Leadership Team

Neil Summerton is Chairman of Partnership. He has been a Council member of Partnership and its predecessor since 1980. He has been involved in local church leadership virtually all his adult life, first at Cholmeley Evangelical Church in Highgate London, from 1991-2001 in planting a church in Crouch End London, and now at King Street Chapel, Tiverton. He is a Council member of the Evangelical Alliance and has been a council member of a number of other national para-church bodies.

Professionally, he was a civil servant for many years and afterwards directed two environmental research institutes at Oxford between 1997 and 2002. He is an Emeritus Fellow of Mansfield College Oxford. He was appointed Companion of the Bath in 1997 for his services to the Department of the Environment.

He is available to address churches, church leaderships and other groups about the work of Partnership. He is also available to speak and teach at churches, Bible schools, etc, including on church leadership, strategy and development, church history, and public policy ethics. He can also advise on matters relating to trusts and church constitutions.

Keith Barnard     works full-time with Partnership. He was appointed National Director in June 2005, having been Assistant Director since March 2002. One of his key tasks is to raise Partnership's profile in local churches and more widely. He administers PLUS - the Partnership Link-Up Service and the N.Able interns scheme with Counties and GLO. He produces a monthly emailing for Partnership members and edits the semi-annual Newslink , a newsletter for members of Partnership churches.

He has been in full-time Christian service for over twenty years, after nine years teaching Spanish and French. He trained at London Bible College from 1980-82, and still marks New Testament Greek papers on their distance-learning courses. After eight years at what is now Medway Christian Fellowship, Huntingdon, he moved to Queen Edith Chapel, Cambridge, in 1990. He is married to Gill, who is active in supply teaching and children's outreach work, and they have four children

Keith is available to visit churches, to speak or to advise about appointing staff, to encourage Christian workers and to help churches develop new ways and activities which express their principles but are relevant to today's culture.

Derek Burnside     is chairman of Partnership's Executive Group, which is responsible for implementing strategy and policy on behalf of the Partnership Council and for supervising day-to-day administration.

He is on the Staff and Leadership Teams at Belmont Chapel in Exeter, where his responsibilities include the teaching programme and oversight of the small group network. In addition to his work with Belmont and Partnership he is a trustee of the Keswick Convention, a guest lecturer with Torchbearer European Bible Schools and a member of Evangelical Alliance Council.  He is married to Penny, a primary school headteacher.

Alistair Purss was born and brought up in Irvine on the West Coast of Scotland. He has been a Council member of Partnership since 1996 and serves in the following areas: planning and organising Conferences/Consultations; Purpose/Vision; Developing Leaders and Networking/Strategic Alliances with other Christian organisations.

In 1986-87 he spent a year of training for Christian service at Tilsley College Motherwell and from 1988 to 1991 he spent a further three years of theological training at what is now the International Christian College, Glasgow. After four years at Brigadier Free Church, Enfield, he was pastor of Sawyers Church in Brentwood from1995 - 2005. He is now Senior Pastor of Bethany Church, Houghton-le-Spring, Durham. He is married to Sharon and they have three boys.