General Synod Election Candidates 2026

General Synod Election Address from Charles Read
Associate Priest at St. Catherine, Mile Cross, Co-ordinator of LLM training and Eastern Region
Ministry Course (ERMC) core staff member

Dear colleagues,

I’d like to give you some information about me
and what I think and also why I think I would
represent you well on General Synod over the
next five years.

The Importance of Parish Ministry

It is time to value parish ministry and support it
properly. We have had over a decade of national
church resources being directed to mission
initiatives other than parishes with the result that
parish ministers have been made to feel
marginalised and parish ministry underfunded.
We have not embodies all the marks of mission
and only valued certain of ways of being church.
Fresh expressions of church and church planting
are essential, but need to flow from the work of
our parishes and chaplaincies. There are lots of
good examples of this in this diocese. I'm very
keen to share this at national level so everyone
can learn from our experience. Meanwhile, we
need to release national resources so that
parishes can be supported better.

This includes looking at how we can reduce the
burden of administration which parish clergy and
wardens have to contend with. General Synod
has already begun to do this but there is more
that we could do.

I value chaplaincy ministry and I think that we
should promote this more than we do. Ministry
where people work as well as in places like
colleges, prisons and hospitals is an important
expression of the incarnation - we go where
people are whether that is our local community or
the workplace.

Safeguarding

I am the safeguarding lead for ERMC and in this
capacity I have tried to listen to survivors of
abuse. I am acutely aware of the failings in the
Church of England in this regard even though
things have improved dramatically in the last 20
years. Safeguarding at local and diocesan level is
generally very good but at the national level there
is much more still to do, especially concerning
learning from past mistakes which we do not
seem very good at doing. I would support some
measure of independent safeguarding oversight
and I would support Synod in holding senior
leaders to account over safeguarding.

Same Sex Partnerships

In 2023, along with six friends, I co-founded the
group Inclusive Evangelicals to give a space for
evangelicals to express support for same sex
marriage. The church where I worship, St.
Catherine's Mile Cross, has become a welcoming
spiritual home for a number of gay people, many
of whom are in long term partnerships. Our
congregation has grown in numbers as a result of
us taking a clearly supportive stance with regard
to same sex partnerships.

I fully support the introduction of the Prayers of
Love and Faith and would vote in favour of
allowing Church of England clergy to conduct
same-sex marriages if they wished to do so, while
leaving clergy free not to do so if that is their
conviction- much as we do at the moment with
the remarriage of divorced people. This is,
however, not the full story because there are a
whole range of ways in which gay people have
been marginalised and made to feel unwelcome
in the Church of England and we have more work
to do, above and beyond same sex marriages, to
turn this around. I want what we have found at St.
Catherine’s to be true for all Church of England
congregations: namely that gay people as well as
straight people find themselves accepted and
welcomed for who they are and helped to grow in
discipleship as they follow Jesus more closely.

Women in Ministry

I have been a life long campaigner for the
ordination of women and voted in favour of the
women bishops legislation when I last served on
General Synod. However, the issues go much
wider than matters of ordination. I hear many
instances of women clergy facing discrimination
and being on the receiving end of poor behaviour.
People with reservations about the ordination of
women generally would not be happy with this
situation either. We need to revisit the way in
which the settlement around the ordination of
women as bishops is working out to see where it
needs some adjustment. We need to make the
Church of England a safer place in which women
can minister. I teach a good number of women
ordinands and many of them are concerned about
whether they will face difficulties in ministry on
account of their gender.

The Church and Public Life

The Church of England is well placed to speak
into the life of our nation but has sometimes been

rather slow to do so. We need to take the lead in
addressing such issues as the rise of right-wing
populism and the Christian nationalism that is
currently aligned with it as well as addressing the
issues which lead to people feeling unheard. As a
Christian Church, we have a great many
resources to draw on here. The doctrines of
creation and incarnation lead us to a valuing of
every individual as well as valuing of the life of
local communities. Our local churches and
chaplaincies are very good at being places of
welcome and at being instrumental in building
community. The national church should do more
to support and resource this as well as speaking
into key debates at national level - for example to
explain why a Christian approach to immigration
leads us to be welcoming of those who are fleeing
violence and persecution.

Vocations and Training

We currently have a crisis in terms of numbers
coming forward for ordination. There is no plan
nationally to address this. This situation means
there is also a crisis in training since we have far
more college places than we can fill and the
residential colleges are in a very fragile position.
There is no plan nationally to rationalise
theological training which means that market
forces will lead to some training institutions
closing. We need to have a clearer plan both to
increase vocations to ordained ministry and to
provide training institutions which deliver the
training which we need as a church for our new
clergy. Clearly this is one of my key interests and
I am committed to preserving the best of our
current
training
provision,
whether
that
is
residential colleges or regional courses.

And this is me….

I represented the clergy of this diocese on
General Synod between 2010 and 2021 which
was a great privilege. Prior to this I had served
two shorter periods on Synod representing
Manchester and then Northern Universities. I am
an experienced person who can hit the ground
running on day one of the new Synod since I
understand quite a bit about how it works and
how to make it work. I still have vision and energy
to come back and serve you again in this
capacity.

On previous Synods I’ve played a full part,
including serving on a Steering Committee (where
the real work often gets done!). I nearly always
asked my quota of two questions in the Question
Time as this is the chief way of scrutinizing how
the Church of England is run.

I’ve given a brief biography of myself at the end of
this address. I have a lot of experience in parish
ministry across different sorts of churches and
places. I take a regular part in preaching and
leading worship and in other aspects of parish
ministry such as weddings and funerals. I think
it’s vital for those of us who train new ministers to
do this, but I also do it because I enjoy it and it is
what God called me to in the first place. I also do
quite a lot of Sunday cover and other events
around the diocese so I think I have quite a good
view of what is happening in the parishes and
chaplaincies all around our diocese. I understand
the concerns of parish clergy as well as chaplains
and sector ministers and can represent you all
well. I see my work in ministry training as being
as expression of Eph. 4:11-12 – equipping God’s
people for the work of ministry. In addition, I have
trained (and worked in parishes with) self-
supporting ministers and I reckon to understand
their concerns too – not least the concern I often
hear that they are not valued. I’d aim to speak up
for all our clergy in General Synod, stipendiary
and non-stipendiary, parish based and workplace
based and also those involved in various forms of
Fresh Expression of Church and pioneering.

I hope you will feel able to vote for me, and to
give me your first preference vote. You can
contact me to discuss any of this by emailing me:
[email protected]

Yours in Christ,

Charles Who?
Born in Birmingham in 1960; grew up in a village near
Lichfield; came to faith in Christ through youth group in
local church; read Theology at Manchester University;
felt call to ordination; became a Reader; taught RE in
secondary school in east Manchester; trained for
ordination at St. John’s Nottingham; curate in Oldham
(town centre team ministry) then minister in charge of
daughter church in Urmston, south Manchester; spent
a year looking after two rural parishes; helped set up
Team Ministry in inner city Salford; appointed to staff
of Cranmer Hall Durham; involved in St Nicholas
Church and later St John’s Neville’s Cross; made
redundant; did some supply teaching; came to Norwich
diocese (2007) as Vice-Principal of Norwich Ministry
Course and joined St Catherine’s Mile Cross. In 2013 I
was reorganised into being responsible for Reader
training and working with ERMC. Stayed at Mile Cross!
Charles
Read

Proposed
by
Liz
Jump,
Rector
of
Wroxham
and
James
Stewart,
Rector of Thorpe St.
Andrew

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