Many churches have extended their offerings to include Messy Church, which describes itself as “a way of being church for families and others. It is Christ-centred, for all ages, based on creativity, hospitality and celebration.” Usually happening on Saturday or Sunday afternoon, this is one of many ways of involving people who don’t think church is for them.

In complete contrast is Leaky Church, an expression of church which has become even more apparent in recent weeks. Yesterday the Church Times published a story, Bishops’ divisions over same-sex marriage exposed. It revealed the surprising figures behind the recent switch from the B5A method of progressing the Prayers of Love and Faith – allowing stand-alone services for same-sex couples immediately, as ‘experimental’, with the official stuff happening further down the line – to the B2 method, where such services can’t happen until November 2025 at the earliest, after all the dioceses have commented and even then only with a two-thirds majority in each House of General Synod. Which is, of course, impossible. 

As the figures leaked yesterday show, the College of Bishops supported such stand-alone services, by a majority of 75 to 22, but the House of Bishops voted the opposite way, by 19 votes to 16. 

The Church Times received documents from, the story said, “multiple sources”. It’s interesting that people in the know thought that publicising the facts was more important than the usual church cover-up.

When I was taking part in the Living with Difference group in September, during the pre-meeting tea and coffee one of the conservative members of the group came over to me and asked me (standing rather too close to me – which I found uncomfortable) whether I’d leaked to the Church Times the list of names of those in our group. I was able to look him in the eye and say no, I hadn’t. It then came out that he thought it must be me because the same story also quoted a blog post I had written – which, of course, didn’t leak these names. It’s interesting to be the prime suspect, particularly when the whole point of this blog is to report what actually happened, insofar as I am able to do so.

And there are limits to that. When we had the Diocesan Shared Conversations back in 2015-17, they were under St Michael’s House Protocols, in which you can ‘share the learning’ but not attribute anything to people who were there: you are “free to use any information received, but neither the identity nor affiliation of the speaker, nor that of any other participant, may be revealed”. The seriousness of that rule was reinforced by us all physically signing a copy of the Protocols. I was so worried about breaching it that, when I started to blog in order to share the learning and inform the wider church what it was all about, I sent draft pieces to those running the event to ask if they were OK. They were deemed entirely OK.

When we joined the Living with Difference group we were also told that the meetings would be under St Michael’s House Protocols, but at the first meeting this was changed. And I assume that’s all I am allowed to say. I’ve stuck with the rule, although I don’t understand why we have it, and even though we didn’t sign anything in the way we did in the Shared Conversations. I’ve no idea what the House of Bishops members are told about the proceedings of their own meetings. Do these take place under the Protocols or under some other rule?

The fact that “multiple sources” have now broken ranks is revealing. The House of Bishops does not publish its minutes, so these figures would otherwise have been hidden from history. The Bishop of Ebbsfleet – present but not a voting member – wrote in his 16th October report of that 9th October meeting that “While the details of the discussions in the House of Bishops remain confidential, until minutes are published on October 20th, nevertheless that disquiet has led to a response from a number of bishops …” I thought that was odd when he wrote it, because minutes are never published. All that came out on October 20^th was a press release, with no “details of discussions”, so I don’t know what he was thinking.  

So, here we are in Leaky Church. It’s a place where there is no creativity, hospitality or celebration. Rather than inviting people in, it shuts them out. Rather than transparency and honesty, it’s all about keeping secrets. Rather than modelling the Kingdom, it imposes silence, and equates power to knowledge. Surely we can do better than this?