Rowland Croucher (with Philip Hughes).

Abstract. ‘As goes the seminary today, so goes the
church tomorrow!’

We have examined what Australian 250 ex-pastors
have said about seminary training – both in their spiritual formation
and relevance in terms of vocational formation.

Rowland Croucher, who counsels clergy-in-transition
and their spouses will offer some insights from an extensive body
of anecdotal material. Philip Hughes, Director of the Christian
Research Association, will summarize findings from John Mark Ministries’
ongoing research into ‘Why pastors leave parish ministry’ – particularly
the sections on these pastors’ appraisal of their seminary experiences.

Many ex-pastors offer a negative/critical appraisal
of their seminary experiences, which may be summarized as: ‘My
seminary training left me no closer to God at the end than at
the beginning…’ ‘Whilst seminary was helpful for studying the
Bible, Church history, biblical languages etc., I was offered
few conceptual tools for handling many difficult parish situations…’

An important rider here: Most ex-pastors are somewhat-to-
seriously disillusioned about Christian ministry – and many about
the Christian faith. Their ‘transference’ of such negativity back
to their seminary training may be understood in terms of ‘scapegoating’.
Other features of our self-selected sample may be relevant as
well.

Nevertheless, this group has offered some important
insights/ suggestions re effective training for parish ministry.

Note 1: the following is in undigested form. It
contains more questions than answers. Following half a dozen seminars
a paper on the subject will probably be published.

Note 2: When not citing others, I prefer to use
the word ‘pastor’ rather than ‘minister’ to describe, generically,
the office of the ‘clergyperson’ – for biblical and ‘anticlericalist’
reasons…

…..

POT POURRI (1)

Here are some statements/questions/issues I have
heard in my counseling/consulting work with pastors and churches,
during the last month:

# Uni graduate student: ‘Pastor, in your sermon
this morning you quoted Jesus’ words about… I’ve been reading
John Dominic Crossan, and he would not attribute those words to
Jesus at all…’

# High schooler: ‘Pastor, our Bib. Studs. class
was debating the topic "Is Ghandi in heaven?" and we’re
divided three ways on the issue (yes, no, don’t know). What do
you think?’

# Middle-aged pastor: ‘My seminary education in
the 1970s did a marvelous job of preparing me for the church…
of the fifties.’

# Female parish visitor: ‘When is it appropriate
or not appropriate to visit or counsel with someone of the opposite
sex? Pastor, do you have some printed guidelines on all this?’

# Business executive: ‘Throughout the business world
these days we’re discussing mission/vision/purpose/goals statements.
Why isn’t the church thinking along those lines too?’

# Christian University student to pastor: ‘This
postmodernism stuff – how does it relate to the way we are supposed
to communicate the gospel these days?’

# Ex-associate pastor: ‘How exactly would you define
"spiritual abuse"? I think I was abused by the strong
senior pastor I recently worked with.’

# A divorcee: ‘My marriage fell apart, but if our
minister had more skill, I think it could have been saved. Sure
we were angry with each other, and said some awful things…’

# An elder: ‘I think we should look carefully at
Tom’s nomination as elder. We know he’s a declared homosexual,
and is committed to celibacy, but he also admits to genital homosexual
activity with various partners from time to time…’

# A human resources manager: ‘At our work, we are
constantly monitoring each other’s performances. In the church,
in my experience, no one’s ever done that conscientiously. All
the pastor needs to do is ask 20 perceptive people to list (anonymously
if preferred) the pluses and minuses, the strengths and weakness
of his/her ministry… I wonder why they never do that?’

# Well-read layperson: ‘I heard that denominations
which have better trained clergy (in a formal sense) are declining,
numerically at least… and the denominations whose churches are
growing have less well trained pastors. Why is that?’

# Frustrated pastor, in transition out of parish
ministry: ‘I’ve really blown it! The conflict in our congregation
got out of hand, but I think if I’d had some conciliation training
I could have managed it much better. Why did I study Greek for
four years and Hebrew for one year – and never used them, except
for an occasional peek into a lexicon? I could have learned how
to use a lexicon and basic grammar in a three-week crash course.
But I received nothing, nothing, on conflict management at seminary!’

…..

POT POURRI (2)

* What Scripture says about theological education:
‘What you have heard from me through many witnesses entrust to
faithful people who will be able to teach others as well’ (2 Timothy
2:2).

* A senior Catholic priest who has heard hundreds
of confessions from clergy said: ‘Why do clergy leave their vocations?
Because they’ve stopped saying their prayers.’

* ‘God takes 100 years to make an oak; three months
to make a melon!’

* In Spain, a door-to-door evangelist was sent to
seminary. He did not do any more door-to-door evangelism, and
indeed ceased to do any evangelism…

* ‘A survey made at Wake Forest College in North
Carolina showed that clergymen are having nervous breakdowns more
frequently than any other professional group, according to Time
magazine. Why? I think I know. We are doing so much committee
work and organizational work that we don’t have time for God.
We are suffering the same neuroses, facing the same emotional
problems, using the same sedatives that the world is, when we
ought to be setting an example of holy living’ (Billy Graham,
‘Training for Christ: a message to young workers’ Decision, February
1962, p.15).

* ‘Precise Taylor bought a Bible of the new translation,
And in his life, he shew’d great reformation, He walked mannerly
and talked meekly, He heard three Lectures and two Sermons weekly.’

And John Wesley demanded of his preachers that they
do no less than five hours of study every day on Scripture and
in the Christian classics.

* Rev. W.P.Nicholson, an Irish evangelist who preached
to large crowds in pre-war Sydney, once said: ‘Many of our theological
colleges take our red-hot young men, place them in theological
moulds, and when they are cold they turn them out.’

* ‘Every mention of ‘ministry’ in the N.T. is associated
with suffering’. (Indian missionary)

* A layman’s letter to John Mark Ministries: ‘In
your para "Why?" I believe you have hit the nail on
the head without intending to: "seminary training."
I believe that requiring pastoral candidates to spend three or
more years isolated in the artificial environment of a seminary
cripples them for life and robs the ministry of its relevance
and power. In order to promote a pastoral lifestyle which is both
more powerful and relevant, as well as more enduring, I suggest
you carefully look at alternative strategies to equip and release
people for pastoral care.’

* Letter from a Catholic priest to The Bulletin,
(February 12, 1991): ‘Preaching, like celibacy, was a taboo subject
in the eight years of Catholic seminary formation in the ’60s
and ’70s: I can never remember one talk, lecture or training session
on the subject of preaching… Rather, Catholic seminarians were
given a few lessons just prior to ordination on how to pronounce
vowels and consonants.’ (A Griffith, Parkville, Vic.)

…..

INTRODUCTION: Much of the following has been moulded
in discussion with pastors and ex-pastors as they have reflected
about their seminary experiences. Most ex-pastors left parish
ministry in the context of conflict. Many of them are disillusioned.
Most of this is anecdotal. And it’s by no means the last word.

Rowland Croucher in Melbourne (and elsewhere) and
Les Scarborough in Sydney (and elsewhere) are talking to a pastor
or pastor’s spouse each day. They are also speaking to groups
of pastors/leaders most weeks.

Rowland does more seminars than Les. Les is involved
in more small groups work than Rowland. They both do a lot of
one-to-one mentoring and counseling. Rowland talks in-depth to
pastors and others over three- or four-day periods, as part of
a residential program sometimes dubbed ‘This is your life’. During
these 6-8 session encounters, most would draw a thorough ‘time-line’
of their life, and write pages in their journal under such headings
as fear/anxiety, guilt/shame, grief/anger, lifestyle/habits etc.

Here is a typical (abridged) conversation between
Rowland, and a pastor (Bill) who has tendered his resignation
from parish ministry, then had it withdrawn…

Bill: I’ve had it. I have no energy. I’m burned
out…

Rowland: You’re feeling emotionally drained?

B: Yes, it’s like ‘running on empty.’ I’m fearful
of the anger of my leaders, I wake up in the night and can’t get
back to sleep. My sex life’s ‘shot’, and I’m generally at the
end of my tether.

R. It’s been a gradual decline – or did something
precipitate these feelings?

B: No, gradual… [more discussion of symptoms]…

B: You know, I could never please my father. And
I went into ministry wanting to grow a church and impress him
that I could succeed at something. But the church starts to grow
and something will blow up, families leave, and we’re back to
where we started. Actually, we’re behind where we started, and
I feel like I’m backing a loser…

[more discussion of family/personal history]

B: And I don’t take a day off, I’ve never talked
to anyone before about myself in this depth (I don’t trust my
denominational colleagues, I’m afraid)… I don’t have a spiritual
director – or even a close friend… Rowland, I’m a ‘wounded healer’,
but who ‘heals the healer’?

[and you can guess the rest...]

…..

You’ll remember G.K. Chesterton’s astonishment
that many criticisms of the church of his day were diametrically
opposed: the church was too warlike/ too passive; too optimistic
or too pessimistic; too dominated by men or by women. His conclusion:
the church is ‘normal’, but thin people said it was too fat, short
people said it was too tall. Perhaps the critics were ‘abnormal’,
not the church. (G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy, Bodley Head 1908).

Is it also so with seminaries?

…..

Seminary rationales, curricula, pedagogical methods
and clienteles are changing. With increasing accountabilities
in modern organizations, seminaries are beginning to consult more
with denominations and churches. More women and laypeople are
pursuing theological degrees – as are many who are possibly pursuing
a second vocation, and some are post-high school students doing
a BTheol on Austudy. And these degrees include a more varied subject-spread
(eg. the social sciences), more are getting cross-credits from
religious subjects into other degrees, and more are studying part-time.
More pentecostal/evangelical students are doing courses towards
degrees conferred by American colleges/seminaries. More people
are accountable to mentors in Supervised Field Education programs.
More are doing post-seminary continuing education courses.

However, most seminary professors are male, and
most church members are female. Most are Western, or Western-educated:
more church-members are now non-Western. Most are oriented towards
an academic, propositional way of viewing reality; most Christians
have a narrational mode of discussing their reality.

A questionnaire sent to all practising Uniting Church
of Australia (UCA) Ministers of the Word (223; 61% responded)
and UCA Councils of Elders in South Australia (253; 65% responded)
found that elders and ministers had different perceptions of the
skills required by a parish minister:

Rank ordering of elders’ perceptions of the skills
required by a parish minister:

1. A person able to relate to people 2. A person
who is spiritually mature 3. A person who can make the UCA work
at parish level 4. A person who is pastorally skilled 5. A person
who can and will preach the gospel 6. A person who can enable
laity 7. A person who has the ability to teach and lead 8. A person
who can administer and manage a parish.

Ministers’ perceptions of skills needed for parish
ministry:

1. The ability to nurture Christians through preaching,
teaching and pastoring 2. The skill to establish the UCA at parish
level 3. The ability to lead and facilitate lay leadership 4.
The capacity to develop a church with a sense of future.

Footnote: ‘The study revealed that 25% of ministers
believed their training had been adequate; conversely only 11%
said it was adequate. The remaining 64% responded that their training
was only partially adequate’. (Jennifer Teasdale, ‘Profile of
a parish minister: Does theological education prepare a person
for parish ministry?’, Australian Ministry, November 1990, pp.
15-17).

WHY SEMINARIES?

I remember the first pastors’ conference to which
I was invited as principal speaker, back in the early 1970s. I
didn’t know these people or their denomination very well. So I
asked these pastors to write down their two or three greatest
frustrations in the practice of ministry, and collated the responses
during the first morning coffee break. Two problem-areas emerged,
way ahead of the others: the management of people and the management
of time. I asked: ‘How much help did any of you receive in your
seminary training in these two areas?’ None had received any help
at all! No one could remember one single hour in their four-year
course which addressed these two subjects! Which fuelled my wondering:
Are seminaries there simply to help clergy-to-be and laypeople
think better about theology, bible, history etc.? Or prepare candidates
for parish and other ministries? ‘Academy’ or ‘seminary’? Who
decides? Is it fair to accuse seminaries of paternalism/elitism
(‘we professional theologians know what’s best for you…’)?

SEMINARY AND DENOMINATION

There is a general perception in many/most denominations
that what is taught in theological seminaries equips poorly for
parish experience (cf. Kenneth Dempsey: Conflict and Decline:
Ministers and Laymen in an Australian country town, Sydney:
Methuen, 1983). Should there be more involvement by and accountability
back to the churches re curriculum matters? Has any theological
college in Australia done a survey among their denomination’s
churches to ask what those churches thought the college should
be doing? Many theological professors get somewhat defensive at
that point (‘We are always open to suggestions etc. – but usually
do not operate proactively on this issue). On the other hand,
the seminary should enjoy some ‘prophetic autonomy’ so that they
can help the churches define a ‘faith for today’.

SEMINARY AND CONGREGATION: A LOVERS’ QUARREL? ‘The
connection between the faith of the members of the church and
the faith of the "doctors of the church" was, up until
the last two decades of the nineteenth century, an intimate and
trusting one. But the way higher criticism was taught shattered
this relationship, as ministers began to be trained in a faith
quite different from their peoples’. (Leonard I. Sweet [provost
of Colgate Rochester Divinity School, New York], ‘Seminary and
Congregation: A Lovers’ Quarrel?’, Leadership, Christianity Today,
summer quarter 1984, p.105. [Reprinted from Theology Today, January
1984]).

Need for academic rigour vs. ‘razzmatazz courses
that will solve denominational difficulties’ (Sweet, ibid. p.107).
Academics do not suffer fools gladly: people in the pew often
intimidated.

Establishment of D.Min programs is one attempt to
connect seminary and congregation.

ACADEMY VS SEMINARY

To caricature the academy: it’s a place that honours
the search for truth and meaning via a Greek rationality, believe
the rational is the most important dimension of life. But every
theologian should take philosophy seriously.

Edward Farley has led the debate on the role of
theology in seminaries and universities (Theologia, 1983; The
Fragility of Knowledge, 1988; and, with Barbara G. Wheeler, eds.,
Shifting Boundaries: Contextual Approaches to the Structure of
Theological Education, Westminster/John Knox Press, 1991).

Robert Blaikie, noting that the Reformation insisted
that Jesus was the only mediator between God and [humans] says:
‘Today, therefore, when exalted claims are made for the critically
trained academic clergy as the essential mediators of the truth
of God to [us], then talk about the need for a New Reformation
seems extremely apt. …The Church today, if it is faithful to
the principles of the Reformation and to the gujidance of the
Living God, the Holy Spirit, will not continue to tolerate or
approve a self-exalting hierarchy of would-be essential mediators-to-[us]
of the truth of God.’ (‘Secular Christianity’ and God Who Acts,
Eerdmans, 1970, p.27).

‘James Barr has… suggested that although those
who have a good grasp of he original languages will always have
a more accurate understanding of the biblical text than those
who do not, ‘it is unlikely that in more than a few special cases
this knowledge will lead to a recognition of some Biblical conception
which is vital to the understanding of the Bible, but which is
invisible to the reader of the English Bible’ (Biblical Words
for Time, 1962, p.162). (Both quoted by Millard J. Erickson, ‘The
Church and Stable Motion’, Christianity Today, October 12, 1973,
p.5).

ARE CLERGY

# ‘Learned ministers’ (the Puritans)? # ‘Masters
of the common faith’ (Glenn T. Miller)? # ‘Pastoral directors’
(H. Richard Niebuhr)? # ‘Pastoral administrators’ (Seward Hiltner)?
# ‘Sacramental persons’ ()? # ‘First and foremost, theological
scholars’ (Peter Berger)?

THE PRACTISING PASTOR’S TEN QUESTIONS:

(Theology) Who is God for me/us ? (Spiritual Direction)
How can I really know this God ? (Psychology) Who am I ? (Ecclesiology)
What’s the church (for) ? (Hermeneutics) What is God saying ?
(Call) What is my vocation ? (Mission) What in the world are
we doing ? (Ministry) How do my vocation and mission mix? (Formation)
How do I best prepare for this vocation? (Transformation) How
do I become a Christifidelis (a follower of Christ in faithfulness)
?

‘CARRY OUT YOUR MINISTRY FULLY’ (2 Timothy 4:5 NRSV)

How is this done? The traditional charge to pastoral
ordinands includes variations on the following:

# I solemnly urge you: ‘Proclaim the message; be
persistent whether the time is favorable or unfavorable; convince,
rebuke, and encourage, with the utmost patience in teaching’ (2
Timothy 4:1-2)

# ‘Do your best to present yourself to God as one
approved by him, a worker who has no need to be ashamed’ (2 Timothy
2:15)

# ‘Rightly explain the word of truth’ (2 Timothy
2:15)

# ‘Give attention to the public reading of scripture,
to exhorting, to teaching’ (1 Timothy 4:13)

# ‘Set the believers an example in speech and conduct,
in love, in faith, in purity’ (1 Timothy 4:12)

# ‘Be ready for every good work’ (Titus 3:1)

# ‘Be kindly to everyone, an apt teacher, patient,
correcting opponents with gentleness’ (2 Timothy 2:24,25)

1. THEOLOGY.

The pastor is Christ’s contemporary interpreter,
‘showing [people] the Father.’ God is ruling over all: but sin
disfigures the cosmos. God is still creating: so goodness is
still inherent in his image within us and others. God is redeeming
us: so God’s people are transformed from one degree of glory to
another.

Was it H. Richard Neibuhr who observed that theologians
are usually right in what they affirm and wrong in what they deny?

If theology is ‘faith seeking understanding’ (or,
‘intentional Christian reflection on important questions’, as
John B. Cobb Jr puts it) an important issue for seminaries is
whether the work of many/most biblical scholars is shaped by the
Christian faith of the scholars or by ‘the state of the discipline
and its new methods.’ ‘Faith seeking understanding: the renewal
of Christian thinking’, Christian Century, June 29-July 6, 1994,
p. 642).

Elsewhere (Farley and Wheeler, op. cit.) Cobb notes
the implications of theology understood as ‘all reflection about
important matters in which the Christian intends to be faithful’
(quoted by Graham Slater, ‘Theology and Ministerial Training’,
The Expository Times, October 1992, p.26).

2. SPIRITUAL DIRECTION.

As Alan Jones asks somewhere, ‘Am I anyone when
I am not doing anything?’

‘The ideal educator,’ wrote Arthur Koestler somewhere,
‘acts as a catalyst, not as a conditioning influence’.

3. PSYCHOLOGY

4. ECCLESIOLOGY.

5. HERMENEUTICS.

As CSLewis said, ‘If you cannot turn learned language
into the vernacular, you either don’t believe it or you don’t
understand it.’

In an article entitled ‘Ivory Steeples? Are our
theological and bible colleges out of this world?’ (Third Way,
October 1990, Vol. 12, No. 10, pp. 23), Mike Starkey quotes a
Baptist minister, Peter Read, who complained that the ‘post-Enlightenment
Western model of education had profoundly affected the art of
preaching: "The grammatico-historical approach is steeped
in Hegelian principles. It results in the fact that most British
ministers think in straight lines. It also means that most theological
statements are sermons will bear this logcial stamp, crammed with
concepts and ideas".’

Hermeneutics ought to be ‘synchronic’ as well as
‘diachronic’ – bridging gaps between contemporary groups and cultures
as well as those between past and present (Mark K. Taylor, cited
by Graham Slater, ‘Theology and Ministerial Training’, review
of Edward Farley and Barbara G. Wheeler, eds., Shifting Boundaries:
Contextual Approaches to the Structure of Theological Education,
Westminster/John Knox Press, 1991, in The Expository Times, October
1992, p.26).

6. VOCATION.

‘Pastors commonly give lip service to the vocabulary
of a holy vocation, but in our working lives we more commonly
pursue careers’ (Eugene Peterson, Under the Unpredictable Plant,
Michigan: Eerdmans, 1992, p.5)

One aspect of vocation: the pursuit of excellence
(cf. the Family medicine program for General medical practitioners).

7. MISSION.

# One hundred years ago, New College Edinburgh,
in one of its inaugural statements, solemnly affirmed its goals
in the following terms: ‘We leave to others the passions of this
world, and nothing will ever be taught… in any of our Halls,
which shall have the remotest tendency to disturb the existing
order of things, or to confound the ranks and distinctions which
now obtain in society’ (Cited in Ralph D. Winter, ed., Theological
Education by Extension, South Pasadena, California: William Carey
Library, 1969, p. 39).

# The missio Dei: what is it? ‘Preach the gospel
and grow churches’? ‘Empower the people of God to serve God in
the church and in the world?’

# ‘At a meeting [sociologist Peter Berger] and I
were both attending, I made the statement that every Christian
is called to engage in radical obedience to God’s program of justice,
righteousness, and peace. Berger responded with the observation
that I was operating with a rather grandiose notion of radical
obedience. Somewhere in a retirement home, he said, there is a
Christian woman whose greatest fear in life is that she will make
a fool of herself because she will not be able to control her
bladder in the cafeteria line. For this woman, the greatest act
of radical obedience to Jesus Christ is to place herself in the
hands of a loving God every time she goes off to dinner.’ (Richard
Mouw, ‘A Kinder, Gentler Calvinism’, The Reformed Journal, October
1990, p.13)

# The sin of the middle class, as Martin Marty used
to say to his congregation, ‘is not in being middle class; their
sin is not seeing through the limits of their class.’

8. MINISTRY.

‘No chloroform can equal the sleep-giving properties
of some ministers’ discourses… If some were sentenced to hear
their own sermons, they would cry out like Cain "My punishment
is greater than I can bear"!’ (C.H.Spurgeon, quoted in David
Field, Approach to Theology, London: IVP, 1969, p.17).

9. FORMATION.

The question isn’t ‘Will we be morally/spiritually
formed?’ but ‘Which community will form us?’ Duke University’s
Stanley Hauerwas commented at a convocation on ‘moral formation
in theological education: ‘We faculty don’t dare to challenge
the moral formation of our students out of fear that, if we challenge
them, they might turn and challenge us’ (Cited by William H.
Willimon, ‘Theological Education and Moral Formation, Christian
Century, November 1988, p. 1088).

10. TRANSFORMATION.

Supervised curacy/residency in a local church.

ACADEMIC. Job of the seminary: teach people how
to think Christianly. Are seminaries too tied in with the academic
establishment? Who should be the primary credentialing agency
for seminary teachers – the academy or the denomination? Academic
fussiness (Freud called it ‘the narcissism of small differences’).
(A theologian talks about the God we all know in language no one
can understand). Important that theological professors more intimate
knowledge of the parish: always associated with a parish church
in some capacity – even if a ‘theologian in residence’: run courses
for church members.

DEVOTION. Seminaries, denominations and congregations
have a common confession: ‘Jesus is Lord!’ ‘They have taken away
my Lord, and I don’t know where to find him.’ ‘If the study of
God does not bring one closer to God, what good is it?’ (Sweet,
ibid., p.106).

BIBLICAL CRITICISM. Divisive influence of biblical
criticism hit more liberal/mainline denominations hardest. We
must not let critical perspectives obscure the text itself. We
read the Bible to meet the Word, not redactors or commentators.
Over the text / under the text. Lectio divina. Some liberal
scholarship has gone too far one way, the fundamentalists too
far the other way…

‘The fundamentalist would not subscribe to the principle
enunciated by Vatican II that "truth is proposed and expressed
in a variety of ways, depending on whether a text is history of
one kind or another, or whether its form is that of prophecy,
poetry, or some other typoe of speech"….’ [But some educators
and biblical scholars] ‘have ignored the principle of Pope Pius
XII that "the sacred books were not given by God to satisfy
people’s curiosity or to provide them with an object of study
and research" (Divino Afflante Spiritu 51). An antidote to
fundamentalism lies in better education so that people will not
have an unreasonable fear of scholarship and critical approaches.’
(Charles Hill, The Scriptures Jesus Knew: A Guide to the Old Testament,
Newtown, NSW: E J Dwyer, 1994, p. 139).

Cognitive Dissonance: gap between what they once
believed and what they are now challenged to believe (philosophical
pressures); compounded by gap between what they believe and what
their laypeople believe (pastoral pressures); gap between ‘devotion’
and ‘criticism’ (devotional pressures); gap between the general
position of denomination / significant others and their own;

Lead very gentle into understandings of biblical
criticism, and balance with devotion…

CONCLUSIONS:

‘First, we need to shape the spiritual formation
which takes place in seminaries and in ministerial training programs
so that growth in the life of prayer and spiritual theology are
placed at the centre…

‘[Second], we need to recover a view of ministry
which stresses the sacramental, charismatic, theological and prophetic
roles more than the professional, managerial and organizational
ones…

‘Thirdly, we need to concentrate on building and
nourishing a remnant, and to reject "multitudinism"
and statistical notions of church growth…

‘Fourthly, we need to build links between neighbourhood
churches and places of spiritual leadership and nourishment (retreat
houses etc.)

‘Fifthly, we need to establish a framework of ascetical
discipline, an ecology of the spirit… If the ministry of spiritual
direction is to assume a central place in the life of the church,
the changes involved will be major ones.’

– Kenneth Leech, Spirituality and Pastoral Care,
London: SPCK, 1986, pp. 78-81.

Dag Hammerskjold: ‘For all that has been, thanks!
For all that will be, Yes!’

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