Last night I attended a farewell dinner for Peter Sedgwick, stepping down from heading St Michael's College on reaching retirement age, after ten years of outstanding service to the Church in Wales, in which the fortunes of the College have been turned around from teetering on the edge of insolvency to being a cutting edge international as well as local higher educational and training institution. A few months ago the residential ministerial training programme was threatened with closure by a revue of its work which concluded for spurious reasons that there is no place for indigenous training, as there are several excellent training institutions in England meeting given need.
This caused much anguish for a College team under Peter's leadership which foresaw the need to redevelop its training offer and responded to changing circumstances in the most innovative way over the past couple of years. The new developments have been well received, and there are more exciting prospects for ecumenical and international engagements, with Vice-Principal, now acting Principal Fr Mark Clavier taking over the baton from Peter. Best of all the doom saying report served to unite the Church in Wales in protest and resistance to the thought of losing a programme of ministry training rooted in the bi-lingualism of the Province. That's an element CofE colleges cannot reproduce in any kind of depth.
In the last weeks of Peter's ministry, announcement of the lifting of the threat of closure was made, a truly happy and fruitful conclusion to ten remarkable years of work, since in a way the map Peter made with his colleagues into the future is already being followed.. The banquet was excellent, and lifted into a happy celebration by this good news. After a term of writing in Durham University, Peter will return to live in the Vicarage of 'the Res' in Ely, where Jan his wife is incumbent. He's certainly no stranger to the Parish already, and they'll be happy to have him share in their life as a community.
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