Dear Friends and Colleagues
As you will know the General Synod meets this week. On Wednesday the Synod will reflect in small groups on GS 2055 on Marriage and Same Sex relationships after the Shared Conversations and hold a take note debate on the report.
If you haven’t yet read the full report you can find it here.
Please do pray for the General Synod meeting this week and especially for those representing the Diocese of Oxford. A suggested prayer is below.
I would encourage all of us to be mindful of and careful for those who will find this continued debate challenging or difficult either for themselves or out of concern for those they love. The report touches on intimate and personal questions of identity and conduct. This is a season for kindness and gentleness and bearing one another’s burdens as sisters and brothers in Christ.
I will write more on the outcomes of the debate and ways forward in due course.
With love and prayers
+Steven Oxford
Father of all mercies and God of all comfort
Send your Holy Spirit to refresh and renew your holy and beloved people.
May the members of our General Synod clothe themselves continually
with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness and patience.
Guide and lead us into all truth as we seek your ways together.
Help us to bear with one another, to forgive as we have been forgiven.
Above all bind our lives together in love for Jesus Christ your Son and for your world.
Make us a means of consolation, reconciliation and healing in the earth
Through our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen.
2 Corinthians 1.3 and Colossians 3.12-14
