Dip RS. BA. MTh. DThMin.
Tutor in Pastoral Supervision
Email: p.goodliff@spurgeons.ac.uk
Paul has been offering pastoral supervision to ministers for the past ten years and has also written and taught the Module on Supervision and Mentoring for the MTh in Applied Theology offered at Spurgeon’s College. He is a Baptist minister and served in pastorates in Streatham, London, Bunyan, Stevenage, and latterly, Abingdon. He has also served as General Superintendent for the Baptist Union’s Central Area, and as the Baptist Union’s Head of Ministry. In the 1990s he chaired the Continuing the Journey Conference for Pastoral theologians and Psychotherapists. He has recently retired as the General Secretary of Churches Together in England, having taken up the role in 2018. He trained for ministry at Spurgeon’s College and completed a doctorate at King’s College, London and is an Associate Research Fellow and tutor at Spurgeon’s College. He is a pastoral theologian, lecturer, trainer, poet, and author of five books: most recently, Shaped for Service: Ministerial Formation and Virtue Ethics (Wipf and Stock, 2017) and, co-edited with Roger Standing, Episcope (SCM Press, 2020). He was honoured in 2022 with a Festschrift Ministry in Conversation. Essays in Honour of Paul Goodliff, ed. Andy Goodliff and John Colwell (Wipf and Stock, 2022). With a life-long passion for supporting Christian ministry, he is a founder member of The Order for Baptist Ministry and is Vice Chair of Trustees for BRF Ministries. Married to Gill, a retired University Lecturer, they have three sons and seven grandchildren, and live in Oxfordshire.
Publications
‘The Church as Sign and Agent of the Kingdom’ in (Ed. Steve Finnamore,) On Earth as in Heaven: A Theology of Social Action for Baptist Churches. Didcot: BU Publications 1996
Care in a Confused Climate. Pastoral Care and Postmodern Culture. London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1998
Doing or Being. An old chestnut revisited. Baptist Minister’s Journal, Vol. 288, October 2004, pp. 3-12
With Unveiled Face. A Pastoral and Theological Exploration of Shame, London: DLT, 2005
Ordination, The Pastoral Call, in (ed.) John H.Y.Briggs, A Dictionary of European Baptist Life and Thought, Paternoster, 2009. pp. 367-369, 377-378.
Inclusive Representation Revisited. Pieter Lalleman (ed) Challenge to Change, London: Spurgeon’s College, 2009
Ministry, Sacrament and Representation Oxford: Regent’s Park, 2010
Baptist Church Polity and Practice, Law and Justice: The Christian Law Review, 168, Hilary/Easter 2012, pp. 5-21
Women’s Ministry: An Exploration at a Historic Moment, Baptist Quarterly, Vol 45 (8) October 2014. pp. 485-499
Baptist Theology Reconsidered: A Review Article, Baptist Quarterly, Vol. 46 (3) July 2015. pp. 113-119
Baptists and Natural Law, chapter in Norman Doe, (Ed.) Christianity and Natural Law. An Introduction, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017. pp. 140–161
Shaped for Service. Ministerial Formation and Virtue Ethics, Eugene OR.: Pickwick, 2017.
“In Obedient Living Find Your Home” Reflections on Baptists and Discipleship in Gathering Disciples Essays in Honor of Christopher J. Ellis Edited by Myra Blyth & Andy Goodliff. Eugene OR.: Pickwick, 2017. pp. 60–75
Review Article, Undomesticated Dissent, Baptist Quarterly, forthcoming
Three Poems, Theology, April-May, 2018.
Becoming Present to God, and Annunciation. Behold a Virgin Shall Conceive in (eds.) Andy Goodliff and Paul W Goodliff, Rhythms of Faithfulness, Eugene OR.: Wipf and Stock, 2018
Episkope, (ed. Paul Goodliff and Roger Standing), London: SCM, 2020
“Everyone lights candles these days” in (ed. Andy Goodliff, Anthony Clarke and Beth Allison-Glenny, Reconciling Rites. Essays in Honour of Myra Blyth, Oxford: Centre for Baptist Studies, 2020.
The Baptist Perspective, in (ed. Norman Doe) Church Laws and Ecumenism, Abingdon: Routledge, 2020 (forthcoming)
Gunton on Theology, Ministry and the Christian Life, in (ed.) Myk Habets and Andrew Picard, The T & T Clark Companion to Colin Gunton, London: T & T Clark, 2021
Conscience and Natural Law: a Calvinist Perspective. In (ed. John Duddington) The Legal Legacy of the Reformation: Catholic and Protestant approaches then and today. (forthcoming)
Reflections on Care in a Confused Climate, Twenty Five years on (Journal of Contemporary Baptist Theology, Issue 6, November 2022)
Virtue Ethics and Social Media (Crucible, 2023 forthcoming)
