Justin Welby new Bishop of Durham
So, Rowan Williams didn't step sideways to Durham, as I hoped he would. Instead the lately-maligned Crown Nominations Commission has made the very interesting choice of Justin Welby , Dean of Liverpool. I don't know him personally (I did meet him once, when he was an ordinand at Cranmer Hall and I was just a stripling, but it's just possible he won't remember that), but his biography , read carefully, reveals the following: 1. He forged a career in the oil industry before ordination. This is unusual among Bishops, who are mostly cradle clergy. While that too has its advantages, it means they have little direct experience of leadership and management outside the church. 2. He has risen through the ranks of the clergy, as we might expect, but his ministry has been of the hands-on leadership type, not in the backroom bureaucracy or the corridors of power. His time as the director of Coventry's ministry of reconciliation is a particular highlight in a CV wh...