Ely Diocese | Education and Training

The CME Framework

Schools Children Youth Ministry - Adult Resources

Homepage What's On The Team The Board Archive

Updated 10 January, 2003

The CME Framework

From the Continuing Ministerial Education Officer

A major theme of the report "Mind the Gap", from the Archbishop's Ministry Division, is the integration of the lifelong continuing ministerial education of the Church's ministry. To implement this policy in our diocese I will need your help and co-operation.

To those who find forms and frameworks very tiresome, I appeal for you patience and understanding.

It will take time to get used to this self-assessment process and for the benefits of communicating it to me, as CME Officer, and the Ministry and Adult Learning Council to become apparent.

The hope is that in completing the CME Framework, as part of each application for a personal CME grant, each individual will better assess the nature and breadth of their CME over a five year period.

Secondly, it will assist MALC in it's planning the various forms of grant aid needed by our ministers and the local and regional provision of CME events.

I will also welcome reports on events you consider part of your CME whether or not you claim a grant.

This will be in addition to the fuller written report which is already a condition of claiming your personal CME grant.

The CME
Framework

4. Interpretation of 5. Formation of 6. Addressing
Christian tradition Church life situations in the for today world

1. Human being as minister

2. Human being as minister in particular role/local context

3. Human being as minister in role and context in the wider Church and world

From "Mind the Gap" Church House Publishing © Archbishop's Council 2001.

"One perennial issue in the discussion on continual ministerial education is that of whether training should be focused on the needs of the individual or on the demands of the job." (GS Mis 122) Both are necessary. CME as supporting individual vocations must be held in creative tension with the development of corporate responsibility for ensuring that the church's ministers are properly equipped and with fostering a learning church able to be adaptable in a changing context.

4.19 Mission and Ministry restated three strands first identified in ACCM 22 as a means of shaping initial training:

interpretation of Christian tradition for today
the formation of Church life
addressing situations in the world.

Similarly, Servants And Shepherds identified the importance of:

the development of the minister as a human being
giving attention to recruiting ministers for particular roles
supporting the minister in his/her role in the wider Church.

Held together, we suggest, these strands form the basis of balanced lifelong ministerial education and development.

4.21 We now offer an interactive framework as a simple way of mapping CME to ensure balanced attention is given to this complex web of needs.

This framework is designed to show how the interdependent strands mesh together. It is intended to be used as a tool to facilitate the design of balanced provision and to provide a way in which individual ministers can monitor and plan for their own development and learning.
Those strands running vertically within the framework draw attention to the three-dimensions taken from Mission and Ministry. Though these were drawn up particularly with the initial ministerial education of clergy in mind, we suggest they are essential themes for all ministry and ministerial development.
Those strands running horizontally cover the ministerial, contexts identified in Servants and Shepherds as an aspect of ministerial review.
We recognise that there will be overlap between the elements of the framework. The strands are not designed to be seen as exclusive elements, but rather to draw attention to a web of themes and emphases important for rich and balanced CME.

4.22 Vertical axis

1. Human Being as Minister
Each minister needs to be continually growing in awareness of their own qualities and needs and of their growth as a person. This strand draws attention to the importance of the minister's life-long relationship with God and his/her journey of faith and spirituality; to the minister's styles of working and relating to others; to their own need for continuing formation as ministers and to maintaining an openness to growth and healing within the Christian communities whose life they share.

2. Human Being as Minister in a particular role
CME provision should help to equip the minister at every stage of ministry, point of transition or acceptance of a particular ministry and assist in the formational process while the minister as person learns to inhabit the role. Particular examples are: leadership and the particular demands of spiritual leadership; parochial management; collaborative team working and coaching teams; courses for newly appointed rural deans; the development of the training skills to equip and enable others.

3. Human Being as Minister enrolment context in the wider Church and world
Here CME seeks to equip people to understand the issues before the church at diocesan, national and international level. These will include matters related to the organisation of the Church's life, ministry, liturgy and ethical priorities, politics and economics. But it will also consider issues before the Church within the wider community locally, at a national level and as part of the world Church and wider Anglican communion. These will include questions of mission and evangelism, social priorities, sex, gender, disability, ethnicity and ecumenical and multi-faith areas.

Horizontal axis

4. Interpretation of Christian tradition for today
CME seeks to continue to stimulate intelligent inquiry into Christian scripture and tradition while relating that to present circumstances so that such inquiry serves the goal of discovering the form of God's creative and redemptive activity in the world and participating in it in the present. Areas here include, homiletics and contemporary approaches to communication.

5. Formation of church life
CME seeks to deepen inquiry into the conditions of the church's life to which it is called by Christ and which it lives in the energy of the Holy Spirit, and to sustain ministers in their personal commitment to Christ through deepening individual and corporate spirituality. Ministers should be helped to discover how relationships can be developed, maintained and strengthened so that the church community is able to explore corporate living which is an ongoing dynamic movement from brokeness to wholeness.

6. Addressing situations in the world
CME equips ministers with a growing ability to identify the situations in which the Church is formed and to which it must address itself, giving confidence in the work of interpreting the Church and the ways of God to the world. Areas here include moral and ethical issues and promoting the Church's engagement with local issues and the world of work as "critical friend".

Using the CME grid
Plotting events on the grid will be indicative rather than an exact science. The strands clearly draw attention to overlapping rather than discreet emphases and some events may span several points of intersection.

Decisions about offering or attending an event should be informed by consideration of the purpose and benefits. The process of deciding where to plot an event onto the grid in itself encourages reflection on the underlying purpose of that event which may not have been immediately obvious.

For example, in preparing to see a consultant, a minister may list that she has "attended a day on the Internet".

The day could have been an introduction to the skills of accessing the net fig a.

It might have addressed the liturgical and biblical resources available for all-age worship fig b;

or the church's response to the impact of the net on societies values fig c.

The purpose and benefits of each would have been very different - as shown up by where they might be plotted on the grid in each case.

*figure a*	*figure b*	*figure c*

Examples

A new incumbent who has solely attended liturgical conferences for the last three years needing encouragement to broaden her education and development to equip her for her new post.
This minister takes an annual retreat.
A minister who has attended a diocesan residential on collaborative ministry, a day on the impact of the Internet on society, and is studying contemporary communication methods in preaching.