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Celebrating 20 Years Of Shared Ministry At Cathedral ...

As 2014 marks the 20th anniversary of the ordination of women to the priesthood in the Church of England, and the 70th anniversary of the ordination of the first woman in the Anglian Communion, St Edmundsbury Cathedral will be hosting a special service on Thursday 4th September. 

The service, an informal Eucharist beginning at 7pm, will include interviews and reflections, and will be preceded by a celebratory drink and light refreshments from 6.15 pm.

Canon Philip Banks, Precentor at the Cathedral, comments, "The service is called a 'celebration of shared ministry' to emphasise that women and men have worked together in ministry since 1994."

Acting Bishop, the Right Reverend David Thomson, comments, "Twenty years of shared ordained ministry is something really worth celebrating! I am looking forward very much to this special service and especially to meeting those women in this diocese who were ordained in 1994."

He continues, "As we go forward together I rejoice that both men and women will now take their place in every order of ministry, and pray that God will use the riches that this will bring to bless our county of Suffolk and our diocese as it serves it."

All those women still in the diocese who were ordained at that first 1994 service will be participating in the service. In place of the traditional sermon, two women priests will be interviewed – one who has been a priest for many years and one who is relatively newly ordained.

St Edmundsbury Cathedral would like to invite you to join them celebrating this special occasion.