Ministry personal statement example

Why do you want to study this course or subject?

What draws me to study Ministry is the ordinary, repeated work of looking after a community and thinking honestly about what it believes. I have watched our minister take a funeral on a Thursday, plan a toddler group on a Friday and then explain a difficult passage from Job on the Sunday, and I have come to see that this requires more than goodwill. It requires knowing where a text came from, why it has been read in different ways, and how to say something true to people who are tired, sceptical or grieving. Religious Studies has given me a first taste of that discipline. Working on the problem of evil, I found that I could not simply repeat the answers I had grown up with; I had to test them, and some of them did not hold. That was uncomfortable and also the most interesting term of my A-levels. I want a degree that takes doctrine, biblical studies and pastoral practice equally seriously, rather than treating theology as private opinion. I am also drawn to the practical questions facing small congregations. The church I attend has an average Sunday attendance of around forty, mostly over sixty, and shares a minister with two other parishes. I do not think there is a clever solution waiting to be discovered, but I would like to be educated well enough to serve in that setting thoughtfully and without pretending. Studying Ministry seems to me the right way to prepare for a life of that kind, and I am open to where the training leads, whether ordained ministry, chaplaincy or lay leadership alongside other work.

How have your qualifications and studies helped you to prepare?

My A-levels each contribute something I expect to use. Religious Studies has trained me to set out an argument and then consider the strongest objection to it; my coursework on whether religious language can be meaningful pushed me to read beyond the textbook and to write more precisely than I had before. History has taught me to handle sources with suspicion, asking who wrote a document and for whom, which has changed the way I read the Bible as well as the way I read a nineteenth-century parliamentary debate. English Literature has been surprisingly useful for close reading: paying attention to imagery in Milton made me notice how much of Christian thinking is carried in metaphor rather than in propositions. For my extended project I looked at how the words of hymns and set prayers are adapted for congregations with a wide age range. I compared three versions of the Lord's Prayer in current use, read parts of the Church of England's liturgical texts, and interviewed our minister and a retired lay reader about the choices they make. The most valuable thing I learned was how to build a small piece of research: narrowing the question, keeping a record of reading, and admitting where my evidence was too thin to support a conclusion. I have also begun learning Greek from a beginners' textbook with a group at church, which is slow going but has made me appreciate how much translation decides. Alongside this I have kept up a reading list of my own, including Rowan Williams's Being Disciples and Augustine's Confessions, the latter read in short sections with a commentary because I found the early books hard.

What else have you done to prepare outside of education, and why are these experiences useful?

For the last two years I have helped lead the Sunday children's group, which usually means eight to fifteen children aged four to ten. I prepare the activity, tell the story and, more often than I expected, manage the sort of conversations that begin with a very direct question about death or fairness. Learning to answer honestly at that age, without either brushing the question aside or overwhelming a seven-year-old, has been the best preparation I could have had for thinking about how belief is communicated. Once a month I help at a food bank run from the church hall, mostly sorting donations and checking dates, occasionally sitting with people waiting for their parcel. I have tried to be useful rather than to treat it as material for an application. My Saturday and Sunday afternoon job at a garden centre has taught me a good deal about people too. Standing on the tills for six hours means serving customers who are cheerful, in a hurry or upset about a dead rose bush, and I have become steadier at staying pleasant when things are busy. I was asked to train two new weekend staff last spring, which meant explaining the till system clearly and repeating myself without impatience. Outside this I sing bass in a community choir, which has taught me to listen to the parts around me instead of my own, and I walk regularly with my brother on the Malverns, which is where I do most of my thinking. I come to this course with genuine church experience but no illusion that I am already equipped, and I am looking forward to being taught properly.

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