Oxford Pastorate

The Method of the Pastorate’s Ministry

 

It will already have become clear that the primary modus operandi of the Pastorate, from the first chaplain through to the present, has been ‘personal influence’.  C.S. Woodward, Pastorate chaplain for the five years preceding the outbreak of the Great War, gave a ‘comprehensive description’ of his own manner of ministry.

It is by the quiet work of making friends that the Pastorate justifies its existence, and may be said to be influencing the religious life of Oxford.  Each year, as a new batch of freshmen arrives, the Chaplains come into touch with a few in every college [...] The mere fact of inviting such men to an occasional meal, of sometimes seeing them in their own rooms, or meeting them by the river, may seem on paper a very little thing, but experience shows that even this casual intercourse may lead to large results later on [in many cases] acquaintanceship has ripened into real and close friendship.[1] 

In case it should be thought that this kind of ministry must remain numerically insignificant, it should be noted that ‘In 1913, for example, Woodward reported that some 1,600 students had been to his house for meals or coffee and that he was in touch with a total of 330’![2]

Inevitably, individual conversations and relationships would sometimes develop into small groups gathering together to address topics of common interest.  The first chaplain, Henry Gibbon, had precisely this experience.  ‘In some cases [the students he befriended] asked him to lead their study groups in colleges, or to lead them in prayer meetings and Bible readings’.[3]  Indeed, from the first published statement of intent, the Pastorate chaplains’ had been commissioned to ‘hold Services, and Greek Testament Readings, and give Lectures, and preach in the City Centre Churches as opportunities occur’.[4]

The final strand in the Pastorate’s perennial pattern of ministry has been its emphasis on encouraging the students it works with to look to be involved in action beyond the quads of the University.  The earliest expression of this facet of the Pastorate’s ministry was its involvement in the Bermondsey Medical Mission (later the Oxford Medical Mission) which was started by the remarkable John Stansfeld (later Rector of St Ebbe’s).  He began his mission of medical treatment and evangelistic boys’ clubs in 1897 in cooperation with many of the Pastorate’s founders and sympathisers.  In 1901 the Mission’s link to the Pastorate was made official.[5]  Throughout the long period of the Mission’s activity a constant stream of undergraduates, accompanied by Pastorate chaplains, spent their vacations serving , often in very basic conditions, in both the medical and pastoral aspects of this evangelistic work.[6]  The force of personality of Dr Stansfeld was responsible to no small degree for the willingness of undergraduates to respond to the call.  One first-hand account of a meeting with the Doctor in a fellow student’s rooms conveys rather well the passion and persuasiveness of his appeal.

He was amazingly unlike other people, and terribly abrupt in his phrases.  We had expected to be asked for half-a-crown, but he insisted that we should ‘come and live the crucified life in Bermondsey’.  We shrank from the words rather: they seemed to push the thing too far.  Yet the words stuck, for no one had come and put it like that before.  We had heard a good deal about ‘religious influences’, but the Doctor talked about Jesus Christ [...] The meeting seemed rather a failure, only seven men there, and none of us at all heroic.  Yet oddly enough all seven came to Bermondsey sooner or later, and five became ‘residents’.[7]

In later years, the Pastorate’s external activity became increasingly centred on taking large numbers of Oxford clergy and undergraduates to take part in city-wide missions just before the start of the academic year.  These mission teams were large, frequently a dozen or more clergy and 100-150 undergraduates.  They were also highly innovative, helping to move evangelicalism on from a reliance on big name, imported speakers towards a method that relied more on the personal testimony and witness of the laity.[8]