The aim of this research is heuristic, seeking andragogical strategies that may facilitate sexual-spiritual integration in ministerial training. The lived experience of sex and faith of seven Christian ordinands and a newly ordained minister was collected by interview and examined. Sex (sexuality and sexual expression) was revealed to be an arena for the development of identity, moral agency and the capacity for relationship, all of which are components of spirituality. Sex and sense-making about sex is a liminal space in which personal sexual experience, the Christian tradition, and other knowledge are wrestled and a “faithfully realistic” personal sexual ethic is created. This is the creation of practical wisdom, a poetic phronesis. The phenomenology of sexual-spiritual integration through poetic phronesis is theorised to be inherent in the moral creativity of human beings. Personal sexual knowledge is tacit and subjugated, and there are significant barriers in the Church which disable sexual reflexivity. The argument is made for an intentional andragogy that creates and resources the liminal space in which sexual phronesis takes place. The features of such an andragogy include: the bounding of sacred space, critical engagement with all four sources of theology (scripture, tradition, reason and experience), attending to the ethos of the training institution and the classroom, invitations to engage personal sexual experience through oblique methods, and opportunities for respectful conversation. Ordinands should be encouraged to cultivate a habit of sexual reflexivity and equipped to manage the sexual power and vulnerability inherent in the ministerial role. It is further theorised that the personal sexual sense-making of poetic phronesis is a micro-example of how lived experience may develop Christian tradition through poetic practical theology. Experience is reclaimed as a potential source of theology, validated by its fruits. Poetics as an emergent method and model of practical theology is posited as a means by which experience may enter into critical-liminal conversation with other sources of theology, advancing the tradition. The thesis is written so as to evoke personal sense-making, the medium echoing the message. Metaphor, poetry and story leaven more traditional academic prose to create liminal space in which the reader may be invited into sexual reflexivity.

... for the phrase 'clergyman’s wife' has connotations which the phrase 'solicitor’s wife' or 'bank clerk's wife’ does not. The content of the meaning it conveys, is a stereotype picture of what the clergyman’s wife is like, and how her life is organised. The 'typical parson's wife’ is seen as someone who, on the one hand, opens bazaars and dispenses charity to the poor of the parish; and, on the other hand, as someone who visits the sick and bereaved and runs the Sunday School. The two elements in the stereotype are, in this study, characterised as the Lady of the Manor and the Unpaid Curate, and their origins are traced historically, as well as their contemporary relevance being examined through empirical study. ... But the interesting thing about the 'clergyman’s wife' is that it is a stereotype attributed in a sense vicariously; that is, a set of statements about a 'typical' person, attributed by virtue of someone else’s occupation. The clear implication is that, by marrying a clergyman, one automatically adopts a particular way of life and style of life, in a much more clearly defined sense than does a person who marries into almost any other occupational group.