The initial case study identifies a dimension of anxiety among clergy participants as they encounter institutional expectations for ministerial practice. Acknowledged issues facing ordained ministers in the C of E are multiple and complex (Lewis-Anthony 2009; Kuhrt 2001). International research into clergy as an occupational group suggests a spectrum of intrinsic and extrinsic difficulties which affect mental health and resilience, such as social marginalisation, personal identity, and inter-personal dynamics arising from contemporary patterns of ministry (Sanford 1982; Rutledge and Francis 2004; Lehr 2006; Rutledge 2006; Francis et al 2009; Francis et al 2013). Perceptions among parish clergy of rising external expectations in response to professionalisation can be a source of anxiety or resistance to change (Rooms and Steen 2008), and tension between conflicting models of ministry causes stress (Irvine 1997; Warren 2002). These pressures are sufficient to drive some clergy from parish ministry to alternatives like Health-Care Chaplaincy (Hancocks, Sherbourne and Swift 2008). Whilst clergy have grown accustomed to centralised, publicly accountable provisions in remuneration, housing and pension (Chandler 2006), legislation around standards of ministerial performance has been rare. Clergy office holders have been obliged only to assent to the Ordinal, Ecclesiastical Canons and Scripture as normative for their work and conduct. As additional clergy responsibility for compliance with Child Protection, Adult Safeguarding, Employment Legislation, and Health and Safety standards brings to CME expressed needs for technical training in skills to meet legal obligations and standards, reflective exercises may appear an unnecessary luxury. An increasingly evangelistic emphasis to mission and a focus
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on clergy leadership technique in church growth can be a further factor in marginalising more reflective forms of CME: ‘academic, dilettante and fringe subjects will have to take a back seat’ (Jackson 2005, 135).
Reflection on ministry practice is a consistent core strand in the C of E’s formal policy documents on CME (e.g. 1980b; 1986; 1994; 2001; 2003a; 2006; 2008a; 2013). CME is summarised as continuing learning which enables practitioners to ‘Reflect on the actual experience of ministry’ whilst maintaining their role as public representatives of the Church in a changing social environment, developing as professional theologians, with the capacity to exercise leadership, teaching and care for the people of God (C of E 1980, cited in C of E 2001, 29). A participative theology of mission (Bosch 1991) gives CME further intentionality:
‘…to equip and develop the Church’s ministers in order that they may stimulate and develop the whole Church to participate more fully in the mission of God in the world (C of E 2001, 30).
Whilst acknowledging a possible pedagogical tension between ‘open-ended personal exploration’ and ‘professional development and the acquisition of skills for ministry (2001, 6) ministerial training before and after ordination is located within an educational ecclesiology, envisaging Church as a ‘school of theology’ in which learning is life-long and for all (C of E 2003a, Chapters 3 and 4; 2006). Ramsey’s sense of clergy partnership with laity in discerning ‘the meaning of divine truth in its human context’ (1991, 7-8) is made more explicit. Clergy are envisaged as theological educators facilitating others in leadership, mission and ministry; capacity to enable Theological Reflection on experience of life, context and ministry is fundamental alongside practical ministerial skills and the capacity for leadership in mission (C of E 2003a, 39-42). Building this reflective expertise becomes a greater priority for CME in response to anxiety about the social role of clergy (Paul 1964; Russell 1980) and a sense of
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‘rising expectation of ministerial and professional competence’ (C of E 2003b, 41). The reflective character of churches growing spiritually and numerically is cited as a key indicator of missional leadership (C of E 2014).The principle that Training Incumbents and Curates should regularly engage in reflective supervision illustrates this trend (Burgess 1998; Ward 2005; C of E 2006, 114-119; Lamdin and Tilley 2007); likewise the Learning Outcomes for
Ordained Ministry as a national benchmark for professional learning against which ministerial
capacity is assessed (2006, 64-72; revised 2013).
In tracing the development of CME it is important to note the Anglican middle-way negotiated in the ‘Berlin-Athens’ debate between contrasting approaches of Wissenschaft and
paidea: objective scholarship combined with professional education for purposive action in
the service of the Church, contrasted with formation into inhabited wisdom (Farley 1983, 1988; Hough and Cobb 1985; Wood 1985; Herzog 1994; Kelsey 1992, 1993). Crass instrumentalism is avoided; CME is to foster ‘inhabited godly wisdom’ (Hardy in C of E 2003a, 42, 57; 2006, 64) through cultivating ‘dispositions’ in the clergyperson which integrate character, knowledge, understanding and skills (C of E 2013) within the liturgical and ethical life of the Church (MacIntyre 1984; Hauerwas 1981; Hauerwas and Williamson 1989a,
1989b; Graham, Walton and Ward 2005b, 100-102). The purpose of structured and intentional CME is to shape ministers capable of animating mission and ministry in the people of God and to lead the church in an age of complexity and change (C of E 1998a, 2001; Ison 2005, 9- 18). Curacy is to shape ministers into persons who serve with ‘developed skills as reflective practitioners…exercising wise and discerning judgment’; and those taking up positions of Primary Responsibility must show additional ‘sophisticated skills as an effective reflective practitioner and the capacity to develop these further to energise and enable creative theologically informed practice’ (C of E 2013, 10, 14).
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Thus we see a strong emphasis on Reflective Practice developed in theological
training and the early years of ordained ministry, and sustained by clergy throughout ministry, supported by CME provision. Yet although Reflective Practice figures as a key strand in CME the term remains undefined in the context of ordained ministry.
Whilst professions and professionalism have received intense and prolonged study, they remain slippery concepts (Freidson 1986, 1994) influenced by sociological theory (e.g. Illich 1977; Brint 1994) or the philosophical approach forged by MacIntyre (1984). With some exceptions (Towler and Coxon 1979; Louden and Francis 2003) major sociological studies have discounted ordained ministry as incompatible with theories of professionalism developed in industrial and technological Western economies. Yet clergy can be understood to have been intentionally engaged in a process of professionalisation (Russell 1980; Percy 2006) and may still be regarded as an ‘eccentric’ professional group (Ballard 2004, 47) or an occupational group espousing professional values (Woodward 1998, 40-83; Pattison and Pill 2004, 18). Official guidance influencing CME conceives of it broadly within this trajectory of professionalisation, seemingly ignorant of studies which interrogate notions of virtuous professionalism in terms of the nature of power relations between professionals and their clients pursuing a ‘collective project’ within society which combines ethics of service and expertise as a means of securing monopoly (Larson 1977; Foucault 1979; MacDonald 1995).
If Clergy CME is understood as a form of CPD within the broader professionalisation trajectory, what shape and content is appropriate? In MacIntyre’s philosophical perspective CPD generates virtuous practitioners who build on the generic virtues of honesty, courage and justice, ensuring the moral probity of the institutions in which they practise (Pattison and Pill 2004, 23-24). Virtuous professionals have corporate as well as personal moral responsibility, shaped by moral values as well as technical expertise. This formation requires models of CPD
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that enable professionals to ask ethical questions of themselves, and to adjust working practices for social good rather than narrow self-interest. CPD as technical training may be sustaining a professional technocracy, but it can also foster ‘best practice’ which benefits clients and society in general (Freidson 1986).
This brings into consideration the pluriform nature of professional knowledge. It may be ‘propositional’, the knowledge of academia; it may also be ‘occupational’ knowledge which is procedural and tacit (Eraut 1998; 2000). A technocratic model of CPD (Lester 1995) facilitates the acquisition or updating of fundamental knowledge relating to well-defined problems. This is ‘maintenance learning’ in an input-based model; it does not address
generative or innovative learning that will reshape organisational practice (Botkin et al 1979). If to possess occupational knowledge is ‘to be capable of participating with the requisite competence in the complex web of relationships among people and activities’ (Gherardi et al 1998, 274), then CPD requires models of learning which are practice-based and use reflective techniques to facilitate understanding (Boud and Solomon 2001, 114). This kind of learning will bring about change rather than defend a professional status quo. For example, in Social Work the epistemological work of Habermas (1972) has inspired models of critical reflection on practice which enable different kinds of learning: knowledge concerning procedures and methods (technical knowledge) through attention to practice-based experience
(practical/communicative knowledge) leading to an understanding of how power operates within structures and situations. This process enables a critique of existing practice, and informed action for change (emancipatory knowledge) (Thomas 2004). A Reflective Practice approach to learning will open up dimensions that may be marginalised in propositional learning, such as the role emotions play in Social Work – a crucial consideration in a ‘messy’
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profession where interventions involve feelings and impressions as well as material facts on the part of both practitioners and clients (Butler 2007).