02.10.2025
New CITI Ordinands Commissioned as Student Readers
Two new ordinands were commissioned as Student Readers at the Church of Ireland Theological Institute yesterday evening (Wednesday October 1). Augustine Ndulue from Dublin and Glendalough and Ryan Parke from Derry and Raphoe were commissioned by Archbishop Michael Jackson during the weekly Community Eucharist. They are among 11 ordinands who have embarked on their first year of study in CITI this year.
The students were presented for licensing by the Revd Dr Patrick McGlinchey who coordinates student placements. Student Readers are called to lead worship, proclaim the word of God and assist in the distribution of Holy Communion.
Archbishop Jackson addressed the students as they embark on a life of ordained ministry and offered them three priorities in ministry which have mattered to him.
The first is self–care which, he emphasised, is not self–delusion, self–superiority or selfishness. “It is the preservation under God of the self for the glory of God and for its expression in this world. Let me explain: God created each of us in his image and likeness. This beauty imposes on us the responsibility of care of ourselves for as long as, and as is best fitted to, the purposes of God. In more sobering terms, this is the long journey from birth through life to death. Throughout the whole of our life, it requires our engagement with programmes of health and self–love in order to fulfil the calling to happiness and to blessedness, within the love of God, that is human being and that is Christian discipleship. Only in this way will we be able to sustain the calling of God to whom and to which we seek to respond,” he explained.
The second priority is service of others. Archbishop Jackson pointed out that the ordinands live in and contribute to a world of unlicensed individualism and a society of self–service on a massive scale. The world is also plagued by war and megalomania and society is fed by “carefully curated anger”. He added: “In all things spiritual and vocational, I ask you to keep in mind the following: you have more time than you think, or than others think. Such a perspective is a lived personal expression of your being Prophet, Priest and King in following the preaching, teaching, healing ministries of Jesus who sought to redeem the world by sharing in every way he could the love of God with the unreceptive and the ungrateful, the mercenary and the destitute.”
The third priority the Archbishop offered is salvation of the world. Salvation is of God, he said and it shapes the Liturgical Year to which the ordinands will be obedient. “In most of your regular praying and preaching, you will have to grapple with it – with people who are anything from bored to uncomprehending, preoccupied to beside themselves with anxiety. They are not particularly interested in hearing from you that Jesus kept saying the same thing in all situations. They will be more interested in how Jesus interacts with the people in everyday situations into which they can imagine themselves – this will be your challenge as discerners and interpreters of the word of God in their midst. But you can enable them to see that it is salvation itself that Jesus leaves with them when, for example, he tells them to go and do likewise: Go now and do to other people what I have done for you! In the work of salvation, the ordained person is not the celebrity performer like Michael McIntrye strutting incessantly along the stage; the ordained person is the midwife of grace, of hope and of peace in God’s work of salvation,” he concluded.
You can read Archbishop Jackson’s sermon in full here.