The Church of Ireland
News Briefing

CHURCH OF IRELAND NOTES
For Saturday 7th September 2002

From: The RCB Library
Email: RCB Library

Summit on Ministry

Next week, from Monday until Wednesday, the Church of Ireland will hold a Summit for Ministry in All Hallows College, Dublin. The summit is an initiative of the Commission on Ministry which was established by the General Synod to explore the future development of ministry within the Church of Ireland. The participants will be the bishops and representative clergy and laity from each of the dioceses together with keynote speakers and guests from other churches- some 99 people in all.

The conference will work through four strands beginning with "The Reality of Ministry now and what the Church and Community will look like in 2020". This theme will be addressed by Dr Sean Barrett from Trinity College, Dublin, and there will be a response from Pastor Paul Fritz of the Christian Fellowship Church.

The second stream will be "The Structure and Styles and Patterns of Ministry for the Future". The keynote speaker will be the Revd Dr Robin Greenwood from the Church in Wales who is well known for books such as Reclaiming the Church and The Ministry Team Handbook. The response will be from Canon Garry Hastings, Rector of Westport.

Stream three will consider "The Place of Popular Culture and Populist Styles in Parish Worship". The principal speaker in this session will be the Bishop of Kilmore, the Rt Revd Ken Clarke, and the response will be from Canon Maureen Ryan who is an auxiliary priest in the Diocese of Tuam and Prebendary of Kilmactalway in St Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin.

The final session will be a consideration of "The International and Ecumenical Context for Ministry in the Church of Ireland. The discussion will be led by Fr Paul Symmonds and there will be a response from the Revd Olive Donohoe, Rector of Mountmellick.

How successfully the discussions of these themes can be synthesised and fed back to the Church, and how the results of this process are received remain to be seen. However, there can be little doubt that ministry is an issue which is becoming more and more a matter of concern. Alan Abernethy's recent book Fulfilment and Frustration and Robert MacCarthy's pamphlet Training for the Ministry in the Church of Ireland, which has just been published by the Catalyst group, are two of the more recent public voices on this subject. However, they are only the tip of a very large iceberg of private discussion.

Today (Saturday) the Archbishop of Armagh will be in Hong Kong where the Anglican Consultative Council will meet until 20 September while the Bishop of Cork will be in Scotland as the guest speaker at the Diocesan Synod of Glasgow and Galloway. In Donoughmore parish church the Revd Declan Smith will be the preacher at the Dublin and Glendlough GFS Diocesan Festival.

Tomorrow (Sunday) the Bishop of South-West Tanganyika, the Rt Revd Michael Westall will visit Castleknock parish and in Cashel cathedral Evensong will be sung by the Lowry Singers from Armagh. In St Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin, at Evensong, there will be a service to mark the anniversary of September 11. Similar services will be held in Dublin on the actual anniversary, Wednesday, in Christ Church Cathedral, St Bartholomew's and Leeson Park churches and North Strand parish church.

On Thursday morning there will be an Autumn Fayre in aid of St Mary's Home, Pembroke Park, in the Royal Hospital, Donnybrook.

A Festival of Flowers begins in Dalkey, Co. Dublin, on Friday and continues until next Sunday. Entitled "Harvest by the Sea" the festival will be staged in St Patrick's Church on Harbour Road.