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Particular charisms of the college |
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- Ecumenical Relationships. Hartley Victoria works in very close ecumenical partnership with the Northern College (United Reformed, Congregational and Moravian) and the Northern Baptist College. We are denominationally specific only when necessary for an appropriate Methodist Formation.
- Our programme is open to lay people for their own personal development. Particularly on the residential weekend mode of delivery such people predominate. We have thus built up a good record and experience of education for the ‘whole people of God’. Those thus studying have a collegial location within the partnership through the Luther King Open College
- Our programme is ecumenically validated and this has been recently broadened with the birth of the Southern North West Training Partnership and our work with the Church of England Dioceses of Manchester, Chester and Liverpool.
- We have international links, and strong commitment to students from the world church.
- Because of our context in the inner city we are well equipped to prepare people for urban ministry and urban mission. We do not of course ignore the fact that our church embraces the whole of the country – rural as well as urban. Some of our placements are rural – and we have developed a weekend devoted to rural ministry through links with the Cumbria District.
- Historically we have always had the largest cohort of those in Foundation Training in the connexion. This has placed us well for involvement in the new Regional Training Forum and provision for EDEV. The expectation is that in future the equivalent of one staff member’s time should be given to the work of the Regional Forum. How this is to be shared between the three staff members depends on a pattern that is still emerging. Currently one member of staff is designated to have a leading role.
- Whilst recognising that there will always be some for whom residential training is appropriate, we have made a deliberate decision that this is not something we offer at Luther King House. We have thus developed new ways of being a community and of belonging together.Because of the population of the North West and the number of candidates it produces Methodism has needed provision in this region for those who cannot easily move elsewhere for training and we trust that this will continue into the future though we are obviously involved in a period of evolution and adjustment with a whole new range of possibilities presenting themselves.
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Hartley Victoria College