Revd Dr Tessa Henry-Robinson elected as Moderator-elect to serve from April 2025

We are delighted to welcome Reverend Dr. Tessa Henry-Robinson as the new Moderator-elect of the Free Churches Group. Tessa will support the current Moderator, Reverend Canon Helen Cameron, in her first year before assuming the Moderator’s role in April 2025. The Free Churches look forward to working with Tessa over the coming months.

Tessa said, “I welcome this opportunity to work collaboratively in an ecumenical capacity. My background and work within the United Reformed Church (URC), which is itself an ecumenical union of churches, have uniquely prepared me for this role, emphasising my leadership capabilities as well as my commitment to ecumenism, inclusivity, and justice.”

Tessa has just completed her year as Moderator of the URC General Assembly and continues to have pastorate responsibility for four URC congregations in east London. Her work as the Moderator of the URC General Assembly involved engagements both in the UK and internationally. She has significant experience in church operations, making her well-placed to navigate and lead complex discussions and initiatives across Free Church denominations. Her ministerial and professional journey includes significant milestones that align closely with the values and objectives of the Free Churches Group. As the first Black and/or ethnically minoritized woman to serve in her current roles, she is committed to diversity, empowerment, and racial justice.

Luke 5: 18 -19 - Through the Roof

“Just then some men came carrying a paralyzed man on a stretcher. They were trying to bring him in and lay him before Jesus,[e] 19 but, finding no way to bring him in because of the crowd, they went up on the roof and let him down on the stretcher through the tiles into the middle of the crowd[f] in front of Jesus.”

Reflection from Revd Helen Cameron, Moderator of the Free Churches Group

One of the most enjoyable things about being Moderator of the Free Churches Group is the connections that can be made. I was glad to travel to Wales to join my sisters and brothers in Free Church leadership there for conversation and careful listening about their perspectives and context particularly concerning issues of language and culture. It was an interesting day not just to talk to a wide range of leaders in Free Churches in Wales but also to see a frontline project addressing poverty in creative ways. I was then asked that day If I would be willing to lead a workshop for Welsh Baptist Ministers addressing themes of rest and restoration. Someone heard a recording of that webinar and then made contact with me directly. This was Katie Mobbs – Through the Roof Roofbreaker Team Leader and Co-ordinator for Wales, West and South West of England

Katie is Team Leader for the Through the Roof “Roofbreaker” project which aims to equip, encourage and resource volunteer disability champions in churches and ministries across the UK. She also has a particular focus on reaching churches in Wales, West and South West England. Katie is based in Cardiff and has Cerebral Palsy and is a wheelchair user. She has a background in health and social care law and disability advocacy in the public and third sector. Katie works alongside people with a range of disabilities and access needs, through her work with Through the Roof and in her local church. 

Contact and conversation with Katie and her colleagues allowed me to reflect personally about issues of access, belonging and inclusion in the life of the local Church as well as issues of policy and advocacy around full participation of all people in the life of the church at every level. In the webinar I led I had spoken quite personally about how issues of neurodivergences for someone close to me affected how they could ever feel included, welcome and be confident that they belonged at work, at leisure and perhaps most importantly for them, at church and in their faith and spirituality. I was used, as a former physiotherapist, to considering how someone with reduced mobility might need church to create flat and level paths, entrances and worship spaces. I was also used, as a teacher, in ministerial formation to consider carefully how students who were visually or hearing impaired might access their learning equally with their peers. Dyslexic students explained to me what would help them learn and how their patterns of thinking enabled a profound creativity. I was enriched in my teaching by what they asked me to consider. My fairly clear diction when speaking results, I remain convinced, from the fact that my mother for many years while I was learning to preach was profoundly if temporarily deaf. She would sit near the front and lip read. I learned not to cover my mouth or turn away to utter an aside. 

Photo courtesy from Throughtheroof.org.

What Katie helped me consider is what it takes for us to raise our voices as champions, as advocates and as those willing to become “Roofbreakers”, those willing to dismantle barriers to inclusion. Personal experience may alert us to some blockages and barriers but the kind of change and transformation required seems to require our whole attention to the imperative provided to us by God in terms of God’s will and purpose for the whole of creation. So in Isaiah 1:17 ( NIV) we read the words of the prophet to the people,

“Learn justice, do what is right and defend the oppressed”.

Our faith must be a lived reality others can experience. Love is what justice looks like in public.

So I have signed up to become a Roofbreaker, an advocate for the full participation of people in our churches and I wonder if you might too. A free webinar is offered to churches when a member signs up as a Roofbreaker advocate.

I wonder too if you mark Disability Awareness Sunday in your church?

In 2023, the date publicised for Disability Awareness Sunday was Sunday 17th September. But any Sunday can be Disability Awareness Sunday! So it is never too late to celebrate, and join the hundreds of churches across the UK - and the world - to share about church disability inclusion. There are 16 million disabled people in the UK (Family Resources Survey 2021-22) who need to know churches are supportive places to experience God’s love.

Over 20% of the UK's population are disabled people (Family Resources Survey, 2021-22). Not all disabilities are visible, but disabled people are still under-represented in UK churches – especially in positions of responsibility.

I am so glad that Katie Mobbs contacted me, so glad to be able to invite the Free Churches Group to consider this issue and to encourage you to draw on the excellent free resources of the Through the Roof Trust.

Find out more about the blessings and benefits of joining over 600 Roofbreaker disability champions in UK churches here.

 Helen Dixon Cameron

Moderator of the Free Churches Group

Seeing and being seen

I am married to a Scot so we celebrated Burns Night on January 25th, despite being in exile in England. My husband recites the Address to the Haggis written by the poet Robert Burns and at the end of the recitation stabs the haggis with a flourish, as is the tradition. He uses a sgian dubh (a small ceremonial knife) to do this which belonged to his father, and which his father wore to work every day, tucked into the long socks he wore under his kilt.

Why on earth am I telling you about this?

Because recently after taking part in an ecumenical service, a very different poem written by Robert Burns came to mind. Burns’ poem about an insect sprang unbidden into my mind while I was reflecting on taking part in Ecumenical Vespers in honour of the late Pope Benedict at Westminster Roman Catholic Cathedral, at the kind invitation of my brother President of Churches Together in England, Cardinal Vincent Nicholls.

Burns’ poem about the tiny insect he spies crawling on a woman’s hat is written in the Habbie dialect and form, and sees Robert Burns musing that the insect does not observe class distinctions and regards all human beings equally, as potential hosts, and so lands on us all. Burns concludes his poem with these words,

‘O wad some Power the giftie gie us / To see oursels as ithers see us!’

English translation: help us see ourselves as others see us!

I think these lines sprang up in my memory because the kind and generous invitation to the Moderator of the Free Churches Group (currently an ordained woman) by the Cardinal was an invitation to me to cross over a threshold into the shared grief and memories of those present who belonged to a form of the Christian tradition which was not my own. I was invited to share in the memories of those who had loved and respected Pope Benedict for his intellect, his rigour, his deep theological exploration of Jesus of Nazareth, his generous engagement with others, his prayer, and his long ministry and service of Roman Catholicism. For a moment during the service of evening prayer, with the Psalms sung in English rather than the traditional Latin, I was able to enter a space with other Christian brothers and sisters and see them differently.

The Service of Evening Prayer was beautiful. The Motet by Henry Purcell was sung by the choristers,

Now, now that the sun hath veil’d his light

And bid the world goodnight;

To the soft bed my body I dispose,

But where shall my soul repose?

Dear, dear God, even in thy arms,

Then to thy rest, O my soul!

And singing, praise the mercy

That prolongs thy days.

Hallelujah!

The sermon was given by the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Williams, apparently without notes. The generous ecumenical welcome enabled us all to participate and to worship profoundly. The music of hymns and responses sung by the choir was beautiful. The closing hymn was “Love Divine, All Loves Excelling” (written by Charles Wesley, Anglican priest and poet, and the cofounder of the Methodist movement with his brother John). Cardinal Vincent told me he had chosen this hymn because it was sung at the funeral of Pope Benedict and he had found himself following the Pope’s coffin as this was sung, moved to tears at the lines, “Changed from glory, into glory”.

You might still be asking why is she telling us this and where do those lines of Robert Burns fit into this reflection?

After the service concluded there was a reception to which all guests were invited, and Cardinal Vincent (again without notes) spoke of his greatest and deepest memories of Pope Benedict during his visit to the UK. At this moment he chose to remember Pope Benedict speaking and telling stories about Jesus with a group of children who listened intently and carefully. Cardinal Vincent chose not, at that moment, to remember a man described as God’s rottweiler, a theological conservative or traditionalist, author of 60 books, a reflective theologian Pope, but rather someone who kept a group of children enthralled and in doing so was fully present to them in that moment.

I continue to reflect on how we see ourselves and how others see us. We can delude ourselves about who we are, how we interact with others, how we behave, how we present ourselves. Others may misread us, not grasp the whole of ourselves and focus on a tiny part of who we are and what we do. We may, in our memories be partial and incomplete.

It is only in our relationship with God that we are fully known, attended to and seen in all our incompleteness and frailty, and in that relationship to be “changed from glory, into glory”, redeemed and transformed to be the person God created us to be. In Psalm 139 we celebrate that it was God who made us and that there is nothing in us which God does not see,

“Your eyes see all my days”.

Whatever our character, and whatever we are and do, at the last and at the end of our days we stand before our Maker and cast before God “our crowns”, lost in the wonder, the love and praise of God. We are all creatures of a Creator God who creates and re-creates us, and all the world.

Every blessing

Revd Helen Cameron

Moderator of the Free Churches Group

Free Churches Moderator meet with King Charles III at a reception for faith leader in Buckingham Palace

The Revd Canon Helen Cameron was pleased to represent the Free Churches at a reception for more than 30 faith leaders in Buckingham Palace on Friday the 16th of September 2022.

At the reception in the Bow Room of Buckingham Palace, King Charles lll said he believed, as sovereign, that his work includes "protecting the space for faith itself" and that he would carry out his responsibilities to serve all communities around this country and the Commonwealth, valuing different Christian traditions and expressions of faith.
He expressed how much their words of condolences meant to him after the death of his mother, Queen Elizabeth II.

Let's continue to pray for King Charles III, the Royal family, and the nation at this time of mourning.

Induction of the next Moderator of the Free Churches Group and Free Church President of Churches Together in England

The induction of the Rev’d Helen Cameron as the 61st Moderator of the Free Churches Group took place at 6.30 p.m. on April 3rd, 2022 at Wesley’s Chapel in London. The service was led by the Rev’d Steven Cooper, and the Revd Dr Hugh Osgood inducted Helen into her new role and invited her to sign the front page of the Bible all previous Moderators have signed. She was then given the badge of Office of the Moderator, was greeted by senior representative of many of the Free Churches and preached her first sermon as Moderator on a theme of “Being generous, truthful and faithful disciples”. The Choir of Wesley’s chapel sang “ King of the Ages” (Stuart Townend & Keith Getty).

The service was live streamed and since then the recording of the service has been viewed a further 600 times. If you have not yet viewed it you can find it here.

We were glad that so many people accepted an invitation to a reception beforehand, which gave an opportunity for many to greet and thank the Revd Dr Hugh Osgood for his phenomenal service for so many years as Moderator. The Revd James Breslin(Chair of the FCG Board) formally thanked Revd Dr Hugh in the service and handed over a gift to him.

We are grateful to Wesley’s Chapel for their hospitality, and to the Rev’d Canon Dr Jennifer Smith and the Rev’d Steven Cooper of Wesley’s Chapel for all their help as well as to Bishop Paul Rochester General Secretary of the Free Churches Group, Thandar Tun and Sabina Williams for everything they did to make it such a remarkable and inspiring service.

We were glad that Mr Paul Herbage MBE KStJ DL the Deputy Lieutenant of Greater London and Representative DL for the London Borough of Islington was able to join us at Wesley’s Chapel for the Reception and the Service of Induction.