Theological colleges - Ridley or Queens

[Distancehelp]

I know there are a few ordinands on here, and I wondered if anyone was at Ridley or Queens?

Most friends trained at Queens, and it’s been my first choice, but I spoke to some people at Ridley last week and wondered whether I’d actually like to go there instead?

DDO is new and doesn’t know me, so hard to advise. I really want somewhere which is liberal, charismatic and with the sung worship or new wine, which isn’t really going to happen...

I'd think Queens is a bit more liberal than Ridley these days. From what I hear it's got more conservative, though it's all sung worship/new wine/charismatic.

Sorry for my ignorance, but what's new wine in this context??

I'm not sure you are going to get liberal and charismatic together. I trained at Cuddesdon which is known to be liberal. When I was there we had a good mix of churchmanships with Anglo Catholics and evangelicals as well as choral middle of the road types like me. I learnt a lot about different styles of worship. It is worth going to the open days and getting a feel of the colleges as if you are residential you have to live there and the worship style could be less important than whether you need a car because it is out of town or full of families and you are single.

@kiltedsheep New Wine

@Niminy Thank you! I should've just googled it, shouldn't I...

Thanks. I don’t think I’m going to find the perfect place but I’m interested in hearing people’s experiences. I’ve been to open days at Queens and Westcott, as they fit the liberal side, but just didn’t enjoy the sung worship and I didn’t feel either had much of a focus on the Holy Spirit. It’s so hard to get a feel for somewhere in a day though and I’m worried about picking somewhere and then regretting it.

I would be residential anywhere except Queens or St Melitus.

I'm not sure I understand what 'sung worship' is. Don't we all sing in worship (unless you're at an 8am BCP ).

It's extremely important in training to allow yourself to be challenged and pushed beyond your comfort zone. It's very likely that at some stage in your life in ministry that you will have to minister in a church that is not your 'style' or theology or tradition. It's really good to encounter that in training where there is a safe space to explore why you don't like or feel uncomfortable with things. You really can't do that once you are in a parish!

At college the worship is led by students so you can't plan for full on praise band worship because there might not be enough singers, keyboard, drummers etc to pull that off. In my year we had a very gifted ex worship leader with considerable keyboard skills but there were no confident singers from that tradition to front a band. The upshot is that unless a college employs a praise band the composition of the student band will change every year so what you see on an open day isn't going to be what you experience when you get there. If you have identified that charismatic praise band worship is what feeds you then in your search for a college find a church local to it that does that sort of thing, maybe a big student church so that you can slope off and get fed. College is there to give you skills, teach you to learn, challenge you, expose you to traditions and practices of prayer that you haven't encountered before and provide a peer group who know you and can support each other. In the C of E we are supposed to be able to cover the whole range of worship so I had to learn to swing a thurible, sing compline and work with music written less than 50 years ago. My charismatic friends had to learn how to open the book and use it and that BCP 8am services can be surprisingly devotional.