Irish Times Notes
Church of Ireland Notes from The Irish Times
Saturday 10 September 2005
NSM Summer School
The academic year for those in training for the non-stipendiary ministry begins this weekend with a Summer School in the Church of Ireland Theological College, Braemor Park, Dublin.
The focus of this year?s Summer School is liturgy and the theologian, Dr Margaret Daly-Denton, and the musician, Mark Duley, will facilitate four days of seminars, liturgical workshops and worship on the theme ?With a Voice of Thanksgiving?. The theme has been chosen to coincide with liturgical developments and opportunities in the Church of Ireland following the introduction of the Book of Common Prayer 2004.
This year there are nine new non-stipendiary ordinands and a total of thirty-one in training over a three year period. The number of non-stipendiary ordinands now exceeds the number of ordinands in training for full-time mimistry. The course which they follow has been radically revised and up-graded in recent years under the direction of the Revd Tom Gordon, Consultant Director of Non-Stipendiary Ministry.
The Summer School will also present an opportunity to meet a new member of the College staff, Dr Lindsey Hall, who has been appointed as Lecturer in Divinity. Dr Hall is a graduate of the universities of Durham and Bristol and has held post in King?s College, London and Bristol. Her academic interests are salvation, ecclesiology and feminist theology which she combined, in England, with pastoral ministry as a local preacher in the Methodist Church.
Tomorrow morning (Sunday) RTE will broadcast an ecumenical Service of the Word from St Nicholas? Collegiate Church Galway. The service will be led by the Provost of Tuam, the Very Revd Patrick Towers, and will include the members of the Augustinian Church who are temporarily sharing St Nicholas?. The Archbishop of Dublin will be in Clonsilla to open the new parish centre while, in Belfast, the Bishop of Connor will be the preacher at the 75th Anniversary Thanksgiving Service in St Bartholomew?s Church, Stranmillis Road. In Whitechurch parish church. Co. Dublin, the former South African Ambassador to Ireland, Ms Melanie Verwoerd, will speak to mark ?Racial Justice Sunday?. Also in Co. Dublin, as part of the Heritage Week celebrations, there will be guided tours of the medieval church of St Doulagh, Balgriffen, from 2 to 6 pm.
From tomorrow (Sunday) until Tuesday the Bishop of Meath and Kildare will be in Lyon for a gathering under the auspices of the Sant?Egidio Community. The theme of the event is ?The Courage for a Humanism of Peace? and will include discussions on matters as various as ?Hiroshima 60 Years On?, ?The Children of the World, War and Peace? and ?Secular Humanism and Religious Humanism?. Among those taking part are the Archbishop of Canterbury, Cardinal Murphy-O?Connor, Cardinal Walter Kasper, the Chief Rabbi of Israel, and Imam Seyed Mohammad Mousavi Boujnourdi from the Khomeini Centre for Islamic Studies in Iran.
On Wednesday the Conference of the Irish College of Preachers begins in the Theological College and continues until Friday. The guest speaker will be the former Bishop of Whitby, the Rt Revd Gordon Bates whose theme will be ?Preaching to the Comfortable, the Complacent and the Committed?. On Wednesday evening the Dublin and Glendalough Mothers? Union Festival Service will be held in Christ Church, Bray, where the preacher will be the Revd Paul Houston, Mothers? Union Diocesan Chaplain.
The East Cork Early Music Festival begins on Wednesday and there will be concerts in St John the Baptist Church, Midleton on Friday and in St Colman?s Cathedral, Cloyne, next Saturday. Details may be had from [email protected].