westcott House, and engaged on further writing in the field of Spirituality). Both are contributing to the life and teaching of the Foundation.

Friends may note that Andrew Chandler is now acting as history tutor in the College, in addition to his research responsibilities. This means that we can maintain the professional teaching of church history after David Butler’s departure.

The Revd Dr Neil Messer has joined the staff at the beginning of 1998: his role combines half time work as United Reformed Church and Ethics Tutor in the Foundation with the half time post of Training Officer in the West Midlands Province. At his Induction Service, conducted by the Provincial Moderator, the Revd Elizabeth Welch, the preacher was Neil’s one-time College Principal, the Revd Martin Cressey. We are thrilled to have Neil with us, and to welcome his wife, Janet and family.

The amount so far received and promised for the Appeal now exceeds £12,000. I am in correspondence with a number of Charitable Trusts to which I have made application in the light of advice and help from friends and supporters of Queen’s.

Mr Brian Cottrill, the caretaker-gardener, continues to win our admiration and respect by the way in which he maintains the grounds and sees to the day-to-day maintenance of the premises, while never seeming to run out of patience courtesy or energy. The good quality of our regular catering in the dining room has been commented on by many people this term; Mr Marlon Brown has quickly settled to playing an effective part as senior cook.

The chapel was more than usually employed during last summer vacation as the setting for a clutch of weddings. Altogether seven present or recent members of Queen’s were married earlier this year, but a number of these were wedded to each other, thus reducing the demand on friends’ diaries. I would particularly like to congratulate Paul Smith, Old Testament Tutor, on his marriage to the Revd Magdalen Thornton, one time student of the College.

The Academic year 1996-1997 spanned two important anniversaries in the life of St Andrew’s Hall Missionary College, both of them being celebrations of mission. The first in 1996 saw the celebration of 30 years of the foundation of the college bringing together the important heritage of Carey Hall (founded in 1912) and St Andrew’s College (founded in 1945). This was both a celebration of Christian Mission and the world Church in general and a thanksgiving for the place of the Baptist and Reformed traditions within the ecumenical movement. The second celebration was one that was shared with the whole church in the British Isles, being the 1400th anniversary of the death of Columba the great Scots missionary and the arrival of Augustine as the instrument of Gregory the Great’s vision to convert the Anglo-Saxon people of this dark land. Both of these anniversaries celebrated events that were forward looking and momentous for the mission of the Church in Britain and throughout the world and perhaps marked also a turning point in the history of St Andrew’s Hall’s contribution to this task.

Revd David Grainger completed eleven years as Principal of the College in August 1997, but has continued to make a contribution to the college throughout his appointment as the Vice President of the Federation of the Selly Oak Colleges for the academic year 1997 – 1998. On the 6th July many people gathered in the College chapel for an occasion of farewell to David, Elidia and the family. Set within the framework of worship the opportunity was taken to look back over David’s life and contribution to the college and many greetings were received. During his time as Principal, David has seen many changes in the life and structures of the Selly Oak Colleges and the School of Mission and World Christianity and has encouraged St Andrew’s Hall to be fully part of these changes.

It was with sadness that the college accepted the resignation of Fei Taule’ale’auamai in December 1997, but we all sympathise with her in her heart-searching over the illness of her father, and we understand her concern to be near her family at this time. We are sorry to lose Fei, who has made an important contribution to the college, and the wider community of Mission education and the Church with her particular skills and her ‘coconut theology’. Finally, Martin Conway also completed his term of office as President of the Selly Oak Colleges in August after many years of leadership in a period that has seen major changes in the provision and expectations of higher and further education in this country. He goes into semi-retirement.

But losses led to gains, and it is with great anticipation and hope that we look forward to the new staff appointments. Michael Taylor has been appointed the New President of the Selly Oak Colleges and his new broom will be sweeping very efficiently soon. Also we will be welcoming the new staff members of St Andrew’s Hall in 1998. The Revd Dr Christopher Wigglesworth of the Church of Scotland is the new Principal of the College and will bring with him a wealth of experience in World Christian Mission and theological education. The Revd Patricia Nimmo will draw on her European and inner city mission experience for her work as Director for Educational Programme Development.

Every continent of the world, with the exception of Antarctica, was represented at the College during the year, so the community was not only multi-cultural but global. This feature of the college’s life is central to its educational policies and continues to be a major source of inspiration and learning for all residents. The United Reformed Church, through their scholarships enabled persons from Eastern Europe, Africa and Asia to make good use of the colleges resources and facilities. Marcos Macarmo from Mozambique obtained his MA in Mission. Antia Sipos from Hungary and Huda Nassar from Syria completed studies in English and Mission which enabled them to continue their theological training. Paul Ssemwanga from Uganda and Clementina Panda from Angola returned to their churches with qualifications in Church Education, while others completed English courses enabling them to be more effective in their work in ecumenical and mission related posts.

The Orchard Learning Resource Centre opened in September, to replace the old Central Library and Library of Westhill College. But this was no simple replacement. This £5.4 million project for the Federation provides a modern library and information technology centre, second to none. Together with the provision of a computer network it also houses the Mingana collection of Syriac Manuscripts, the Harold Turner Collection of documents relating to New Religious Movements, and the most comprehensive libraries of Missiology in Britain today, together with a superb collection on theology, Contextualised theology, Christian education, World Faiths, Development Studies and Regional Studies. St Andrew’s Hall has created its own computer centre as an annexe of the library, providing twenty four hour on-line facilities for all its residents. These new developments enable the college to offer much better facilities for sabbatical and private study.

Being situated in Birmingham, a very multi-cultural and multi-faith city, there is easy access to the college from all parts of Britain making it a very convenient place for courses, conferences and committee meetings. The United Reformed Church together with other churches is making use of this facility, and we expect an increasing use in the future. All these developments enable the college to look forward with new vision to the new millennium, and the many changes that will be taking place. Alongside our traditional role as a multi-cultural learning community enabling people to work in cross-cultural situations throughout the world in various aspects of mission, we expect to add new dimensions of courses and training programmes for local congregations and to develop new networks and programmes for the European context.

Copyright © 1998, United Reformed Church

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