Beginnings at Lambeth Palace, 2011

It all started with a conference held in September 2011 held at Lambeth Palace by invitation of the Archbishop. The aim was to reflect on women’s ministry and celebrate what women deacons and priests had brought to the Church of England. The conference was planned by a steering group representing NADAWM, DARC, WATCH and AWESOME. Each group was invited to send two representatives, and AWESOME’s were Lis Goddard and Rosie Ward.

After the conference, a conference summary was sent to all the participants, and also sent by Archbishop Rowan to all the bishops. The initial steering group took on the role of furthering the conversations which had begun on that day. It became clear that research was needed on some of the issues which has been highlighted, and a research committee (TRIG) was established to take this forward, and the Steering Group has reported back regularly to the House of Bishops.

Issues included:

• lack of young women ordinands (particularly evangelicals)

• self-supporting ministry

• women leading larger churches

• flexible working practices (especially around maternity leave).

Where are we now?

There are now ‘Transformations’ developments in a number of areas:

• Following the publishing of Liz Graveling’s research paper on young vocations in 2015, focusing on the lack of women coming forward, a number of day conferences for younger evangelical women thinking about ordination have been held. Lis Goddard has spoken at most of them.

• Another piece of research by Liz Graveling is on the lack of women leading large churches, an important issue for the Church, as the number of women leading large churches is very small. In 2017 Kate Seagrave produced a paper on Women Leading Larger Churches, looking at both larger (USA>350) and very large (USA>800) churches.

• Other issues of concern to women, such as maternity leave and flexible working, are being taken forward by the HR department of Ministry Division.

The Transformations Steering Group continues to meet three times a year, with representatives from the original 4 groups and from CMEAC.  If you’d like to know more about current work, get in touch with our current reps Lis Goddard or Fiona Gibson.

Links

Papers and information can be found in various places.

The Church of England website has a Women in Ministry page with a list of Transformations work and further links, including Liz Graveling’s research papers.

Transformations Presentation to the College of Bishops, September 2016