Jane Leach
Principal
jl332@cam.ac.uk

Jane Leach

The Revd Dr Jane Leach has been the Principal of the College since 2011. Prior to 2011 she was Director of Pastoral Studies here for ten years (2001-11). She trained at Wesley House in the 1990s and served her probation in the Fenland Methodist Circuit where she was responsible for four rural chapels.  She was ordained presbyter at the British Methodist Conference of 1998.

Jane holds degrees in history and theology from the Universities of Oxford, Cambridge and Nottingham. Her own doctoral research was on faith development theory. She researches, supervises and publishes in the fields of practical theology and theological education with expertise in qualitative research and multidisciplinary perspectives. Her own recent research has been on the impact and nature of reflective supervision offered in a denominational context. Jane has enjoyed study leave in the United States and in South Africa and is currently part of the team delivering a Diploma in Church Leadership at Kenya Methodist University.

Her current doctoral students are researching the following topics: ageing well in Singapore; the impact of reflective supervision in the USA; leadership in the Methodist Church in Kenya; forms of accompaniment for women ministers in the Baptist tradition.

Jane was the founding chair of the Association for Pastoral Supervisors and Educators (APSE www.pastoralsupervision.org.uk).  She is an accredited APSE supervisor and educator and holds a diploma in Creative Supervision from the London Centre for Psychodrama.  She offers pastoral supervision to clergy, chaplains and other church workers and teaches on the Wesley House Diploma in Pastoral Supervision, and the Wesley House Diploma in Group Supervision.  She was the team lead in introducing reflective supervision into the Methodist Church in Britain (2017-21) and has consulted and taught supervision within the United Methodist Church and Kenya.

Jane is a Fellow Commoner at Jesus College, Cambridge and is the Executive LEaD Hub Director: Britain for the General Board of Higher Education and Ministry of the United Methodist Church. She is a member of the Faith and Order Committee of the Methodist Church in Britain. She broadcasts regularly on Radio 4’s Thought for the Day.

Lectures and Speeches

Recent publications

  • 2022 Selected Thoughts in Christine Morgan, ed., Thought for the Day:50 years of fascinating thoughts and reflections, BBC Books
  • 2020, Reflective Supervision and the renewal of Christian leadership, Nashville TN: Foundery Books
  • 2018, ‘Holy Containment and the Supervision of Leaders in Ministry’: Holiness 1 (2018) https://www.wesley.cam.ac.uk/holiness/
  • 2017, ‘Speaking of God in Private – the art of pastoral conversation. Holiness 3.1 https://www.wesley.cam.ac.uk/holiness/
  • 2017, Holiness 3.1 What have the sermons of John Wesley ever done for us? On visiting the sick.
  • 2016, Sermon for the Second Sunday after Pentecost, Expository Times.
  • & Paterson, Pastoral Supervision: a Handbook, second edition, London, SCM 2015
  • 2015, Is Wisdom the Principal Thing? Holiness I.1 www.wesley.cam.ac.uk/holiness
  • 2014, ‘Power & Vulnerability: Creative Supervision for Ministry’, in Chesner & Zografou eds., Creative Supervision across modalities , JKP 2014
  • 2010, ‘The End of Theological Education: an analysis of the contribution of portfolio learning to formation in ministry within a university context’ Journal of Adult Theological Education 7.2: 117-204
  • & Paterson, M.S, 2010, Pastoral Supervision: A Handbook, London: SCM.
  • ed., Practical Theology 2.3: Equinox 2009
  • ‘Pastoral Theology as Attention’, Contact: practical theology & pastoral care No.153, August 2007
  • Walking the Story: in the steps of saints and pilgrims, Peterborough: Inspire 2007
  • This is Our Story: Free Church Women’s Ministry, edited by Janet Wootton, Epworth 2007, 978-0-7162-0606-4
  • and Morley, J., Share this Feast, Methodist Church House, 2006
  • ‘Pastoral Supervision – a Literature Review’, Contact: practical theology & pastoral care No. 151, December 2006
  • ‘El Camino de Santiago: the value and significance of pilgrimage in the 21st C’, Epworth Review 33.1 January 2006
  • & Paterson, M S, ‘Surfing the waves: formation for ministry in the Christian Tradition revisited.’, Journal of Adult Theological Education 1:1 June 2004
  • ‘Mind the Gap’, Luscombe & Shreeve eds., What is a minister? Epworth 2001.
  • The Renewal of Christian Tradition’ in Forward, Plant & White eds., A Great Commission, Peter Lang 2000.

 

Book reviews

  • Holiness II.2, Pentecost 2016, Zoe Bennett, Using the Bible in Practical Theology, Ashgate 2015.
  • Modern Believing, January 2013, Bob Whorton, Reflective Caring: imaginative listening to pastoral experience, SPCK 2011 ISBN 978-0-281-06413-7
  • Theology, September 2010; vol. 113, 875: pp. 368-369, Trans/formations, ed. Marcella Althaus-Reid and Lisa Isherwood (SCM Press 2009), 204 pp
  • Practical Theology 1.3, 2008, Elizabeth Newman, Untamed Hospitality – Welcoming God and Other Strangers, Michigan: Brazos Press, 2007 pbk, 233pp, ISBN: 987–1– 58743–176–0
  • Contact: practical theology & pastoral care No.151 December 2006, David Hay & Rebecca Nye, The Spirit of the Child Revised edition, London and Philadelphia, JKP 2006
  • Epworth Review 34.3 2007: Deborah van Deusen Hunsinger, Pray without Ceasing: Revitalizing Pastoral Care, (Eerdmanns, Grand Rapids, Michigan/Cambridge UK) pp xiii, 250 ISBN 08028 4759 5.
  • Epworth Review 33.4 2006: Lartey, E.Y., Pastoral Theology in an Intercultural World [Epworth Press 2006 £12.99] pp. ix, 161 ISBN 0716205831
  • Political Theology 7:2 2006: Frances Ward, Lifelong Learning: Theological Education & Supervision SCM Press 2005, 184. ISBN 0334029627
  • Political Theology 6:2 2005: Nicola Slee, Faith and Feminism: An Introduction to Christian Feminist Theology, DLT 2003