Welcome to davidheywood.org
David Heywood recently retired as Deputy Director of Mission for the Diocese of Oxford with responsibility for ministerial formation. He was an Anglican vicar for 20 years, from 1986 until 2006, and Director of Pastoral Studies at Ripon College Cuddesdon from 2006 to 2017.
This site contains details of David’s published books, articles on a range of topics connected with Christian ministry and ministerial formation, the full text of David’s PhD thesis on the relationship between learning and revelation, and a through-the-year set of Bible studies covering the whole Bible in 365 readings.
Formation for Enabling Ministry
Since his retirement in 2020, David has been working on a project for the Church of England. In 2017, a report from the Archbishops’ Council called ‘Setting God’s People Free’ challenged the Church to give much greater priority to encouraging and enabling every Christian to live out their faith in everyday life. As the report put it, to enable, ‘fruitful, faithful mission and ministry, influence, leadership and, most important, vibrant relationship with Jesus Christ in all of life.’ The Church has come to call this ‘everyday faith’.
Over the next five years, work was undertaken to follow up the report in various ways. The strand on which David has been working concerns the implications for the way lay and ordained ministers are trained. How can the Church make enabling ‘everyday faith’ central to its vision for ministry? How are ministers most effectively trained as enablers of others?
The outcome of David’s work has been a report, which was distributed to training institutions in October 2022, and an online learning programme, designed for all who contribute to ministerial formation. Both are entitled, ‘Formation for Enabling Ministry’. Click here for a dedicated page with links to some of the resources in the online programme.