Meet our Patrons - Bishop Paul Bayes in conversation with Kieran Bohan
THE OPEN TABLE NETWORK (OTN) is becoming a charity. So we have asked several notable Christians who identify as LGBTQIA+, or as allies, to become our patrons.
They will be advocates for OTN, speaking about us and supporting us in the public eye. We are proud that these individuals believe in what we’re doing and want to have their names associated with us.
In the fifth of our Q&A webinars with our new Patrons on Thursday 18th March 2021, Bishop Paul was speaking with Kieran Bohan, Co-ordinator of the Open Table Network.
If you missed our Q&A webinar with Bishop Paul Bayes, or want to watch it again, now you can catch up below or on our YouTube channel (59 mins).
When the Right Revd Paul Bayes became Bishop of Liverpool in 2014, in his inaugural sermon he spoke of an 'open table' made by a poor, generous carpenter who offers a place at the table to anyone who wants to sit and eat.
In July 2015 he visited the first Open Table community and charged us with a mission to give ‘the love that you share, and the openness that you manifest’ as a gift to the wider church, which struggles to receive it.
He has become an outspoken ally - In 2017 he became a patron of Pride In Liverpool and marched with the Christians At Pride group, the first Diocesan bishop in the Church of England to do so.
In 2018 he became Chair of the Ozanne Foundation, which tackles prejudice and discrimination on the grounds of sexuality and gender in religious organisations.
In 2019 he published The Table: Knowing Jesus: Prayer, Friendship, Justice which expands his vision of Christ’s church as an open table.
In 2020 he became Co-Chair of the Global Interfaith Commission on LGBT+ Lives which calling for an end to violence and criminalisation against LGBT+ people and for a global ban on conversion therapy.
Bishop Paul was in conversation with Kieran Bohan, Co-ordinator of the Open Table Network. In 2020, thanks to a grant from the National Lottery Community Fund, he begun working full-time to raise our online presence to reach more isolated LGBTQIA+ folk. This funding has made these webinars possible.
Bishop Paul answered a wide range of questions, including:
Growing up as a churchwarden’s son in Bradford, your spiritual and social life in the late 1950s and 1960s was formed by Sunday school, church choir and youth group, until you went your own way at University. What led you to come back to the practice of your faith as an adult?
You trained for ministry at an ecumenical college, Queen’s Birmingham. How did that ecumenical experience in training inform your ministry today?
As a young priest you served as a University chaplain in London, where you sought to build the church through small groups of students and others, committed to serving God through social action. What did you learn from that experience that has stayed with you?
From London you moved to parish ministry, where you complemented the ministry of the churches you inherited by planting new congregations to bring the Christian message to people the churches weren’t reaching. Finding appropriate ways to plant churches has remained central to your ministry - what lessons might you have for the Open Table Network as a Fresh Expression of Church
When you preached your first sermon at Liverpool Cathedral in 2014, about an 'open table' made by a poor, generous carpenter who offers a place at the table to anyone who wants to sit and eat, how did you feel when you discovered an Open Table on the Cathedral doorstep?
In 2017 you became a patron of Pride In Liverpool and marched with the Christians At Pride group - what response did you get to your public support for Pride?
How can we sit together at an open table with people who would disagree with or exclude us as LGBT+ Christians?
How could the Church of England make its 'Living In Love & Faith process safer?
Should someone leave a church which isn't inclusive if it causes damage?
How has your role as Co-Chair of the Global Interfaith Commission on LGBT+ Lives, which is calling for a global ban on conversion therapy, been received?
How might allies be more effective and have reconciling conversations with colleagues?
How can someone report abuse against LGBT people in their diocese?
What was the turning point for you in speaking out?
How can those of us committed to church unity steer conversation away from threats to leave?
If you could choose to sit around a table with anyone, who would it be?
Catch up with Paul Bayes in conversation with Kieran Bohan (59 mins):
