This has been a very noteworthy year for the college! We have taken the historic step of changing our English name to Cardiff Baptist College, in line with our Welsh name Coleg y Bedyddwyr Caerdydd – this allows the acronym CBC to work bilingually.

But the changes this year have not just been linguistic ones! We are delighted that our staff team has expanded considerably. Helen Dare brings her excellent biblical and pastoral skills to the college as a part-time tutor, and Richard Weaver brings a wealth of experience in community organising, and a passion for training church leaders, to his role of developing our Recognised Local Minister provision and pioneer pathway, as well as designing a new module on science and faith. Our wonderful College Manager Helen Ede is joined in the office by two other H’s – Heather Lewis as our finance and facilities manager, and Holly Terrington who has taken on the role of academic administrator while continuing to serve us as a librarian. Together, the H Team is a formidable team who meet every challenge with flair!

There have also been some innovative developments in our partnerships with other organisations. We are delighted to be working with Regent’s, Northern and IBTS to pilot a joint online spirituality module. Cardiff University has made arrangements to enable us to continue supervising PhD students through them, and we are investigating a similar arrangement with IBTS in Amsterdam.

We are also very grateful to the College Trustees for agreeing that every final year student at CBC will be offered the opportunity to do a module through IBTS as part of their course, with a fully funded residential overseas if this is included in the module requirements. We think that this offers our students a unique opportunity to gain experience of the wider European context, while building friendships with students from other countries. As part of our ongoing partnership with IBTS, Mike Pears (Principal of IBTS) will be giving our annual Edwin Stephen Griffiths Lecture this year in March, and we look forward to welcoming David Gushee to give the next lecture in 2023-24. We are also increasing our Welsh language provision as we work closely with the Baptist Union of Wales and other Welsh denominations to develop a programme of formation which is appropriate for our missional context today.

Our plans for the future envisage that we will continue to provide a mix of residential, full-time, part-time and weekend training as we seek to meet the needs of ministerial students today. We are excited about the future as we serve a great and exciting God!