Inclusive Church has a network of 700+ churches, and a list of the new ones who have just signed up can be found below.

We also have a network of 40+ voluntary Regional Ambassadors around the country. The ambassadors act as a point of contact between a region (especially the inclusive churches in that region) and Inclusive Church nationally.

Please get in touch if your church would like to join the network, or if you would like to be an ambassador (if your region already has one or more, don't worry - you can work together!) If you need to get in touch with any ambassador on our list, please just find their email address here.

The role description for Regional Ambassadors was updated during the annual ambassador training in 2022, in collaboration with the ambassadors themselves. It can be read here.

More information on becoming an inclusive church can be found here.

New Church List

Blackley Baptist Church, W. Yorks
St Mary Magdalene,D Yarm, N. Yorks
Christ Church Pitsmoor, Sheffield
St. James Church, Mangotsfield, Bristol
St. Mary & St Barnabas in Humberstone, Leicester
Heywood Baptist, Lancs
Church of the Transfiguration Kempston, Bedford
St James Community Church, Bolton, Bradford
St John's C of E Church in Broadstone, Dorset
Leamington Parish Church
St Anne’s, Fence, Lancs
St Andrew's Church in Bedford
Mutley Baptist Church, Plymouth
St John’s Church, Redhill
St Michael and all Angels, Somerset
St Guthlac, Market Deeping
St Martin’s Shenley, near St Albans
Grove Lane Baptist Church, Cheadle Hulme
St Wulfran’s Church, Ovingdean, Brighton
St Augustine's Church, Dunstable
St Peter’s Hall Green, Birmingham
St Peter’s Falstone, Hexham
St Aidan’s Thorneyburn, Hexham
St James, Kingsway and Quedgeley, Gloucs
Fakenham Parish Church, Norfolk
Trinity Methodist, Long Eaton
Holy Innocents, Great Barton, Bury St Edmunds
St Peter's, Thurston, Bury St Edmunds
Kirkham Methodist Church, Preston
St James, Haslingden, Lancs
St Thomas, Musbury, Lancs
St. Peter & St. John, Kirkley, Yorks
St Matthews Redhill, Surrey
Wanstead United Reformed Church, London
St. Anne's Church Bagshot
All Saints, Normanton, Wakefield
St Luke’s New Catton
St Margaret’s Durham
St. Anne’s Church, Sale
Parish of Holy Cross (The Abbey and S. Peter's), Shrewsbury

New ambassador for Leeds/Harrogate

Domhnall (Donald) Crystal has joined the IC ambassador team in Leeds, and will also represent Harrogate, where he spends a lot of time. Please do get in touch with him if you're in the area.

News from Europe ambassador, David Hawkins

Learning from Difference and Diversity

In the wake of the Church of England Synod, I want to recommend a sermon delivered by Bishop Cherry Vann at her enthronement service at Newport Cathedral on 1st February 2020. I believe that practice and communication can lead us out of our theological bunkers. That's why a big tent is so important. If you insist on inhabiting a smaller theologically pure tent, you cut yourself off from learning from people who are different, even from people you dislike.

Bishop Cherry writes “It is the case that we can often learn most and be the more enriched by those who are different to us, those who challenge us, even those we don’t much like.”

My question is this. When you hear God speaking so clearly through the mouth of Bishop Cherry, how is it possible to believe that a lesbian woman shouldn't or can’t  be a bishop ? A lesbian woman is an essential part of our mosaic of understanding and without that piece of mosaic our spiritual life is diminished.

“God has given us a world teeming with difference and diversity. Even just within the human family, the diversity is mind-boggling. Millions upon millions of people down the centuries and each person that has ever lived is different; unique in their particularity. Sadly, because we’re human, difference can so easily lead to division, mistrust and barriers being put up, as we look to protect ourselves and our interests and to diminish those we don’t like or despise in an attempt to control and dominate.”

It is my personal experience of women priests and lesbian and gay clergy that tells me that this is what God wants. That’s why I particularly recommend the YouTube recording. Without that personal experience perhaps I would still have doubts.

Bishop Cherry's sermon can be found here and the transcript is here.

Blogs and News

On the IC website this month is a statement released by IC about the recent allegations of bullying made by Christian Concern. Read the statement here.

From our partner, SCM: 'The Student Christian Movement is currently recruiting 200 churches to commit to donating £200 to SCM on an annual basis. SCM relies on the support of regular and one-off donations to continue its vital work of empowering students to explore and live out the Christian faith. As a member of Inclusive Church, please consider whether you can support us by committing to donate every year. The hard truth is that conservative youth organisations are well supported by like-minded churches. In more open and progressive churches, we have much less of a tradition of that kind of support and SCM is going to struggle to keep going if that doesn’t change. All the information about the campaign is on our website. If you would like some more information or to sign up, please email fundraising@movement.org.uk. Please continue to pray for our work with students and recent graduates.'

From our partner, Open Table: 'A charity which affirms and empowers lesbian, gay, bi and trans (LGBT) people to build communities hosted by welcoming and understanding churches has received a large cash boost from one of Britain’s national churches. The United Reformed Church (URC), which agreed in 2016 to allow local churches to vote on performing marriages of couples of the same gender, has committed to supporting the Open Table Network (OTN), a growing partnership of communities across England and Wales run by and for LGBT+ people, their families and friends. The grant, for £50,000 over the next three years, is the first donation that OTN has received from any national church in the 15 years since it began among a group of six LGBT+ people at St Bride’s Anglican Church in Liverpool in 2008.'

Every Wednesday, between 6 and 6.30pm, OneBodyOneFaith are hosting an online space for prayer and community called 'Rhythm'. Find out more on the website. Drawing on monastic patterns, Rhythm includes resources to download and a rule of life for people to embrace.

On the 1st of April, as part of the Progressive Christianity Network's AGM, Dr Joe Forde will be presenting a talk on Zoom highlighting some of the pressing welfare challenges faced in the post-pandemic context in the UK: 'Picking Up The Pieces: Church, State and Welfare In A Post-Pandemic Context – Shaping A Progressive Christian Vision For Welfare'. More information and booking on the PCN website. 

OneBodyOneFaith will be hosting a Memorial Service on Sunday 23rd April at Hinde St Methodist in London, to commemorate and remember members of the LGBT+ community who have lost their lives and experienced harm, following exclusion from Christian communities. The event will provide a structured time of memorial for those who have been lost and those who have been harmed and will also intentionally look forward to more respectful dialogue, as a number of denominations move to a more inclusive environment. You can now reserve a seat for the service using Eventbrite.

On the 5th June at 7pm, we will hold the IC AGM and Annual Lecture, which this year will be a celebration of 20 years of IC! The lecturer will be Rachel Mann and the venue is St John's Waterloo in London. More information and booking on Eventbrite. Also available at the AGM will be information on pre-ordering our 20th anniversary book, which comes out around September this year.

Open Table are 15 years old this year and are asking supporters to SAVE THE DATE of their national gathering on the 10th June (all day).

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The content of the newsletter is drawn from a number of sources including individuals and partner organisations. The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect a 'formal viewpoint' of the Inclusive Church trustees, individual members of Inclusive Church or registered inclusive churches.

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