Revd Dr Gary Hall

Before joining the tutorial team at Queen’s in 2010, I led an international contextual training programme for the Methodist Connexional Team and in partnership with ecumenical colleagues in the UK, Latin America, India and elsewhere. Based at the United College of the Ascension in Selly Oak until its closure, I was also training mission partners in transition to and from the UK. Previously I served as a Presbyter in priority appointments in Leicester and Leeds, after working as a schoolteacher, engineer and farm labourer, and living with the Taizé community.

Amongst a range of interests is the twentieth-century American Trappist, Thomas Merton, whose legacy continues to inform and inspire vocational engagement with twenty-first century realities. For some years I have been co-editor of The Merton Journal, and regularly contribute to Merton conferences and events in the UK and abroad.

Qualifications

MA	1987	University of Cambridge
MPhil	1994	University of Birmingham
PGCE	1989	University of Cambridge
PhD	2019	University of Birmingham

Roles at Queen's

As a tutor in the Centre for Ministerial Formation, I share responsibility for teaching, oversight and stationing of Methodist student ministers, and supervision of research work.

As Coordinator of the international Partnership in Theological Education, I am responsible for our international work in ministerial training and development, primarily with colleagues in Sri Lanka and Rwanda.

At Queen’s I have developed and delivered

undergraduate and postgraduate courses in:

• Mission and Ministry
• Mission and Globalisation
• Theology After Modernity
• Theology in the Marketplace (consumerism and economics)
• Ethics
• Preaching
• Christian Spiritualities
• Autobiographical Theology and Writing
• Contextual Theology for attachment-based learning
• Uses of Doctrine
• Discipleship

External roles and responsibilities

As a Presbyter I continue leading worship and other events with local churches around Birmingham and beyond. I am a member of the Methodist Faith and Order Committee, and contribute to church media and reports. I am an external examiner for St Patrick’s Pontifical University, Maynooth, and occasional visiting lecturer at other universities.

Research interests and publications

Teaching responsibilities have covered a broad range, with a consistent focus on interpreting and responding to the world as we experience it, from our many and varied perspectives, in light of our reception of Christian faith. So economic and social theory, media and culture studies, liberation theologies and monastic traditions, contemplation and attention, epistemology and poetics have all been part of a continually developing practical theological enterprise. I continue to research in learning and teaching, and practices of ministry. My doctoral work is in hermeneutics, communication and counter-consciousness, through an extensive study of Thomas Merton and his readers.