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Notice
Ecclesial Futures MA Prize Details

Ben Aldous
Principal Officer for Mission and Evangelism, Churches Together in England 
ben.aldous@cte.org.uk

The inaugural year of the MA prize in Mission is a new venture 
between Churches Together in England, the national ecumenical 
instrument, the Mission Research Network UK, and the British 
and Irish Association of Practical Theology. In this inaugural year 
of the prize we received twenty-five entries from students based in 
a wide range of locations from Falmouth, Cornwall, to Barrow in 
Cumbria and representing a range of denominations.

The aim of the prize is to draw out good-quality research at 
the MA level from students completing their studies at a UK-based 
college or university around the topics of mission, evangelism, 
and church planting with a particular focus on mission in the UK 
context.

This year’s winner of the prize was Daleen Ten Cate, whose 
MA dissertation, “A Critical Examination of the Theological Basis of 
a Christian Charity Engaged in Community Ministry,” was deemed 
by the judges to be a robust and rigorous piece of work which 
clearly engaged a community of practice out of deep relation-
ships. Her MA in Contextual Theology was taken through Luther 
King House in Manchester. Daleen is an ordained URC minister 



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based just outside Blackburn. She currently works for the United 
Reformed Church as a Missional Discipleship mentor alongside 
thirty-seven churches across Lancashire. Originally from South 
Africa and an Afrikaaner, she moved to the UK twenty-two years 
ago, initially learning English at a local village school.

The judges were particularly impressed by the passion and 
level of engagement that Daleen showed in her work and the way 
in which she had rolled up her sleeves, got her hands dirty volun-
teering for six months, and built significant relationships. They felt 
the level of reflexivity was particularly rich. Her abstract is set out 
below.

Abstract of the MA Prize Winner

This dissertation is a critical examination of the theological basis 
of a Christian charity engaged in community ministry. Through 
using Theological Action Research (TAR) as my methodology I 
identified the “Theological Voices” of this charity and hopefully 
enabled formative transformation for practice, but also to allow 
practice to contribute to the transformation of theology. In un-
dertaking the research I conducted ten in-depth, semi-structured 
interviews with open-ended questions and also administered 
twenty-four questionnaires. Based on the three theologies of mis-
sion, according to Bevans & Schroeder (2005, 35–72), Type C: 
Transformation and Liberation was endorsed by the participants 
as the charity’s espoused theology. However, data also revealed 
that Type A: Mission as Saving Souls and Extending the Church 
and Type B: Mission as Discovery of the Truth were also promi-
nent theologies. Yet despite these differences and the different 
denominations of staff members, the charity clearly unites in prac-
tice. Their key biblical text headlining their website, expressing 
their vision, is Isaiah 61:1, which is in line with the espoused the-
ology of transformation and liberation, became their normative 
theology. Incarnation and kenosis were unanimously endorsed by 
interviewees as an appropriate operant theology for this charity. 
This operant theology is brought in conversation with the formal 



Ben Aldous—Ecclesial Futures MA Prize Details

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theological voice of John Vincent and his vocational cycle (2013, 
59) and the transformation that took place through the eyes of his 
discipleship cycle (2013, 61).

This theological methodology used in conjunction with in-
terdisciplinary dialogue in this dissertation took place alongside 
theologies of mission, such as Bevans & Schroeder (2005, 2011), 
Bosch (1991), Davey (2010), and Frost & Hirsch (2003); as well as 
reflecting on and dialoguing with different models of community 
work and social action such as Ledwith (2005), Morisy (1997), 
and Ballard & Husselbee (2007) and finally also by listening to 
the challenging voices of liberation theologians such as Vincent 
(2013), West (1999), and Brueggemann (1998).

Four Other Shortlisted Finalists Were:

Tiffany Jackson, whose MA in Theology, Ministry, and Mission 
from Trinity College in Bristol explored one of the earliest exam-
ples of a mission document found in Mark 16:9–20 by exploring 
the themes of power, truth, and allegiance. By studying Mark’s lon-
ger ending through a missional hermeneutic and in dialogue with 
Charles Kraft’s model, Jackson opened up a discussion around the 
miraculous and mission.

Robin Ham’s MA in Theology and Ministry from the Uni-
versity of Cumbria reflected on the experiences of church planting 
in a small town in the north of England in conversation with Tim 
Keller’s planting model for cities.

Mark Nam in his MA asked, “What can the Church of Eng-
land learn from East Asian theology in terms of contextualizing 
the gospel?” Describing the five marks of mission as a template 
for mission and polity in the C of E and drawing on Bevans and 
Schroeder’s prophetic dialogue, Nam asks what role, if any, East 
Asian theologies might bring to bear in C. of E. contexts in twenty-
first century Britain.

Christopher Collins, who was awarded an MA in Theol-
ogy and Transformative Practice from the Queens Foundation 
in Birmingham, asked the seemingly simple question, “Is the 



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present-day Methodist Church as prophetic as it could be or as it 
perceives itself to be?” Collins argues that by drawing on the work 
of John Hull the Church could give greater attention to the inter-
subjective witness to injustice and broader engagement with the 
complexities of truth and power, challenging injustice rather than 
focusing on relieving its effects and becoming less self-interested 
for the sake of justice.

All these dissertations and a wide range of other PhD- and 
MA-level work may be accessed via the new Churches Together in 
England Mission Research Library at the following: https://cte.org.
uk/mission/research/#/.


