01 Feb CMS UK Appoints New CEO
Church Mission Society appoints strategy specialist as new chief executive officer
Alastair Bateman, 44, has been appointed chief executive officer of Church Mission Society. He will succeed Philip Mounstephen, who was installed as Bishop of Truro in 2019.
The first layperson to lead CMS this century, Alastair is currently chief operating officer of Resurgo Trust, where he has been responsible for developing the Christian social transformation organisation’s sustainable growth strategy. Before that, he worked with Tearfund in high-level marketing, fundraising and change management roles.
Alastair shifted to the charity sector after more than a decade of strategic consulting in the commercial world with companies such as GlaxoSmithKline, Vodafone and Wyeth Pharmaceuticals. Commenting on this shift, he said: “I had known for quite a while that I was being drawn into more vocational work. It’s been a privilege to work in contexts where prayer and worship are integrated with organisational life.”
The move to CMS follows a time of introspection and prayer, during which Alastair increasingly felt that he was being called to lead a global Christian mission organisation. “Towards the end of this, I heard about the CMS role, which seemed like the perfect fit,” he said. Alastair explained: “I’ve known of CMS for a long time, both through the work of individual mission partners and through the significant part CMS as a whole has played in the history of the last two centuries.”
CMS chair of trustees Charles Clayton said of Alastair’s appointment: “Alastair’s experience in the business sector and international Christian organisations, his leadership and strategic development abilities and his passion for mission will all be key to CMS at this time – as the world of mission is changing and we must keep a clear focus for the future.”
“Mission is as urgent and as relevant as it has always been,” Alastair said. “The needs of the world are enormous, expressed in broken relationships everywhere. The issues are too great to solve without God, which is why prayer is central. I value building relationships for life and look forward to doing this more at CMS.”
Alastair will take up his new role at CMS at the beginning of May 2019. He and his wife Justine and their two children, Poppy (11) and Joel (9) live in Teddington and are part of St Michael’s Fulwell, a relatively new church plant, where he co-leads a ministry training home group and sings with the worship team. He studied economics and politics at Brunel University, theology at St Mellitus and he holds an MSc in management with strategic information systems from the University of Bath.