About Church for Everyone

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The suicide of Lizzie Lowe in September 2014 propelled our church community into a radical reassessment of what it means to be a ‘Church for Everyone’. Lizzie was a committed Christian and much-loved member of our community at St James and Emmanuel, Lizzie believed that her emerging identity as a gay young woman clashed irreconcilably with her Christian faith and she believed that God couldn’t love her the way she was.

Lizzie was only fourteen when she died and her death prompted the kind of soul-searching that comes with the loss of a child in tragic and needless circumstances.

On these pages you will find the fruit of some of our learning.  What began with tragedy has become a source of life and energy that we feel compelled to share with the Church at large. 

What began with a radical opening the doors to the LGBTQ+ community has broadened and deepened over the years. 

We are not experts in any of the areas covered on this site, we are fellow travellers who want to share some of our learning and who want to invite you to share with us some of your learning.  We want this site to be a place of hope, learning and transformation. 

There are some areas where we feel more experienced and confident than others.  LGBTQ+ inclusion is one of our areas of confidence.  Other areas of ‘Church for Everyone’ such as autism awareness are growing rapidly, but we are still in the research phase.  Our work on high level disability is a very new endeavour but thanks to expert help we’ve grown rapidly in the implementation of ‘Changing Places’ into our buildings.  It’s for this reason that we will also endeavour to harvest the learning of communities more experienced than our own as this project develops.

The goal is a Church for Everyone.  This is a theological as well as practical destination.  It’s the heart of the gospel and I hope that you will feel welcome as you browse these pages.