First graduates of church music foundation degree; Church does not need to fear conflict – Archbishop
First graduates of church music foundation degree
The Royal School of Church Music (RSCM) and Canterbury Christ Church University (CCCU) have presented degree awards to the very students to enroll for their joint Foundation Degree in Church Music.
Five students started the two-year course in 2011 and were honoured in a graduation ceremony at Canterbury Christ Church University on Saturday.
Later this year, the graduates will also receive a certificates from the RSCM, entitling them to use the letters AdvDipRSCM after their names.
All the students in the degree programme are practising musicians working in churches all over the country and much of the course makes use of the student’s home church and community setting.
Teaching and support is provided to the students both online and face-to-face by CCCU tutors and a UK-wide team of RSCM Mentors, backed up by three Residential Study School in Canterbury a year.
The first students to graduate were David Dewar, from Chippenham, Wiltshire, Hannah Dix from Bromsgrove, Worcestershire, James Gallagher, from Liverpool, Tracey Laws from Canterbury, Kent, and Michael Williamson , from Waterbeach, Cambridgeshire.
Chris Price, the Programme Director, is delighted for the students. “Each has completed an innovative degree course which has required them to be amongst the most motivated and autonomous learners in the country,” he said. “Their achievement should not be underestimated.”
Church does not need to fear conflict – Archbishop
The Archbishop of Canterbury has encouraged Christians to be reconcilers and not avoid those who are different from them. The Archbishop of Canterbury was at Coventry Cathedral this week to preach on the theme of reconciliation.
Speaking at the Faith in Conflict conference, Justin Welby said reconciliation was about “recognition of diversity and a transformation of destructive conflict to creativity”.
“It holds the tensions and challenges of difference and confronts us with them, forcing us to a new way of life that accepts the power and depth and radicality of the work of the Holy Spirit in our conversions,” he said.
Coventry Cathedral has come to be a symbol of reconciliation after being reconstructed following its destruction in World War Two.
The Archbishop said the conference was taking place precisely because “conflict is so much part of our lives”, but added that conflict was not necessarily wrong.
“Our fear of it, our sense of it being wasted time and effort is wrong,” he said.
“So often we seek like mindedness so that we can get on with the job of worship, of making disciples, of serving other human beings.
“Because conflict in the church is time consuming and destructive, we turn from facing it and instead seek those with whom we agree.”
He challenged the church to “manage diversity and grow with it”, and be unified around a shared faith in God.
“Conflict arises from the diversity in which we have been created,” he said.
“When we seek to find a way of life that avoids it we deny the three realities of our fallenness, our present diversity, and the tension between the realised present and anticipated salvation of our futures.”
He continued: “In the old expression, we can choose our friends but we are stuck with our family. And so, by calling on God we are bound into a fellowship of being heralds of the reconciliation we have received. We had better get used to it because it lasts for ever.”
Without reconciliation, the Church would be hindered in its mission and evangelism, but also failing as church, the Archbishop warned.
He admitted reconciliation could at times be “painful” and slow but added that a failure in reconciliation would be indicative of a church that was “not open to the love of God”.
“Success has many faces, but all of them are rooted in finding the love of God at work in us and seeing it in others,” he said.
“We are many tribes, but one people. For that to have any possibility of success the journeying must be in truth, responding to the Spirit of God in us calling to the Spirit of God in each other.
“In journeying we must speak to each other. Silence is not peace.”
Beyond the Church, the Archbishop encouraged Christians to be reconcilers within society and creation, working to support the environment, families, and communities.
He concluded: “If we can name and listen, be in conflict but not destruction, take the crooked straight path of reconciliation, we can establish a pattern and model of trust filled living drawing on the grace of God, a model that changes the world.”