A New Model College for a New Training Era
From September 2016 St John’s College, Nottingham will be St John’s School of Mission. The change of name
reflects a major change of focus in our ordination programme, from traditional residential training to training in
context – at the coal-face of local church life. It also reflects greater synergy between our ordination, lay and
youth ministry pathways - made possible by our new Durham University-validated Common Awards curriculum.
We believe this remodelling of St John’s to be consistent with significant changes now taking place in ministerial
training and theological education within the Church of England, and in other churches.
Key features of new St John’s will be:

A two-day-per fortnight teaching pattern, facilitating both sustained learning in context and intensive
corporate learning on campus

Common Awards modules selected intentionally to blend reflection and practice

An integrated curriculum that allows ordinands and lay ministry students to share a third of classes
with those training in our Midlands Institute for Children, Youth and Mission (MCYM). Students pursue
a full BA Hons over three years.

Faculty overseeing context-based training while themselves engaged in local church leadership –
facilitating context-based supervisors as well as context-based students

A two-fold contextual training matrix, offering alternative options to students, churches, dioceses and
networks with different needs and resources. The two forms of context-based training will be as
follows:
Hub-Based
Students will train with a supervisor in a parish or local church context while also being employed by that
church as a part-time student minister. The student and supervisor will also relate to a cluster of other
students and supervisors in a local or regional area such as a deanery, diocese or district. That cluster will be
overseen by a St John’s faculty member, who will in turn be active for part of their time in local church
leadership.
Locally Mentored
This will extend and adapt the pattern already followed successfully by our youth ministry students. As in the
hub model, students will train with a supervisor in a parish or local church while also being employed there as
a part-time student minister. Relationship to students and supervisors in other such contexts will be looser
and more informal than in the hub model, but oversight will still be provided by a St John’s faculty member.
Students in both Hub and Locally Mentored contexts will stay overnight in a nearby hotel when on campus for
their two days of classes per fortnight. They will also share in an annual residential week.
Complementing this changed model, St John’s will continue to offer part-time training to ordinands and
independent students who do not undertake context-based training, and distance learning to lay people studying
with us remotely. We will maintain the high educational standards recognised in the top QAA rating we received
in spring 2015. Our library will be sustained as a model of best practice, and our renowned digital Timeline
resource will further enhance teaching and learning. As it transitions to this new model with its new name, St
John’s will build on the best of our past to offer ministerial training and theological education fit for the future.
Further details of St John’s remodelling are available in a longer paper - ‘Reshaping St John’s’ – and in our new Prospectus, available from November 2015