Photo by Patrick Joyce, Rugby.
The LLF Advocate Team give an update on LLF in the diocese.
Where are we up to now?
We’ve been tremendously encouraged by the engagement with LLF across the Diocese over these last 2 years. With the help of our Deanery Representatives and others, we ran 12 LLF Courses, as well as 5 Away Days which enabled over 200 people to participate in this vital process of listening, learning and discernment around issues of human identity, sexuality, relationships and marriage.
Participants were invited to offer feedback through the national LLF questionnaire. There were 102 responses from Coventry Diocese, with 6,448 being the overall national total. Creative response was also encouraged. Many took up this opportunity through a variety of media, from sculpture to poetry. All this feedback has been gathered together and published in a very accessible report Listening with Love and Faith which you can access through this link: Listening | The Church of England.
Tell us about the LLF Thanksgiving & Prayer Service
Recognising that engagement with LLF can be costly, right across the spectrum of opinion, we wanted to offer space and opportunity to say an enormous ‘thank you’ to everyone who played a part in facilitating this in our diocese. We are deeply grateful to our LLF Deanery Representatives, Chaplains as well as to every person who had the courage to take part in a course or away day, especially when many of these had to be held on-line.
On Saturday 24th September at St Andrew’s Church in Rugby, we held an LLF Thanksgiving & Prayer Service. We were delighted that Bishop Christopher was able to join us. In addition to his involvement with the initial production of LLF resources, Bishop Christopher has, more recently, contributed to one of the initial responses to the LLF process, ‘Friendship & the Body of Christ’, a further resource for reflection. This is also available through Listening | The Church of England.
Two participants shared their own experiences of being involved in courses, as well as their hopes and fears for the process going forward. We were able to celebrate the honesty with which folk, from a variety of differing perspectives, had engaged with one another around such sensitive issues, whilst acknowledging there are still so many voices we need to hear and listen to more carefully.
We shared a time of reflection and prayer through a Visio Divina exercise, based on various images portraying Jacob’s wrestling at Peniel in Genesis 32: 22 – 31. You might like to use this passage, and images connected to it, for your own reflection around areas of tension, disagreement, conflict and reconciliation in the church. Jacob’s own sense of identity, his relationship with God and others is profoundly changed by this encounter, as ours too can be as we learn to wrestle respectfully in areas over which we disagree.
What has been the impact of LLF in our Diocese?
Though we would love to see still more widespread and diverse involvement, it has been truly heartening to witness a growing confidence to share and speak together openly around subjects we often feel afraid to address for a variety of reasons. Some spoke very movingly of this being the first opportunity they felt they’d had within the context of the church to discuss the kind of issues LLF explores. It was often the LLF Film Stories which had the most impact on participants. These highlighted the lived experience of Christians in a range of life circumstances – from those in more traditional marriage relationships, to those choosing to remain single and celibate, to those in same-sex relationships and those identifying as being transgender.
Taking it further: These resources are all still available on the LLF Learning Hub.
LLF has been instrumental in raising awareness, in helping us to be better and more widely informed, and in showing us the value of engaging in constructive dialogue with those whose experience and opinions may be very different from our own.
So what’s next?
After the service, a number of folk signed up to say they’d like to be part of exploring next steps in terms of LLF in our diocese. If you’d like to join them, please let one of our LLF Advocates Team know. Please also be in touch if you’d still like to participate in a course. We’re happy to run more for those interested.
The House and College of Bishops met from 31st Oct – 2 Nov and will meet again from 12 – 14th Dec to give particular focus to listening, learning and discerning around LLF. Some responses are already featuring in the media. Please do continue to pray for all our Bishops in this process as they seek to respond to the feedback from the LLF process.
General Synod will meet again in February with LLF as a key agenda item. We’re grateful for the engagement of many of our own General Synod Representatives with LLF in our Diocese. We hope this will inform and enrich their involvement in discussions and in the discernment process. Again, please do keep them in your prayers as they represent our Diocese in these matters which will have a deep impact on the life and future of the church.
The LLF Advocate Team
Rev. Gail Phillip: revgailvicar.stgiles@gmail.com
The Revd Canon Edmund Newey: rector@rugbychurch.org.uk
Emma Crick de Boom: Emma.CrickdeBoom@Coventry.Anglican.org