Transformative Learning and Ministry Formation

Abstract

This article discusses the theory and practice of transformative learning in the particular context of ministry formation. Parochial ministry is exceedingly complex, it accesses and presses in on matters to do with selfhood, identity, vocation, relationships, life and death, celebrations and crises, leadership, service, spirituality, and religious forms and emphases. These issues of being can become tools for transformative learning. The article argues for a specialised form of training for curates such that they can become critically reflective learners, open to discourse and with genuine desire to negotiate new frames of reference for the sake of those to whom they minister and for their own religious and spiritual development. This work proposes that application of transformative learning theory, and in particular a hermeneutical model of transformative learning, can provide the specialised form of training necessary to form and train effective ministers for the Church of England.