Revd Helen Cameron
Moderator of the free churches group
Since having been elected as the 61st Free Churches Moderator by the twenty-seven Free Church denominations of England and Wales in April 2022, Helen Cameron has given the Free Churches Group a key public presence. She also serves as one of the Presidents of Churches Together in England, maintaining links with a number of other key organisations.
“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.”
About Helen Cameron
Revd Helen Cameron is a Methodist presbyter who currently serves as Chair of the Northampton District. In September 2022 she will also serve as Chair of the Nottingham & Derby District. She was born in North Yorkshire, to a Methodist family. Both her parents were Methodist Local Preachers (as were her grandfather, great grandfather…) and she began preaching alongside her parents from the age of 13.
Helen trained as a physiotherapist in Edinburgh with a specialism in stroke rehabilitation. While working in York she candidated for ordained ministry and after being accepted her Initial Ministerial Formation was undertaken in Birmingham at the ecumenical Queens College. Helen’s first ministerial appointment was at Longbridge (just as decisions were being made for closure of the car factory) and Frankley (a Birmingham overspill estate where significant deprivation existed). Helen was involved in conversations about the impact of the Longbridge closure on the community and in enabling better community cohesion on Frankley.
The Church on Frankley was a Local Ecumenical Partnership and fed Helen’s conviction that Christian denominations should be working closely together in mission and ministry. Helen spent many years in ministerial formation as a staff member of the Queens Foundation and helped to form many ministers, including Anglicans, Methodists, URC, Pentecostals and worked with many students from the global South. From 2015 -2017 she served as Assistant Secretary of the Methodist Conference.
Helen remains convinced that diversity is a gift, not a threat, and welcomes the opportunity that serving as Moderator will offer to continue to support and encourage Free Church identity within Christian life, witness and service in the public square.
