Forming Ministers or Training Leaders is a unique book because it is based on a significant piece of empirical research. Anthony Clarke explores the way that the practice among theological colleges in the UK has been changing and develops the concept of the ""pastoral imagination"" to express what a theological college is aiming to do with its students. The book then offers an analysis of the ""pastoral imagination"" that is in fact at work in a selection of Baptist colleges and other theological institutions in the UK. Alongside this Clarke offers a coherent and robust theological account of the work of a theological college, through engaging with recent trinitarian theology, and argues that this is best understood as a process of formation which embraces other ideas of training and education.

Anthony Clarke is an ordained Baptist minister and currently senior tutor at Regent's Park College, where among other things he has responsibility for ministerial formation. He is also a member of the Faculty of Theology and Religion at the University of Oxford.