Worship, formation and small seminary communities

Not all seminaries are small, although my reflections focus especially on formation in small seminaries, arising as they do out oftheAustralianAcademy ofLiturgy symposium on Worship in Small Congregations.' They also emerge out of experience of moving from larger theological colleges in the UK (The Queen's Foundation for Ecumenical Theological Education, Birmingham, and Cranmer Hall and the Wesley Study Centre, Durham) to a smaller one here in Australia: United Theological College in Sydney. Aside from the numbers of students at the various places with which I am familiar, a very important feature is that the British colleges are more pervasively ecumenical, embracing several traditions, with students from different denominations sharing the lion's share of curriculum as well as chapel services. By contrast, ecumenical range is inevitably narrowed in a stand-alone seminary of the Uniting Church, albeit even as the Uniting Church is itself a confluence of various prior traditions. This being so, as Robert Gribben has noted, the Uniting Church's connections with its world communion partners and their traditions can be 'tenuous'-'