Vicar: Celebrating the Renewal of Parish Ministry

'After many years as a hands-on Christian minister, Alan Bartlett writes of what he knows well and loves wisely.' PROFESSOR WALTER MOBERLY 'Magisterial' CHURCH TIMES The Church has long been talking about the oncoming challenges of providing ordained ministers to lead and enable local churches. Now structural change is really happening: but those at the sharp end - 'vicars' - are often bewildered and demoralized. This book celebrates the tradition of English Anglican ordained pastoral ministry; it also affirms the value of vicars' ministry and way of life, and the great gift they have for relating to our communities and churches. The 'vicar' (parish priest, pastor, minister) still leads people - those who 'come to church' and those who don't - in prayer and praise, cares for them in their sufferings and rejoices with them in their joys. This deep wisdom has sustained the Church for centuries. Yet, the question must be asked: how can we be better equipped to make prudent decisions about the way church ministry has to evolve now?

About the Author :
Alan Bartlett has been an Anglican priest for 25 years. He has served in four north-eastern parishes as well as teaching in a theological college, where he was the postgraduate Director, and is now working as a CMD Officer in Durham. Alan taught Anglicanism, church history, spirituality and practical theology. He has written widely on Anglicanism and spirituality and now reflects on the future of English Anglican parochial ministry as both experienced practitioner and theologian. He is married to Helen, a railway chaplain, and they have two adult children.

Review :
After many years as a hands-on Christian minister, Alan Bartlett writes of what he knows well and loves wisely. Magisterial [On HUMANE CHRISTIANITY] This plea for a humane Christianity will encourage those who have suffered from the cruelties of institutional religion, and show how faith can really affirm the worth of the human person. At a time when many conceive of religious faith in terms of rigidity of mind and violence of action, it is vital to listen to those voices which rightly understand Christian faith in terms of astonishing divine grace and compassionate human wisdom. Alan Bartlett is one of those voices. What makes his book different is that it is written from an Evangelical (or, more accurately, post-Evangelical) perspective; and that it appeals a good deal to English and Anglican tradition, and especially to the writings of Jeremy Taylor, Richard Hooker and Julian of Norwich, in making the case that the Church should take a more affirmative approach to both the human condition and the totality of creation. [On A PASSIONATE BALANCE] It is perhaps telling – and, in fact, encouraging – that in introducing the ‘Spirituality of Anglicanism’, Bartlett introduces not merely methods of prayer or mysticism divorced from content, but the history and theology of the embodied community of Anglicanism (and all the messiness and ambiguity that those three imply). That this is the case means that the book does not occupy itself with spirituality narrowly de?ned, but rather with introducing Anglicanism itself in the broad sense, of showing its elemental intuitions and impulses as seen historically in the tradition. This is an introduction to spirituality in the best sense of the word, and in its speci?cally Anglican form.