Reflecting on a weekend of Pride, Hope & Celebrating God at Work

This weekend was Pride in London and there were a Christians at Pride group marching again, just as there have been for a number of years now. Except this year it was different, very different.

This weekend the Church of England synod in York and as has become a regular happening LGBT+ issues were discussed. Except this time it was different, very different.

This weekend I preached at the church which has been home over the last couple of years, just as I have in other churches. I was faced with the dilemma of whether to mention anything about LGBT+ witness and mission in my sermon, just as I have on a couple of other occasions as a local preacher. Except this time it was different, very different.

So what were these differences and what do they have to tell us about what is going on in the churches and the Christian LGBT+ world?

The Christians at Pride Group was bigger than in the past, much bigger. This year it was made up of about 250 people and was the third biggest group after Barclays (the main sponsor) and Stonewall. It was also a much more mixed group culturally, with a far higher number of BAME people involved, (despite what this picture seems to show). It was not just “the usual faces”, many of them were watching in the crowd – being among those who stood next to the “angry Christians” turning their yellow negative placards into a rainbow proclaiming love. There were also some at the church where the annual Pride Service was being held offering hospitality through a tea party in the garden.

The Church of England synod was different because whilst there was the “official discussion” on what to do about LGBT+ issues with the usual prevarication and kicking into the long grass there were compassionate and important motions passed. These were motions bought by synod members and diocese which committed the Church of England to condemn conversion therapy and look to develop an official recognised liturgy for people who wanted to mark their transition and reaffirm their new/ true identity.

The church I was preaching in is a URC/ Methodist church which has in the past year signed up to Inclusive Church and become a recognised One Body One Faith Church. It set up a stall outside the church, which is on the Birmingham Pride route, and gave out water and sweets to those in the Birmingham Pride parade this year. It was also one of the co-ordinating groups involved in getting Christians at Pride in Birmingham off the ground this year. Preaching there I didn’t have the dilemma of whether to mention LGBT+ issues I knew I could do so, encouraging the church in the way in which God had been working in there. I could talk about the impact that their actions have; how they help the LGBT+ community and the way God is obviously working through them. I could talk about the way in which I know that church has not changed their thinking (it all went through Church meeting very quickly and without much debate) and they probably don’t think they’ve done anything much but actually what they’ve done is really important.

The passage I was preaching on yesterday was Matthew 11: 16 -30 (note without the gap which the lectionary suggests) and this talks about some recognising God’s signs and wonders whilst others rejected them. To recognise what God was doing in the world then you had to recognise experience. I think the same is true now…..we need to look at experience as well as using scripture, tradition and reason.

Experience is what is telling me something is happening, God is at work through ordinary people in the church who may or may not belong to the LGBT+ community. Experience is telling me that divisions in the church between different groups are being broken down. Is telling me, through conversations I’ve been having with people and coverage of Christians at Pride in publications like Pink News, that the perception the wider LGBT+ community has of Christians and the gospel message is beginning to change.

Yet, I know all this doesn’t happen without hard work. I know that there are those who have been patiently working towards where we are now for many decades. So I want to thank them for their hard work and faithful witness over the years.

I also know that there is still much to be done if LGBT+ people are to be fully accepted, acknowledged and included in the church. There is still much to be done if our relationships are to be treated on an equal basis. I know that the more the church embraces the LGBT+ community the more vicious some opponents will become, as they realise they have lost the argument (I remember the late Pauline Webb explaining this was the case with the campaign for women’s ordination in the Methodist Church).  

Yet as I have shown God is at work and I have more hope than I have ever had.