Bishops of Monmouth
Charles Green
Gilbert Cunningham Joyce
Alfred Monahan
Alfred Morris
Eryl Thomas
Derrick Childs
Clifford Wright
Rowan Williams
Dominic Walker
Derrick Greenslade Childs was Principal of Trinity College, Carmarthen when he became Bishop of Monmouth. His Visitation charges clearly indicate that he understood the challenges of the 1970s and 80s and the need to relate the Gospel "to how men think about and react to the matters which affect them most immediately".
Bishop Childs wanted to see the laypeople playing their proper part in ministry. He knew that the resources for ministry were inadequate to the needs of the diocese and he encouraged greater use of non-stipendiary ministry. The diocese's continuing failure to foster more indigenous vocations to the ministry meant that the number of incumbents reaching the age of compulsory retirement exceeded the number of ordinands.
The ordination of women to the priesthood would have to wait for another generation, though the diocesan conference decided in 1975 that "there were no fundamental objections to the ordination of women to the priesthood".
Stewardship was another of Bishop Derrick's concerns. His attempts to establish an endowment fund for the diocese met with only limited success in the economic climate of the mid seventies, but he did succeed in appointing a diocesan stewardship adviser in the early eighties. He initiated the appointment of a diocesan missioner and encouraged the policy of building Voluntary Aided Church Schools.
Bishop Childs challenged the diocese to be open to change especially in the areas of ecumenical co-operation and industrial mission. There was a Bishop's Commission on Manpower, Structure and Finance with proposals in 1979 for the setting up of areas of pastoral responsibility in informal groupings in parishes.
Derrick Childs became Archbishop of Wales in 1983. He retired in the summer of 1986. The tragic circumstances of his death as the result of a motor accident in 1987 occasioned the publication of a series of essays, Living Authority, edited by Andrew Willie in 1990.