When Iain McLaren completes his training at Mansfield College later this month he will be the last of more than 150 United Reformed Church ministers to have been trained at the Oxford College, since the URC came into being nearly 40 years ago.

The celebrated American biblical scholar and theologian Dr Marcus J. Borg, who has studied at Mansfield, will give a keynote lecture at the college on 27 June immediately before a commemoration service at which Iain McLaren will receive his ‘leaving certificate’. Preacher at the service will be the Revd Dr Susan Durber, principal of Westminster College, Cambridge, one of three resource centres for learning where the United Reformed Church is now concentrating its initial ministerial training – the others being Northern College, Manchester; and the Scottish College.

Secretary for Education and Learning, the Revd Fiona Thomas, said: ”It will be a day of very mixed feelings – thankfulness for all that Mansfield College has done for the Church, but poignancy that the nature of the relationship is changing. Although we are sad to be leaving Mansfield, we are entering an intriguing new era. Co-incidentally, on the same day there will be an ‘enquirers conference’ in Cambridge, recruiting the next generation of candidates for training”.

Iain McLaren (pictured) the last of the Mansfield URC graduates, was formerly an accountant. He is hoping to become minister of a local church during the next year, but in the meantime he is looking for short-term secular employment. He is a widower, aged 46, with two stepchildren aged 11 and 14, for whom he cares.  He said: “My first contact with Mansfield was more than a quarter of a century ago, while an undergraduate at nearby St Catherine's College. I used to meet weekly with other URC students in the room of the then chaplain, the Revd Charles Brock. It therefore seemed natural that Mansfield should be where I would do my ordination training. I am immensely grateful to have been given the opportunity, though saddened that there will be no more ordinands following me."
 
The Revd Tony Tucker, a URC minister and former associate director of ministerial training at Mansfield, has edited a book 'Mansfield's Ministry', to be published by the URC History Society, celebrating more than a hundred years of ordination training for the Congregational Church in England and Wales, the United Reformed Church, and the Congregational Federation. It reflects on the contribution that members of the college have made to the denominations, the ecumenical movement, scholarship and hymnwriting, and the contribution of the college's chaplaincy to Congregational and United Reformed students in Oxford.'  
 http://www.urc.org.uk/about/history_society/history_soc/history_soc

Details of the commemoration service and other events on 27 June at   http://www.mansfield.ox.ac.uk/storage-folder/events/summer-reunion-and-commemoration-service.html

Education and Learning at the United Reformed Church: Education_and_Learning