Wholly Weak

From a busy end of (teaching) term to a busy vacation - assessed essays to write, Greek to get back on track.

It's at this stage of the course - next term has a few teaching weeks then exams - that lots of us are thinking about the tension between learning and developing for ministry.

If only we knew what, from all this, will be useful, what we'll forget and regret, what we'll look back and wish we'd taken better advantage of the opportunity to explore.

I take great comfort from generations of ordinands who have completed courses like ours and lived out fruitful lives of ministry; I take note with humility of the statistics for stressed-out and demotivated clergy.

Please pray for those in training, especially those going ahead, this year's leavers who will very soon be heading off to parishes around the country, longing to be as Christ to those to whom they are send, offering their weakness and seeking his glory.