General Synod Election Candidates 2026

ELECTION ADDRESS for GENERAL SYNOD 2026-2031 - HOUSE OF CLERGY - DIOCESE OF GLOUCESTER

What I would work for

Evangelism & Church Growth
Everyone should have the chance to
hear the good news of Jesus. I would
ask of every national decision a simple
question: does this help a local church
share the Gospel?

Local Parish Ministry & Chaplaincy

I grew up within the variety of the
Church of England, both urban and
suburban. I now serve 8 rural

parishes. Too much national thinking is
shaped around the larger, the urban
and the central structures. I would
seek to represent across the range of
ministry contexts to ensure our voice is
heard.

Vocations & Training

We need to call and form the next
generation of clergy and lay leaders,
and to train them for confident,
outward-facing ministry. This requires
encouraged and healthy clergy to
inspire and encourage others.

A Safe & Trustworthy Church
Safeguarding matters enormously - the
vulnerable need real protection, not
more paperwork. I want a
safeguarding culture built on
relationship and genuine assurance, so
that our practices protect people
rather than institutions. The church
must rebuild trust and that starts with
us all working together.

Revd Charlie Styles

Priest-in-Charge of Northleach with Hampnett and Farmington,
Cold Aston with Notgrove and Turkdean and Compton Abdale with Haselton

Why I’m standing
Dear colleagues,

I want everyone to have the chance to hear how
much God loves them, whether they come to church
or not. To do this we need strong local churches with
confidence to reach out joyfully. That is my reason for
standing, and it is the test I would apply to the
business that comes before Synod.

I serve eight churches in the North Cotswolds. Like
many of you, I know what it is to hold together small
congregations, ancient buildings and a short list of
willing volunteers, and to find real joy in it. But I also
know how remote national decisions can feel from
Collective Worship in a local primary school or the
pastoral conversation after the Eucharist. If elected,
my first commitment is that the ordinary realities of
parish ministry in this diocese are heard in the
chamber.

I love the Church of England - and I have real hope
that things can be better, together. I believe the
whole of the Church of England is genuinely greater
than the sum of her parts: that when parish, diocese
and national church are rightly ordered around one
shared calling, we become something none of us
could be alone. That's the case I want to make to you
— not a complaint about where we are, but a hopeful,
practical vision for where we could go.

I believe that local matters, and that the parish is the
essential unit of the Church of England, because it's
where the gospel meets ordinary life - where people
who would never darken the door of a church
encounter someone who will baptise their baby, bury
their mother, and sit with them in hospital. The parish
meets people exactly where they are. I want to see
that conviction restored to the very centre of how we
think, fund and organise ourselves — not as one
priority among many, but as the thing everything else
exists to serve.

That's also why chaplaincy matters so much to me.
I've seen how many people — young people especially
— are hungry to ask honest questions about faith,
doubt, suffering and meaning, if only someone will
meet them where they already are: in a school, a
hospital, a workplace. Chaplaincy, Schools ministry
and outreach are not add-ons to parish ministry;
they're the same calling reaching further out. I want
Synod to treasure both.

If that vision speaks to your own hope for the
Church, I'd be enormously grateful for your vote.

“Proclaim afresh in each
generation the faith
uniquely revealed in the

Holy Scriptures...”
The Declaration of Assent

More about me

• Served parishes in Slough and South

Buckinghamshire, and as Rector of
Lutterworth in Leicestershire and have
seen significant growth, especially
amongst younger people.

« Led a globally-active Christian charity as
its chief executive and held leadership
roles across the charitable and public
sectors.

« Helped establish two foodbanks and been
actively involved in three church plants,
including one ecumenical project with
other denominations.

« Served as Trustee of LWPT (a Methodist
charity supporting lay preachers,
publisher of Preach Magazine), and an
organiser of the Pastoral Refreshment
Conference (an interdenominational
retreat supporting those in pastoral
ministry and their spouses).

• Alongside parish ministry, I continue to

serve as an itinerant evangelist and have
recently joined the diocesan vocations
team as an Assistant DDO.

How I will serve you

Alongside parish ministry I have spent much of my
working life in governance: leading a national
charity, serving on boards, and chairing a multi-
academy trust through a period of significant
political and structural change. That work taught
me to read the papers properly, to ask the
unglamorous questions about money,
accountability and who carries the cost of a
decision, and to keep a body of people with
different convictions working together.

I would attend, prepare and stay to the end of the
debates. I would report back plainly after each
group of sessions, in writing and in person at
deanery chapters, so you know what was decided
and why. Before contested votes I would ask what
colleagues across the diocese think, and I would
explain honestly if I felt that I had to vote against
the grain.

My faith began in the evangelical church, was
enriched by catholic worship and I now serve in
parishes of diverse traditions. The clergy of this
diocese are a genuine mixture of traditions, and I
will work with anyone who wants to see the Church
of England confident in the gospel, honest about its
problems and generous with those who see things
differently.

Much of the coming five years will be spent on hard
questions where we will not all agree. I hope to take
part in those debates in a way that colleagues who
disagree with me would still recognise as fair, and
that leaves the Church more able to work together
afterwards.

Please get in touch

I would welcome a conversation
before you vote, whether or not
you decide to support me. Please
get in touch.

[email protected]
07725 264991

accountability,baptise,catholic,chaplaincy,church growth,church plants,ecumenical,eucharist,evangelical,evangelism,good news,gospel,methodist,next generation,outreach,safeguarding,safeguarding culture,vocations,young people