A newly ordained Bermudian minister will provide spiritual leadership to worshippers in two churches separated by the Atlantic Ocean.

The Reverend Cindy Campbell will minister to Christ Church, Warwick, as well as St Andrew’s Church in Newcastle, England.

She was ordained on Sunday at the Scots International Church Rotterdam.

Ms Campbell, 63, said the ministerial training team was flexible and creative because there was only one Church of Scotland congregation in Bermuda.

She added: “I ended up working with Anglican ministers because that's the primary church in Bermuda.”

Ms Campbell, who is married with two children and one grandchild, completed the training while also working a 70-hour-a-week job in mergers and acquisitions for an insurance company.

She was unable to commit to the typical time requirements but found “so much support” from the church to accommodate her.

Ms Campbell initially thought about ministry after being asked while she attended the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland.

She said: “It's been a journey. When I first started, I didn't go for Ordained Local Minister because I didn't think I could meet the requirements as they were set out. But I found the training team was really flexible.

“The church is looking for new ministers. Sometimes we just need to talk to people and say, ‘Have you considered this?’.

“When you read the training guidelines, they sound very strict and precise. But what I've found is that people are more interested in accomplishing what the guidelines are trying to accomplish, rather than strictly the mechanics laid out in the guidelines.”

Ms Campbell hopes her corporate background will help her in her new role.

She added: “The church is now looking at how to become a church for the 21st century.

“The 1950s model of church doesn't work any more and so we're going through a lot of mergers and acquisitions.

“Presbyteries are combining. That's something I did all the time.

“How do you get groups of people who didn't use to work together to work together?

“We're doing it in the [Church of Scotland’s] International Presbytery as well, because we're merging how people work across different countries.”