Revd. Elizabeth Welch - Moderator

The Revd Elizabeth Welch is a third generation minister. Her father, Clifford Welch, served in the South Pacific before he returned to England and married Nancy. He then moved to Sale, where Elizabeth was born, to work as Regional Secretary for the London Missionary Society for the North West. Subsequently, Clifford was called to the Central Congregational Church in Johannesburg in South Africa where Elizabeth and her brother Lawrence grew up. The experience under apartheid was of crucial importance for Elizabeth's thinking about the nature of the church and its involvement in the world.

Elizabeth finished High School in South Africa and returned to England to work as a trainee computer programmer before training for ministry at New College, London. She spent a further year at Eden Seminary, St Louis, USA on a World Council of Churches scholarship before returning to the UK to her first pastorate. In-service training has included completing training in counselling through the Westminster Pastoral Foundation, an MTh in Ecclesiology at King's College, London and an annual eight day silent retreat in Ignatian spirituality.

Elizabeth's commitment to ecumenism, nurtured in the hotbed of separation in South Africa, has remained at the forefront of her ministry. 

Elizabeth was ordained in 1976 to St Barnabas United Church and Christian Centre, Langney, Eastbourne. This was a three denominational Local Ecumenical Partnership involving Baptists, Methodists and the United Reformed Church. It was started on a new housing estate with premises designed for community use as well as worship.

In 1983 she was called to serve at Christ the Cornerstone, part of the growing ecumenical scene in Milton Keynes. Initially, the church met in rooms at the public library and Elizabeth worked in an ecumenical team with particular responsibility for the development of the congregation. The ministerial team led the church through the difficult period of raising money, building and establishing a new church. The new City Church is a five denominational partnership, involving Baptists, Anglicans, Methodists, Roman Catholics and the United Reformed Church, in which Anglicans and Free Churches worship together each Sunday.

In 1996, Elizabeth became Moderator of the West Midlands Synod. In contrast to serving as a minister in new and growing churches, she has been faced with questions about decline and the vision that we need for renewal. A pressing concern has been the issue of deployment and the way ministers are shared fairly around the churches. Her ecumenical commitment has been continuing in her work with the thirty Local Ecumenical Partnerships and the nine regional sponsoring bodies across the Synod.

Alongside local and regional ministry, Elizabeth has served nationally and internationally. She has been on the national Ministries and Ecumenical Committees and the panel for Assessment Conferences. Following the Human Sexuality Debate at General Assembly in 1997 she took on the demanding task of Convener of the Core Group.

After the formation of the new UK ecumenical instruments in 1990, she became a United Reformed Church representative to the Forum of Churches Together in England and to the Assembly of the Council of Churches in Britain and Ireland. She served twice on the Assembly Planning Committee. In 1998 she became part of the Trilateral Informal Talks with the Anglicans and the Methodists and also became a Governor of Queen's College, Birmingham.

In 1991 she was one of the United Reformed Church representatives to the 7th Assembly of the World Council of Churches and was elected to serve on the WCC Central Committee. During this time she served on several WCC committees, including the committee planning the 8th Assembly in December 1998 in Harare.

Elizabeth is co-author with Flora Winfield of Travelling together: a handbook on local ecumenical partnerships and has been invited to speak internationally on local ecumenism in Canada, Germany, South Africa and Australia. She has also written various articles on ecumenism and on management.

Elizabeth is married to Peter Skerratt, who she met when he was a non-ministerial theology student at New College. They married in November 1976 and celebrated their 25th anniversary during Elizabeth's year as Moderator of General Assembly. Peter currently works in the House of Commons as the Head of Information Systems Services in the Department of Finance and Administration.

Elizabeth's interests include dabbling in languages (she can preach in German, is currently learning French and Italian, and has journeyed through Afrikaans, Latin, New Testament Greek and a tiny part of Hebrew), travel, reading detective novels, movies, theatre (especially now based close to Stratford-upon-Avon) and swimming. On a recent sabbatical on Ecclesiology and Worship she also developed practical experience of world cooking.