St Chrysostom’s is proud to have a wonderful variety of people in our membership.
The variety of cultures and outlooks enrich our church community. Variety and inclusion are ‘in our DNA’ at St C’s. We are, for example, proud of our well established welcome of LGBT+ people.
The Church Council is encouraging more ways to honour, include and celebrate the many varied, cultures, languages and traditions among us. We hope this will extend to all areas of our church life and work.
We’ll encourage wider participation and engagement in worship, including use of prayers and hymns / songs / music from the differing countries and cultures represented among us. We will take care over the words we use to help us include people more. This will, of course, all be in the style and context of our inclusive Catholic Anglican tradition, which we cherish so much.
Leaders of worship and preachers are also being encouraged to be alert to this when preparing worship. In so doing our worship will help articulate the prayers and worship of us all. We will continue to draw on the liturgies and prayers of churches worldwide, as we both celebrate and develop our spirit of inclusion. We will have social events to help celebrate our variety, such as, a Nigerian and a Pakistani evening which are already planned.
We will hear and celebrate the stories of different church members and celebrate them.
Much of the Church Council’s action on this has arisen from thinking about our monthly service we called Open Table which had a particular focus of welcome for LGBT+ people. Of course we are proud of our long tradition of welcome of LGBT+ people. Indeed this inclusion has led us to develop further our inclusive natur. And so We have developed Open Table to become more clearly inclusive of all and renamed it Evening Oasis.
Our spirit of welcome extends to everyone and the Church Council wish to emphasise this at worship.
Welcome is far more than saying ‘all are welcome in this place’.
Welcome includes being enriched by one another, and celebrating together.
Welcome at St C’s is about honouring and making visible different cultures and approaches, together and equally. We believe our tradition at St C’s does this and look forward to this spirit of inclusion developing in all aspects of our church life.
St Chrysostom's Church News and Views 
Does this change mean a move away from a public Nd open support for LGBTI Christians?
Thank you for your question, Andrew. The answer is most certainly no! For over 40 years we have welcomed LGBTI people at St Chrysostom’s, and many have found refuge with us, especially from less tolerant churches. We continue to openly and publically support LGBTI+ Christians.
It is these early steps to inclusion that have led us to broaden out and attempt to be more comprehensive in our understanding of what being inclusive is.
Have a look at the first paragraph of this blog post: “The variety of cultures and outlooks enrich our church community. Variety and inclusion are ‘in our DNA’ at St C’s. We are, for example, proud of our well established welcome of LGBT+ people.”