Press release from the Prime Minister’s Office.
The Coventry diocesan website states that Dr Cocksworth will take up his new appointment in November 2023.
Appointment of Dean of Windsor: 20 June 2023
The King has approved that The Right Reverend Dr Christopher Cocksworth be appointed to the Deanery of The King’s Free Chapel of St George, Windsor Castle.
From: Prime Minister’s Office, 10 Downing Street
Published 20 June 2023
The King has approved that The Right Reverend Dr Christopher Cocksworth, Bishop of Coventry, be appointed to the Deanery of The King’s Free Chapel of St George, Windsor Castle, in succession to The Right Reverend David Conner following his retirement.
Christopher was educated at Manchester University and trained for ministry at St John’s College, Nottingham. He served his title at Christ Church, Epsom Common, in the Diocese of Guildford, and was ordained priest in 1989.
In 1992 he was appointed Chaplain at Royal Holloway and Bedford New College, University of London and from 1997 to 2001 he served as Director at the Southern Theological and Education Training Scheme (STETS). From 1999 he held the additional title of Honorary Canon at Guildford Cathedral. In 2001 Christopher was appointed Principal of Ridley Hall, Cambridge.
Christopher was appointed to his current position as Bishop of Coventry in 2008. He is married and has five adult sons.
A great appointment, Coventry’s loss.
Coventry’s suffragan see falls vacant in August, and the diocesan in November. Would it be wise to put in a new suffragan before the new diocesan?
I seem to remember in recent years there have been two situations where a Diocese was without a Diocesan and a Suffragan Bishop. One was Birmingham when John Sentamu was translated to York and around the same John Austin retired as Suffragan Bishop of Aston, and a retired Bishop, Michael Whinney who was a Hon Assistant Bishop in the Diocese had to act as Diocesan Bishop, then again in the Diocese of St Edmundsbury and Ipswich, the Bishop of Dunwich Clive Young had retired and the Bishop of St Edmundsbury and Ipswich, Nigel Stock was called away to be Bishop… Read more »
Is there any need for a suffragan ?
Hereford Diocese seems to be managing. I suppose it depends whether the diocesan plans to be present and available to the diocese.
More pertinently Fr Dean, is there any need for a diocesan. The diocese of Coventry is a modern invention and rapidly declining into oblivion or short term merger with a neighbour. For example, Easter communicants 2009:15,200 2021:5,400. Baptisms 2009:2,000 2021:670. This is during the episcopacy of the current bishop. By the autumn there will be only one senior cleric (out of four) still in post, the Archdeacon Missioner. The Archdeacon Pastor was dismissed at the start of the year for conduct unbecoming. The bishop of Warwick’s final Sunday is 12th July, the bishop of Coventry will go on leave soon… Read more »
Comparing 2009 with 2021 is hardly fair, given the country was in lockdown for the first three months of 2021 and slowly opening up thereafter.
It was a very close run thing when the last suffragan was appointed as to whether there should be a suffragan. The Diocesan had recently had a bit of a health scare and that may have influenced the decision. However given how much time +Christopher has given to national roles it may have been good to have had a suffragan in post
I heard Bishop Christopher Cocksworth give a very good lecture once at the Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham on “Mary and Evangelicals”
Read his thorough new book on Mary which conservative “Catholic Anglicans” will welcome – though it does not take much note of critical Biblical scholarship. His book on Anglican Evangelical scholarship regarding the Holy Communion is magisterial.
This is a good appointment and inter alia means presumably that +Christopher won’t need to retire at 70 if he doesn’t want to! Mind you, he’s a spring chicken at 64 (by year end). As for the needs of Coventry and its episcopal leadership, during my short tenure on the Dioceses Commission one of the metrics for determining whether a suffragan vacancy should be filled was the ratio of stipendiary clergy to each bishop. I’m not sure that was entirely correct but it was one measure. I can’t lay my hands on stipendiary clergy per diocese, but Coventry has 125… Read more »
So the average Hereford benefice contains more than 5 church buildings…
So it seems, if I have read the most recent ministry statistics (almost) correctly! Actually it’s 340 *parishes*, 4.4 per benefice. Total number of *churches* is 400. Coventry has 240 churches.
Not at all obvious that “most benefices have more than one clergyperson.” 6669 benefices and 7670 stipendiary clergy, so rather the opposite.
Lots of other issues to factor in. Self-supporting ministers and retired clergy to name but two. The focus purely on stipendiary ministers is not helpful, although they do represent the ‘professional’ cadre and are usually more deployable.