Priest of the Church or Priest of a Church: The Ecclesiology of Ordained Local Ministry

(Hardback)

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Description

The development of new forms of ministry, lay and ordained, has included worker-priests, now found in the Anglican Communion in a related form variously called Self-Supporting Ministry (SSM) or Non-Stipendiary Ministry (NSM). This book focuses on one of the most recent developments, the creation of Ordained Local Ministry. After chapters that consider preliminary questions of the nature of ministry, such as authority in the church and Holy Orders, Noel Cox argues that the crucial distinction between these and other forms of ministry is that the Ordained Local Minister (OLM) is overtly ordained specifically for a given locality (variously defined); they are a deacon or priest for a specific church, parish, benefice, or deanery, rather than of the universal church. Their introduction inevitably raises difficult ecclesiological questions, which Cox examines.

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Churches within the Anglican Communion view themselves as being part of the one Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, and Anglicanisms via media has enabled it to be viewed as a focus for ecumenism. Recent innovations with regard to ordained ministry may, however, have compromised both the claim to catholicity and its ecumenical usefulness. In this book, Nol Cox a scholar priest with

experience of ministry in several Anglican provinces world-wide examines the historical, theological and legal aspects of these developments and their consequences, with particular attention to Ordained Local Ministry. His analysis and conclusions deserve careful and prayerful consideration.

Author Bio

Noel Cox is a priest in the Anglican Church in Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia, currently Priest-in-Charge, St Judes Avondale, in the Diocese of Auckland, New Zealand.