THERE were those in Roman times who thought that Christians practised cannibalism. It is easy to misjudge other groups about whom we know nothing. In the Church of England, not many people encounter the life and work of residential theological colleges, and financial constraints and easy digital communication can make us ask why it should get much support. Is it not better, anyway, to be trained in the midst of life rather than away from it?
Non-residential training as developed in this country is a gift to the worldwide Church, many would agree; so, what are the arguments for full-time formation in residential theological colleges? This is a hot topic, as numbers coming forward for ordination decline (News, 12 July 2024), and there is a danger of seeking pragmatic solutions that miss the heart of the matter. Whatever the form of training, the aim has to be formation into the heart of something. What might that be?
There are moments when a college could make good reality TV. Living closely together in a group can hit us, as little else can, with awareness of how we are all so different, if not unfathomable. When you cannot walk away from relationship difficulties at the end of the day, but are kept cheek by jowl, you learn a lot about the need to live with difference and work through it. Like it, lump it, I’m landed with them.
We can then begin to see our own views in proportion, and to work harder at understanding the other’s position from inside. Empathy is key in pastoral ministry, as I learn to dampen my urge to sit in judgement on others, and try to understand what is going on in them, aware that we are all sinners. I also emerge as not so easy to live with as I had thought.
Institutions should never comply with avoidance, leaving the candidate unchallenged, with the same ideas and behaviour that they started with. Married students, too, learn how to balance the dual responsibility to family and community, before being faced with it in the parish. Residential formation, when done well, is a demanding school in truth about yourself. St Bernard knew about this: he once told a well-relating religious community that they needed to recruit some difficult members, so that they would grow in patience, charity, and self-knowledge.
At the same time, such community broadens horizons, as we discover unlikely relationships. It can also act like a poultice, as problems emerge in a student that were not identified in the selection process, the skills of the staff then identifying with them a way forward.
STUDY inevitably looms large for students and staff. Academic excellence is an essential aim, not only for the good of individuals, but as a basic principle, too: the Church needs to be able to rise to the challenge of dialogue with the hugely capable, articulate, and profoundly thinking world that it is in.
Facebook/College of the Resurrection, MirfieldStudents process at the College of the Resurrection, Mirfield
There is intense pursuit of academic excellence today in all ordination training; but residential formation in a college provides a community of thinking and discussion that is much more difficult to find if students study alone while holding other additional responsibilities in life. And, of course, there is more time for study, and for it to go a great deal further.
At the same time, these create pressure that is not always straightforward to deal with. Spiritual and pastoral formation can lose out among the claims on students’ time. Students themselves can treat the spiritual and pastoral as simply another area for totting up marks, and parishes receiving students on pastoral placement can pick this up. “Where your treasure is. . .”.
All areas of college life need to be in dialogue, all of it organic, a bubbling stew: theological study, pastoral work, prayer, community, liturgy, relationships, chores, social events, sport, the arts, all bubble away to make for a theology not simply of the head but of the whole person. Academic study can then find its proper place on the ladder, rather than being enthroned. Such formation will shape in you a hinterland, a rich wellspring when dealing with the deepest reaches of the souls of others.
Then there is individualism. Academic qualifications, personal career, and “my” development need to be put in their place. Our world wants us to think of “me and my personal life”; the future priest needs to aim higher than that, towards personal maturation, the spiritual journey away from self-regard and towards God, a fired-up pastoral heart and a spirit energised by the Church as community. Formation is not simply of individuals, but of the greatest community of all, one that you would give your life for.
The more that a person discovers the gifts that only the community of the Church can give, the more they will be able to foster such community in the parish. A college cannot afford to be less demanding, for instance in weakening the sacrificial demands that it makes on students: for one thing, its claim for financial support then becomes less convincing. Leslie Houlden, at Cuddesdon, in the 1970s, made this clear to me and other new arrivals: “Community life begins with morning prayer at 7.30 a.m. — see you all there tomorrow and thereafter.”
SPIRITUAL formation is the mortar for all these bricks. In a world that assumes that each individual needs to make their own personal journey, the gospel holds before us something more corporate: non-negotiable givens that will gently guide our individualism towards a tried-and-tested repertoire that we need to sit under. My personal resources are not enough for me; the resources of the people of God are a treasure-house that I need, in order to become skilled in them.
Daily morning and evening prayer, and regular eucharist, training in personal prayer and in learning how to be disciplined about them, are fundamental. The unrelenting corporate daily office takes a student to another dimension, the penny drops, and something new is born in them that will stay with them for life. The necessary development of our creativity and imagination, for imaginative worship and the forward thrust of mission, will flourish far more richly from such a foundation, which is no sausage-machine, but a source of flourishing of gifts.
Does this mean that residential formation is “better” than any other? That is patently not the case. Non-residential formation, when done well, has proved its worth for the particular needs that it meets. There is, rather, a question about how we share the gifts; so that the variety of clergy that we have are distributed in a way that can make the co-ordination of their gifts symphonic. And how else, come to that, can we, the whole people of God, come to live out our calling to be symphonic?
If formation in residential communites is so important, what if there isn’t the money? People short of money need to be canny about how they invest the little that they have. With ordination, it depends on your standards, on what you believe in, and on what makes a wise investment for the future.
Fr George Guiver CR is a member and formerly Superior of the Community of the Resurrection, Mirfield. His latest book, All Christians are Monks: The monastery, the parish and the renewal of the Church, is published by Sacristy Press (Books 7 March).
