In October 2025, Growing Together in Faith: Thinking Theologically about Ministry with Children and Teenagers by Emma L. Parker and Sarah Strand was published. The book is about the importance of all ages coming together where faith is at the heart of the community and it explores how faith can deepen our fellowship across all ages. The book explores the theological and biblical foundations for ministry with children and young people but it also brings together formational and practical issues faced by young people, volunteers, practitioners and church leaders seeking to grow in faith across the contexts of school, church and home. One chapter within the book includes research from Cranmer’s Growing Faith Learning Hub, in which, with the support of two ordinands engaged with over 400 primary and secondary pupils to explore their perspectives on faith, prayer and the Bible.
We’re delighted that Growing Together in Faith has been positively received and has led to a podcast episode with BRF’s popular Parenting for Faith Podcast as well as other opportunities to share the research. Sarah has also been sharing the research with participants on the Incumbent Leadership Programme, which launched in November 2025 and is led by Jonny Price, our newly appointed Director of Children’s and Youth Ministry Training. This is a nationally-funded programme which seeks to enable clergy of all traditions to lead churches with flourishing children’s, youth and family ministries. Delivered across a combination of three residentials, mentoring, reflection groups and a practical element, the programme is designed to focus on well-being and give clergy opportunities to deepen in Christ-like character, grow in confidence in priestly leadership and develop their skills in enabling a flourishing ministry with children, young people and their families in their churches.
When I came to work at Cranmer, if felt like I was getting a job in Narnia. What a magical and unique place to work. That feeling has never left me.
This morning, I interviewed a potential student aged just eighteen and yet called to ministry. Quite what shape that ministry will take remains to be seen but the call is tangible. With no faith background in his family, he started thinking about God in Year 10, bought and began to read the bible, went along to church, and then had a dream in which he encountered God. I have many Iranian and Afghan friends who had dreams en route to faith in Christ. But now God is revealing spiritual reality in dreams to people in the Channel Islands. Our future student now leads the Christian Union, has raised over £1,000 which he has used to purchase bibles which the CU give out to pupils at school. How thrilling to be hearing his story and how special to be involved day to day in the formation and theological education of all our amazing students.
This afternoon I read a book: the Cross and the Prodigal by Kenneth Bailey (2nd Ed. 2005) I am improving my reading lists and wanted to review this one. What a delight. I squeezed it on the list but more than that it found a place in my heart. Lifelong learning is such a gift.
Yesterday I hosted a webinar where Dr. Ruth Perrin (our lead Tutor on the Free Church Pathway) presented the findings of her latest research “Resilient Faith, the Lives of Millennial Christians in North East England. I have five Millennial children. It was so helpful to hear someone of Ruth’s skill as a Practical Theologian setting out the wealth of insights she had gleaned from her work. I find it so stimulating and joyful to be living at the cutting edge of deeply theological and yet very practical research.
Tomorrow afternoon after worshipping together at the Service of the Word in Chapel I will go home to lead our church planting group in our village of Burnhope. We are using an Acts 2 model – eat together, pray together, teach together and break bread together. We are all age, which is chaotic but fun. Our fourteen-year-old is leading on bible memorisation where she encourages us to learn a bible verse each week. We are going alphabetically and tomorrow it is N. How marvellous it is to not just to have the privilege of teaching church leadership but to be doing some of that leading and learning myself.
I don’t really have a job. I have a life. In his book The Making of a Leader, Robert Clinton calls it Convergence. In all the mess and the stress, I am endlessly grateful. Well. Most of the time.
I had the opportunity this summer to present a research paper at the annual European Association of Biblical Studies, which this year was held jointly with the international meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature. The conference was held in Uppsala, Sweden, where I studied for a year as an undergraduate student. I had not been back since, so I enjoyed the added bonus of rediscovering old haunts, as well as connecting with new colleagues and friends made in the intervening years.
My paper was on the topic of emotions and the biblical world, with a particular focus on human connection as a counterpoint to loneliness. In a society increasingly characterised as polarised and fragmented, there is value in exploring the significance the Bible places on interpersonal connections.
The seriousness with which God takes the need for human connection can be seen in God’s repeated provision of companions for those who are isolated: Elisha travelling with Elijah, Baruch working with Jeremiah, the second human in partnership with the first, and families for the solitary in Psalms and Isaiah. While the presence of God is vital and pre-eminent for human flourishing, it often appears to be the people whom God provides who are the ones to sustain and encourage us through the daily tasks, excitements, and disappointments of life.
All in all, I was glad to discuss and learn from scholars and students from across the world, all sharing a common interest in how emotions, humanity, and the divine interact in the Bible and other ancient texts, while simultaneously representing Cranmer Hall and St John’s College in the wider academic world.
The Bede Centre for Church Planting Theology is a research centre based at Cranmer Hall seeking to encourage a critical, theological conversation about the starting of new churches.
In September 2025, The Bede Centre published, The Communion Dilemma, a new piece of research exploring the place of communion in new church communities in the Church of England. It was authored by Joshua Cockayne Academic Dean at Cranmer and Director of the Bede Centre.
The report examines the practices of 62 new communities and examines the implications for ecclesiology in the Church of England today. The report is framed around a dilemma that is faced by practitioners in these contexts and argues that none of the available options for celebrating communion is preferable. Summing up this dilemma, Cockayne writes,
For those leading new things in the Church of England, the choices which exist all have deeply problematic implications. If contexts choose not to celebrate then questions abound about whether this context is really a church, at least in any Anglican understanding of ecclesiology. But if contexts choose to celebrate, they are left with equally difficult choices: celebrate with authorised texts which feel jarring and inaccessible to the communities you have been sent to engage with, or find a way of making liturgies more accessible by using unauthorised forms, but thereby violate the Declaration of Assent and potentially cut the new church community off from the ecology of the wider Church.
The report concludes by examining the next steps which might happen to create more space for faithful eucharistic practice in new things.
In a recent webinar, we discussed the research with Revd Mark Earey and Revd Rachael Phillips, a recording of the webinar can be found here. The report was also covered in a recent article in the Church Times.
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