General Synod Election Candidates 2026

Election Address 2026 – Revd Jude Padfield

I am standing for General Synod because I love the Church of England and want to see our Communion and our
Churches flourishing together. I will contend for these things. I believe the Church of England has a great role to
play in God’s future, for our nation and the world, and I want to serve our Synod to help realise that potential.
We can be diverse, compassionate, Godly and great, all at the same time, and I will seek the collective wisdom
and action required to help navigate the narrow path to a more unified future.
Indeed, because of our peculiar history and national identity as the Church of England, we have been forced to
wrestle with the challenge of unity amidst diversity; and I believe this is a prophetic reality that we are called to
model and share with the world around us. Indeed, unity amidst diversity it is of great theological importance
and given significant priority in Jesus’ prayer for oneness in the Church in John 17. It should be a source of joy
and confidence, pursued with earnestness, and I hope we can recapture that together in our regional and
national Church.
I believe we are in a missionary context, with tremendous opportunities to share the Good News of Jesus. I
want to see the Church equipped to share our faith with friends, family and in the public square. I am
particularly motivated to help our Churches hand on the baton of faith to those coming after us. Investing in
children and young people has an urgency which I want to support. Resourcing the Next Generation is the
tagline of one of the Churches I help to lead, it’s something I have invested a large part of my ordained ministry
prayerfully pursuing, and something I want to contend for more broadly.
Equally, I want to see every Church given the chance to re-imagine itself for the 21st century and beyond. There
is much inherited good that we should cherish and hold onto, and there is much we need to adapt and find new
expressions for. I will be supportive of Churches across our breadth of tradition, and especially where there is a
desire to adapt to our changing missional landscape. Helping Churches collaborate, learn from each other,
embrace missional change, and become more able to share their faith and impact their community is vital for
our cultural moment, and vital to preserve our important diversity. I am also an advocate of facilitating Church
Revitalisations across our diocese where PCCs decide they need help to make a step change in mission and
ministry. As with St Mary’s Wavertree, one of the Churches I help to lead, the process of Revitalisation needs to
be highly relational, collaborative and shaped by and for the people involved. I will be encouraging the wider
Church to prayerfully imagine a flourishing future and take the steps towards that in faith together.
Prayer is at the centre of our faith and the centre of our Church expressions. I want to advocate for more
collective prayer across our diocese. We will only realise our dreams of unity, mission and creative Church
renewal if we contend together in prayer. I will endeavour to ensure that planning and decision-making is
birthed out of and wrapped in corporate prayer, and that we find new ways to pray together more regularly.
Healthy, collaborative and missional leadership is vital for our Church. As a published author on Christian
leadership (Hopeful Influence, SCM Press) I want to see lay and ordained leaders supported and equipped to
fulfil the ministries to which they are called. I think we should be dialoguing together on how we support and
develop our leadership, and this would include investment in clergy housing, peer to peer reflection,
safeguarding, and improving frameworks for chapter and shared learning.
I am currently Vicar of St James in the City, one of our diocesan resource Churches, and priest-in-charge at St
Mary’s Wavertree, our first revitalisation. I have always been part of Churches where people are regularly
coming to faith and growing in faith and have a rich and fruitful experience of Church planting in different
contexts. I hope to share something of that learning and spiritual optimism through Synod. I have led a
successful SDF (Strategic Development Fund) project in our diocese focused on the Missing Generations of 11-
30 year olds.
I am on the Membership Board of All Saints MAT (multi-academy trust). I served on the Grove Leadership
Editorial Board overseeing a variety of publications. I spent a year with Pioneers working with the local Church
in central Nigeria. I have two degrees in Theology, a degree in Physics and a masters in Maths. I worked for 7
years as a consultant for a FTSE 100 company based in the city of London before becoming ordained. In my

twenties I served as a Special Constable in our city and ran a football team in the Merseyside Christian league. I
have two adopted children and a wonderful wife Hannah – whose gifts, love and support I value enormously –
who works for the diocese as Anglican Chaplain to Liverpool University and John Moores University. I still play
football, run marathons, cycle as much as possible and thoroughly enjoy family holidays, despite my teenage
kids showing increasing reluctance for them. I’m not a big fan of committees but am happy to serve if elected. I
am very conscious of my weaknesses and failures and came to faith in my early twenties off the back of some
quite broken personal circumstances. I love the Lord Jesus Christ and if unity, mission, creative renewal, prayer
and leadership are important to you, then I would value your vote.

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