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Archbishop's Criteria

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Vocations: Archbishop's Criteria

The Archbishop's Criteria for Ordination Candidates:

  • Have reverence for the truth of God revealed in the Holy and Blessed Trinity.
  • Have a personal knowledge of Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour.
  • Know the transforming power of Christ in their personal life.
  • Recognise conversion as a process. It may begin with a particular experience, but to mature it must learn to deepen with prayerful sensitivity.
  • Have a passion to make Christ known with sensitivity, care and dignity. Be aware that God in Christ is at work in our world, in the lives of people. Evangelism is not about meeting salvation targets, but of mutual connectivity. God in Trinity — Father, Son and Holy Spirit — creates, redeems, sanctifies.
  • Be a person of Prayer with dependence on God, knowing that we are saved not by our skills, intelligence, sexuality, gender — but by the grace of God in Christ.
  • Know their infirmity, weakness — clay jars in whom the extraordinary power of the Gospel is at work.
  • Have a prayerful love for Scripture. Be attentive to hearing the Word speak. To have a desire to explore the Word. To know that the story of salvation and the Truth of God in Christ did not stop with the last book of the New Testament. To be able to see that the Scriptures do not confine God but define God's character of Revelation. To know that the written word points us to the living word — Jesus.
  • See the Tradition of the Anglican Church as living and vibrant — one that engages in an interaction between Catholic substance and Protestant principles. To have a due love for the Sacraments as communications of Grace.
  • Be open to reason to an intelligent exploration of all matters of faith and life as expressed in the Diocesan Mission Statement.
  • Allow for care in relationships that makes for emotional wholeness and integrity.
  • Have a generous acceptance of the Church, aware of its shortcomings yet appreciative of its history. See the laos, the baptised, as the primary order of the Church. Pay attention to the College of the ordained. I will ordain those who see their own call to the ministry of Word and Sacrament as having a similar integrity to another's call, whatever their race, colour, gender or station in life. To know that their ministry is grounded in Christ whose body is the Church.