New chair of trustees appointed
Rev Jeremy Moodey, former CEO of Embrace the Middle East, will be the next CMS chair
We are delighted to announce that Rev Jeremy Moodey has been appointed to succeed Charles Clayton as chair of trustees from April 2025.
Following a prayerful and extensive search and interview process, the CMS board of trustees has unanimously chosen Rev Jeremy Moodey to be the next chair.
Jeremy is an ordained minister in the Church of England and brings extensive experience as a Christian charity CEO.
He also spent 10 years in the UK Diplomatic Service, serving in Pakistan and Italy, and 15 years as a City investment banker.
He has been appointed as a co-opted trustee and will take over as chair when Charles Clayton steps down from 1 April 2025.
Jeremy says: “I first came across CMS back in the 1980s, while working in Pakistan, meeting amazing people like Dr Ruth Coggan (daughter of Archbishop Donald Coggan), who ministered at the Pennell Memorial Hospital in Bannu, in what was then the North-West Frontier Province. The pastor in the church in Islamabad where I worshipped was also a CMS mission partner.
“The witness even then was very much ‘at the edges’, so I am delighted to be re-engaging with CMS so many years later as a trustee, and in due course as chair of trustees.”
Jeremy moved from the City into the Christian charity sector in 2009, serving first as CEO of BibleLands, a Christian development charity focused on the Middle East and established in 1854. He led its successful rebranding as Embrace the Middle East in 2012 and had the opportunity of working with some of CMS’s partners in the region.
In 2017 Jeremy moved to become CEO of Sons & Friends of the Clergy, an Anglican clergy benevolent charity founded in 1655. This too he led through a successful and award-winning rebranding, as the charity became Clergy Support Trust in 2019.
In 2021, after retiring from full-time work, Jeremy was ordained into the Church of England. He currently serves as a self-supporting and part-time assistant minister at St Mary’s Church in Chesham in the Diocese of Oxford.
He also sits on the General Synod of the Church of England, and as trustee-treasurer of Trinity College Bristol, an Anglican theological training college.
Alastair Bateman, CEO of Church Mission Society, said: “I and the rest of the leadership team are very grateful to God for providing a new highly-skilled chair for CMS and for how good the whole process has been.
“We are also extremely grateful to Charles Clayton for serving so well in this role for nearly a decade.”
