Church of England in action

In a spinoff from the ever popular ‘what vicars do the rest of the week’ blog series, Great Malvern Priory brings you...drumroll… ‘what the congregation and curate do the rest of the week’.

For this week is the Church of England’s February General Synod meeting, which keeps at least two members of the congregation busy in very different roles. General Synod is the national assembly of the Church of England.

Fi, usually seen in the front row of the Priory Singers on a Sunday, is a member of the General Synod team. Lynn, meanwhile, with her ‘non Priory congregation hat’ on is a Member of the House of Laity and on the Panel of Chairs. To follow Synod live on YouTube, click here, until Friday 13th February.

The Priory curate is also kept busy… but she’s involved with ‘IME2 training’. Successful completion of ordination training at The Queens’ Foundation was just the beginning of her studies. Initial Ministerial Education (part 2) continues throughout all curates’ curacies.

Since Christmas Philippa has been kept busy at weekends with the Curates Conference, ‘All things Anglican’, which included a nocturnal field trip to Holy Trinity Stratford-on-Avon, former parish of +Martin (who acted as a very well-informed guide) and place of Shakespeare’s baptism and burial. Photos beside ‘Shakespeare’s font’ were a ‘must’ for every curate’s portfolio. Other post-Christmas IME2 activities have included a day on ‘Wisdom’ in Worcester, with Dr Paul Bradbury, exploring amongst other things, the ecology of church. Yesterday saw an evening in St Thomas’, Stourbridge, learning more of the worldwide Anglican Communion and the upcoming curate exchange, where a curate from Magdeburg, Germany, may visit the Priory this summer.

Watch this space for further episodes of this exciting new series…