Revd Helen Cameron elected as Moderator-elect to serve from April 2021

28 October 2020

From the Free Churches Group:

Helen will work alongside Hugh Osgood for the first year and become the Moderator of the Free Churches Group in April 2022. We are very pleased about this appointment and look forward to working with Helen.

The Rev’d Canon Helen D.Cameron is a Methodist presbyter and Chair of the Northampton District of the Methodist Church. She is a former theological educator at the Queen’s Foundation in Birmingham where she was involved in the formation of Methodist, URC, Anglican, and Pentecostal student ministers and has served as Assistant Secretary of the Methodist Conference. She worked on the implementation of the Safeguarding Past Cases Review Report for the Methodist Church from 2015 and was influential in establishing supervision for ministers and those exercising pastoral ministry. She has written, “Living in the Gaze of God - supervision and ministerial flourishing’ published by SCM in December 2018. She believes that accountability is a key part of flourishing in ministry for both lay and ordained. She enjoys reading novels and theatre. She is married to Iain, a GP, and has three adult children.

Helen says, "I regard it as a very great privilege to have been elected as the next Moderator of the Free Churches Group and to be able to serve the Free Churches Group in this way. I am a committed ecumenist and for many years lived and taught student ministers in the ecumenical community of the Queens Foundation in Birmingham. What that experience gave me was a foundation to my Christian experience which helped me to know that difference was to be celebrated as a gift of God (rather than a threat) and that Christian unity was a fundamental part of a convincing and confident Christian witness. I know that I am enriched by the breadth of the traditions and the practice of the churches that make up the Free Churches Group and look forward to learning more about and working with all of the member churches. I am a Methodist presbyter who currently serves as Chair of the Northampton District of the Methodist Church and I have served previously as Assistant Secretary of the Methodist Conference. I value the work of the Free Churches Group particularly its work in developing chaplaincy in health care, education and prison communities and believe such ministry is vital in our public expression of faithful witness."