Helen was blessed by the small church where she trained as sole minister-in-training, and then went on to serve as minister for a further 4 years. Amongst those people she learned about church leadership, and also about the vital role of the church in the wider community.  She quickly realised that working outside the walls of church was where she found life, and although she enjoyed the traditional aspects of church, her proudest achievement was in leading the church to successfully implement a number of projects which directly served the community rather than the church!

Helen spent a further 5 years as a pioneer community minister in Bicester, where she served a unique self-build housing development, building kingdom values into the foundations of the community.  As a part of the ministry, Helen and her husband built a house to live in! Pioneering amongst a diverse and very secular community is where she feels most authentically called by God, and where she most often feels she encounters Jesus. ‘Big picture thinking’ and ‘getting things started’ seems to be what she has done most successfully in ministry.

Helen enjoys walking with other Christians who don’t fit into traditional roles, mentoring and supporting a number of women in and outside of ministry.  She is a proud mum to 5 grown-up children and step-children, and enjoys spending time out with friends and family.  She also enjoys writing – particularly poetry, and reading – both novels and theology!  She paints badly but with joy and is passionate about her garden. Together with her very patient husband Helen is slowly renovating a Victorian farmhouse.  In between she loves to be on the beautiful Northumbrian coast walking her dog.