disability,doctrine,equality,gender identity,good news,gospel,liturgy,lutheran,mental health,mission,neurodiversity,ordinands,parish share,safeguarding,safeguarding officer,same sex,same-sex relationships,save the parish,scripture,sexuality

MY NATIONAL ROLES
▪Church Commissioner, elected
by the House of Laity. We invest
the Church’s historic endowment
and set what it distributes each
year.
▪Board member, Church of
England Central Services. We
employ the national Church’s staff
and run the payroll that pays
clergy stipends.
▪Trustee, the Corporation of
Church House. We own and run
Church House, Westminster,
where Synod meets in February.
Robert Zampetti
Candidate for the House of Laity · Diocese of London
Churchwarden, St Paul’s Church, Covent Garden
Five years to change the conversation. ✔
Five more to make the actions follow.
Your first or high preference vote.
WHY I’M STANDING FOR RE-ELECTION
I stood five years ago because our parishes were being starved of the
resources they need. I arrived knowing very little about how the
national Church works. I know now, and I know what still needs doing.
WHAT THE LAST FIVE YEARS CHANGED
A decade ago, refusing to subsidise failure was the justifcation for using grant funding to replace
worn-out inherited parishes. Few would use that language now. I played a big part.
Talk has turned to what a parish is for. We needed reminding that a priest serves a place and
everyone in it, whether or not they come through the door. Calling comes before strategy, and the
growth is God’s to give.
The argument is no longer whether parishes matter. It is whether we still believe the parish is a
form God gave us to steward, or an inheritance we may squander.
I am on the steering committee of a review demanded by Synod on how national money reaches
parish ministry. My hard work behind the scenes, not in the chamber, helped bring this about. I
would like London’s vote behind me when Synod debates the work in July 2027.
WHERE I AM SERVING
At St Paul’s I am Churchwarden and Safeguarding
Officer. We welcome tourists, actors who know it as
their church, and neighbours with nowhere else to go.
Protecting these people from harm is not only a
national policy question, it is something we have to
get right in our own congregation.
WHERE I COME FROM
I am British and American. I graduated from Villanova,
as did Pope Leo, and a Fulbright scholarship took me
to France to teach. My working life was spent advising
large employers on how they treat their people,
latterly as a partner at Ernst & Young. I am now
retired. Baptised and confirmed a Lutheran, I spent
my early adulthood among independent evangelicals.
The Lutherans gave me the liturgy and the doctrine
that salvation is a gift. The evangelicals opened scripture to me, and with it the duty to hand the
Gospel on. So I am at home across our traditions, and wary of any argument in which one member
of the body says to another, “I have no need of you”.
I have lived and worked on three continents, and moving that often surfaced my need to belong.
Time and again it was a parish that took in the stranger and put him to work. What my husband
and I found at St Paul’s, Covent Garden led us to seek citizenship in our adopted country and make
London our home.

WHAT I’LL FIGHT FOR
Everyone, no exceptions
We are citizens with the saints, members of God’s household — every one of us (Eph 2:19). I am
committed to equality for everyone, at every level and in every role in the Church, regardless of
disability, economic power, ethnicity, sex, gender identity, learning disability, mental health,
neurodiversity or sexuality. Written down it is a list. In practice these are real people who, like all of
us, bear God’s image. Some of us have been told so but are still waiting to be shown.
I will not pretend to be neutral. I support the ordained ministry of women at every level, bishops
included, and I affirm people in same-sex relationships. I will work with those who see it otherwise,
because the Church is not a coalition of the like-minded and never has been.
If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is
honoured, all rejoice together with it.
1 Corinthians 12:26 · NRSV
Thriving parishes, no more excuses
I stand with Save the Parish and commit to all six of its aims for the next Synod:
PARISH
▪Fund the priests our
parishes need
▪Spend parish share on
parish ministry
PRIEST
▪Establish a charter of care
for clergy
▪Train ordinands properly,
not cheaply
PEOPLE
▪Adopt a charter for church
volunteers
▪Make closure harder than
survival
WHERE DOES THE BUCK STOP?
Ask who decided something in the Church of
England and you will be sent round the
houses. Bishops say it too, that what lands on
them was settled elsewhere. Parish priests
and churchwardens feel it most. Ask anyone,
and the finger points away from whoever is
answering. A Church that cannot say who
decided is a Church people stop trusting, and
trust is the ground mission grows in.
I served on the Revision Committee that
redesigned the national Church institutions,
so that Synod could scrutinise them properly
rather than take note of decisions already
taken by the very people it is meant to be
scrutinising. With others I restored a duty the
new Measure had left out, that the
endowment goes first to the cure of souls in
the parishes needing help most. I argued for it
to go further. The Ecclesiastical Committee of
Parliament has now said the same and sent
the Measure back. That is our chance, and I
am ready to help write the better one.
MY VISION OF OUR FUTURE
I am not standing on a platform of decline.
There is a Church ahead of us I would love to
see. A priest known by name to her community.
Clergy who are energised, and lay people who
are appreciated. A font in use, and a door open
on a weekday afternoon. Congregations
confident enough to share the good news. The
young learning the faith from those who have
kept it.
We already hold what is needed. What we lack
is the resolve to act as if we do.
Thank you for reading. Do get in touch, whatever your view. I would be honoured to have your
first or high preference vote.
Robert Zampetti
[email protected]