Confidence in our Calling
Clergy Conference 26th - 29th September 2011
What happened at the sessions? Notes and sound files
High Leigh Conference Centre is in Hertfordshire and part of the Swanwick family of Christian conference centres. You can find out more about it on http://www.cct.org.uk/
You can see the programme here on the website and some biographical notes on our keynote speakers Alister McGrath, Ann Morisy and Andrew Dilnot, and Cathy Ross who led a daily Bible study. Optional afternoon sessions included a choice of Jesus and the earth, using Presentation in worship and teaching, financial planning, praying with your senses, stress-busting, story telling, parish websites,ministry in an ageing population, learning from the World Church, meeting our partners from Peru, Morogoro and Magdeburg - quite a variety!
Our speakers
Alister McGrath
Alister McGrath was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, in 1953. In September 1966 he became a pupil at the Methodist College, Belfast, majoring in pure and applied mathematics, physics and chemistry. He was elected to an open major scholarship at Oxford University, to study chemistry from October 1971, afterwards researching in molecular biophysics in the university. He also spent three months as a European Molecular Biology Organization visiting fellow at the University of Utrecht, in the Netherlands. During the years 1975-8, he carried out scientific research, leading to the publication of a number of peer-reviewed research articles, alongside studying for the Oxford University Final Honour School of Theology. In December 1977, he was awarded an Oxford D.Phil. for his research in the natural sciences, and he gained first class honours in Theology in June 1978. The interaction of Christian theology and the natural sciences has subsequently been a major theme of his research work, and is best seen in the three volumes of his Scientific Theology (2001-3).
McGrath then left Oxford to work at Cambridge University, having been elected to the Naden Studentship in Divinity at St John's College, Cambridge (1978-80). He also studied at the same time for ordination in the Church of England at Westcott House, Cambridge. In September 1980, he was ordained deacon, and began work as a curate at St Leonard's Parish Church, Wollaton, Nottingham, in the English east midlands. He was ordained priest at Southwell Minster in September 1981. In 1983, he was appointed lecturer in Christian doctrine and ethics at Wycliffe Hall, Oxford, and a member of the Oxford University Faculty of Theology. McGrath spent the fall semester of 1990 as the Ezra Squire Tipple Visiting Professor of Historical Theology at the Theological School, Drew University, Madison, New Jersey. He gave the Bampton Lectures at Oxford University in 1990, in which he explored the factors which lead to the origins of doctrinal statements in Christianity.
McGrath was elected University Research Lecturer in Theology at Oxford University in 1993, and also served concurrently as research professor of theology at Regent College, Vancouver, from 1993-7. In 1995, he was elected Principal of Wycliffe Hall, and in 1999 was awarded a personal chair in theology at Oxford University, with the title of "Professor of Historical Theology". He earned an Oxford Doctorate of Divinity in 2001 for his research on historical and systematic theology. In September 2004, he resigned as Principal of Wycliffe Hall to become the first Director of the newly-established Oxford Centre for Christian Apologetics. In October 2006, he was elected to a Senior Research Fellowship at Harris Manchester College, Oxford, where he began directing a major new research project on natural theology, funded by the John Templeton Foundation. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in 2005.
In September 2008, McGrath took up the newly-established Chair of Theology, Ministry and Education in the Department of Education and Professional Studies at King's College, London. He also serves as the academic leader of the Centre for Theology, Religion and Culture, and is involved both in theological research and the professional development of clergy from a range of Christian denominations.
As a former atheist, McGrath is respectful yet critical of the movement. In recent years, he has been especially interested in the emergence of "scientific atheism", and has researched the distinctive approach to atheist apologetics found in the writings of the Oxford zoologist and scientific populariser Richard Dawkins. He regularly engages in debate and dialogue with leading atheists, and is presently researching the iconic role played by Charles Darwin in atheist apologetics, and the appeal to the controversial and problematic concept of the "meme" in recent atheist accounts of the origins of belief in God.
His main research interest at present is the area of thought traditionally known as "natural theology", which is experiencing significant renewal and revitalization at the moment. He addressed this theme in detail at his Richardson Lectures at the University of Newcastle-upon Tyne (2008), his Gifford Lectures at the University of Abedeen (2009), and his Hulsean Lectures at the University of Cambridge. The Richardson Lectures have been published as The Open Secret: A New Vision for Natural Theology (Blackwells). His Gifford Lectures were published as A Fine Tuned Universe: The Quest for God in Science and Theology. His Hulsean Lectures were published by Wiley-Blackwell in 2011, with the provisional title "Darwinism and the Divine: Evolutionary Thought and Natural Theology".
Ann Morisy
Ann Morisy is a freelance community theologian who has worked in both rural and urban contexts. Ann is a well regarded speaker, with invitations from across Europe and from Australia. Her presentations are always down to earth but informed by scholarship and honesty as well as engaging and light-hearted. She has worked in the field of social responsibility for many years and directed the Commission that wrote the report ‘Faithful Cities'. Ann has written two best selling books - Beyond the Good Samaritan and Journeying Out.
Ann has written a number of books, on the theme of mission and community involvement. However, her latest book ‘Borrowing from the Future' is a contribution to the debate about fairness between the generations, and has just been published by Continuum.
Andrew Dilnot
Andrew Dilnot has been Principal of St Hugh's College since October 2002 and Pro Vice Chancellor of Oxford University since 2005. He is an economist and broadcaster. He went to a comprehensive school in Swansea, and then after a PPE degree in Oxford worked for the Institute for Fiscal Studies in London.
He was Director of the Institute from 1991 to 2002. He was the founding presenter of BBC Radio 4's series on the beauty of numbers, More or Less, and presents television documentaries about the economy for Channel 4. He is the chairman of the Statistics Users Forum of the Royal Statistical Society. He has served on the Social Security Advisory Committee, the National Consumer Council, the Retirement Income Inquiry, the Balance of Central and Local Funding Inquiry, the Rowntree Committee on the future costs of long term care, the Ageing Population Foresight panel, and the Councils of the Royal Economic Society and Queen Mary and Westfield College. He is an Honorary Fellow of St John's College Oxford, Queen Mary University of London, the Swansea Institute of Higher Education and the Institute of Actuaries, and holds an Honorary Doctorate from City University.
He is passionate about the role and use of statistics, which is the subject of his latest book, 'The Tiger that isn't: seeing through a world of numbers', written with his long-standing colleague Michael Blastland. Rory Bremner said of the book that it 'makes statistics far, far too interesting'. His main research interests lie in government economic policy and its effects on the distribution of income, labour market behaviour, savings and pensions, and also the control and setting of government budgetary rules and the monitoring of fiscal policy. He was awarded a CBE in 2000 for services to economics and economic policy.
Cathy Ross
Cathy comes from Aotearoa/New Zealand where she completed an MA in French and German from Auckland University before studying with her husband at All Nations Christian College in UK. Her PhD is entitled More than Wives and looks at the lives of four CMS missionary wives to Aotearoa in the 19th century. She and her family have worked in Rwanda, Congo and Uganda as mission partners with NZCMS. From 1998 - 2005 she worked at the Bible College of New Zealand as the Director of its School of Global Mission. After that she managed the Crowther Centre for Mission Education at CMS and was the J V Taylor Fellow of Missiology at the University of Oxford, and then General Secretary of the International Association for Mission Studies. She has recently been appointed M.Th coordinator and tutor in Contextual Theology at Ripon College, Cuddesdon.
Cathy is interested in supervising research students in missiology - especially in the areas of: theology of mission, contextual theologies, feminist theologies, women in mission, and history of mission. Her current research is looking at hospitality as a metaphor for mission. Geographically her areas of expertise are Africa and the South Pacific.
Cathy is married to Steve, a GP in Oxford and they have three children. She enjoys tennis, swimming, coffee, travel and watching the All Blacks and the Silver Ferns.
