On Tuesday evening, a stalwart bunch of people braved the inclement weather and the vagaries of strike-prone public transport, to hold a prayer vigil outside St. Paul’s church in Covent Garden, also known as the Actors’ church.

Why should we do such a thing, you might be asking yourself?  This week, the House of Bishops met for 3 days to discuss and debate a way forward following the ‘Living in Love and Faith’ consultation, which some of you engaged in earlier in the year. Currently, marriages or even blessings between same-sex couples are not allowed in the Church of England.  Clergy with a same- sex partner must affirm that their relationship is celibate, or they risk losing their licence; they can have a civil partnership but are not able to affirm their love and commitment to one another before God. That strikes me as cockeyed in the extreme: God surely wants us to flourish and for many people they do so in the context of a loving and stable relationship.

There are an increasing number of us - both clergy and lay alike – who believe that this not only diminishes the value of loving and stable same-sex relationships, but actively does harm to those who are LGBTQ.  Gay people are not welcome in many churches the length and breadth of our country; some have even taken their own life because of what they have been told by the Church or how they have been made to feel.

Thankfully at St. Barnabas, we extend a warm welcome to everyone, and we are currently exploring becoming members of Inclusive Church.  This will allow us to use their logo on our website, so any newcomer will feel confident they’ll be met with love and hospitality under our roof. In a nutshell, we believe that we are all made in the image of God, that our sexual identity is a fundamental part of who we are – and we can’t and shouldn’t try to change that.  There will be a follow-up to the ‘Living in Love and Faith’ course in 2023 – do please come along for further exploration.

As we move towards the end of Advent and into the Christmas season, our minds focus on the coming of our Saviour in the form of a helpless baby, to a young mother in abject poverty. The first who heard the tidings of this miraculous event were the rough and ready shepherds, despised and looked down on by the rest of society; and some rather strange foreigners from a distant country.  Let us remember that the nativity we’re about to celebrate is good news for everyone – absolutely everyone with no exceptions.  And we in our turn must extend that inclusive welcome to all those made in God’s image.