Our context- based training: practical and academic training for ministry
based in a local church context

• Trinity and mission
• Placements
• Preaching teams
• Context-based training
  • New context for 2012-13: Bishopston
  • BS10: Bristol city
  • J18: edge of Bristol
  • St Matthew's and Woodlands: joint city context
  • Woodbridge: rural Wiltshire
  • Training in context: some questions answered
• Site map

Context-based training

Training while based in a particular community, or context, is one of the two tracks open to you if you are preparing for church ministry at Trinity; the other track is college-based training. Both gain the same academic qualifications.  (What's the difference?) We hope that you will feel a definite call to one track or the other when you come to study at Trinity.

Pioneered by Trinity in 2006, context-based training (CBT) is fully endorsed and authorized by the Church of England as a form of ordination training; full-time students from other churches are also welcome to take part. Our newest context, St Matt's and Woodlands, includes a non-Anglican church.

 

How does it work?  

As a context-based student you...

• train as a group of 5-10 students in a particular community or communities (rural or in Bristol city)
• live near other students in the context community
• become part of that community with your family
• work with the local clergy and other leaders in a variety of church and community activities
• reflect as a group on your experiences once a week, with the help of your Trinity tutor
• come to Trinity for teaching and community events at least two days a week
• gain the same academic qualifications (degree, certificate, diploma) as college-based students. 

 

What are the benefits?  

Training in context offers you the chance to ...

• Gain a thorough, comprehensive and integrated training in leadership, mission and practical skills
• Mix academic and practical training in a coherent way over the whole of your time at Trinity
• Be part of a small closely-knit unit for friendship and support
• Be rooted in a community with real needs, contribute to that community, and be involved in long-term mission
• Develop patterns of lifelong learning in the midst of busyness.

 

Where would I train?

You are free to choose where you would like to go, or you can leave it to us to assign you to the place where there is most need, or where we feel you would best fit in.  There is a choice of four contexts:  one on the country (currently the Woodbridge group of churches in Wiltshire) and four in Bristol: J18, BS10  St Matt's and Woodlands, a context based in St Matthew's Kingdown (Anglican)  and Woodlands Community Church (independent), and a new context for 2012, Bishopston. 

  'My experience was that context-based training provided me with the perfect environment to study academic theology and do that as rigorously as possible. Context gave me a community within which to learn, colleagues to bounce ideas off and a parish within which to test out ideas! I think that the support, stimulation and opportunities of context deepened and enriched my academic work.'
Justin Tomkins, recent context student, now in church ministry

'The Diocese of Bristol is very positive about context-based training.  Traditionally,the philosophy of training for the ordained ministry was to teach the theory in college and to leave most of the applcation and practice to a curacy. Context-based training tries to integrate action and reflection from the beginning of ministerial development. I am very supportive of this model of training.'
Right Revd Lee Rayfield, Bishop of Swindon