16/01/2026
Wise words by a trusted Clergy colleague, Tim Goode in response to the LLF Update.
Yesterday’s House of Bishops statement marks the formal conclusion of the LLF process. But it also exposes deeper questions about what inclusion and participation truly mean in the Church of England — not only in relation to sexuality, but for all those whose bodies, identities, relationships, or histories have too often been treated as conditional within the life of the Church.
As someone who is not LGBTI+ but who seeks to journey alongside as an ally, I am struck by how easily our language of “pastoral generosity” and “continued disagreement” becomes a way of postponing justice. When inclusion is framed as something granted rather than shared, or participation is offered without power, voice, or trust, it ceases to be inclusion at all. This is not a challenge faced by one group alone; it is a pattern that affects disabled people, women, racially minoritised people, those living with poverty, and others whose presence has been welcomed in theory but constrained in practice.
What concerns me most is not that the Church holds difference — it always has — but that it repeatedly resolves that difference by asking the same people to wait, to adapt, or to carry the cost of unity on behalf of the whole. When any part of the Body is asked to bear that burden disproportionately, something essential to the gospel is distorted.
The risen Christ remains wounded. Those wounds are not a problem to be managed but the very place where resurrection is made known. A Church shaped by that Christ must be willing to let its own wounds be seen — especially those inflicted through exclusion, silence, and delayed justice.
This moment therefore calls all of us to ask hard questions about who is trusted, who is heard, and who is allowed to shape the Church’s future. Belonging in the Body of Christ is not provisional, negotiated, or earned; it is given by grace. Yet the House of Bishops’ statement speaks far more of process, containment, and institutional caution than it does of grace. It asks for patience without repentance, restraint without repair, and unity without justice. That is not the costly grace of the gospel, but an ungracefulness that diminishes the Church’s witness — and one the Church must now have the courage to call out and name as utterly contrary to the Good News of Jesus Christ.
Years-long Living in Love and Faith process will instead come to an ‘imperfect’ and ‘untidy’ end, statement says
