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AT A carol service this month, hosted by the Open Table community in Liverpool, we heard this moving, inspiring extract from a lecture called ‘Jesus for the non-religious’ by John Shelby Spong, a retired US Episcopalian bishop

JEN WILLIAMS, founder of the Open Table community in Sefton, Merseyside, in 2017, reflects on what Open Table means to her, and what she’s learned from setting up a community.

ON SUNDAY 29th July 2018 the first Open Table community in Liverpool hosted a Post-Pride Chillout Service in the Lady Chapel of Liverpool Cathedral to mark the end of the city’s Pride festival. This is the reflection from that service by Kieran Bohan, Open Table Network Coordinator.

A REFLECTION on the parable of the mustard seed (Mark 4:26-34) by poet Cate Jacobs, author of Climbing Mountains in the Dark, which evokes her experience of living with HIV, at the tenth birthday communion service of Open Table Liverpool, the first community in the Open Table Network.

FOLLOWING the Inauguration of the LGBTI+ Chaplaincy in the Diocese of Bangor at St. Mary’s Menai Bridge on 22nd May 2017 by the Right Reverend Andy John, Bishop of Bangor, this new Chaplaincy has held services in Menai Bridge and Cricieth.

AT A carol service last Sunday, hosted by the first Open Table community in Liverpool, we heard this poem, which was moving, inspiring and too good not to share.

‘DREAMING around an Open Table’ was the title of our national gathering in Coventry on 21st October, when 30 members of Open Table communities, and those considering whether Open Table is a ministry they wish to offer in their church, came together to share experience, insight and visions for the future. Here is our Coordinator Kieran’s reflection with which he opened the day:

ON SEPTEMBER 11, 2017, sixteen years after the devastating terrorist attack on New York’s World Trade Center, an article appeared online about its first recorded victim, which asked: ‘Could Father Mychal Judge Be the First Gay Saint?’ Kieran Bohan from Open Table Liverpool reflects on a talk from his biographer Michael Ford.

AT THE FIRST Open Table community in Liverpool in August, the Bishop of Liverpool, Rt Revd Paul Bayes, gave a reflection on ‘a story of increasing love and boundaries crossed’, following his experience of walking with the Christians At Pride group at the city’s Pride festival in July.

THESE were the courageous words of the keynote speaker at this year's annual conference of Quest, which offers pastoral support for LGBT Catholics in the UK. Sister Jeannine Gramick has cared and campaigned for the LGBT+ community in the USA since 1971, two years before Quest was founded here.