LIZZIE LOWE took her own life in a forgotten patch of farmland behind the River Mersey on 10 September 2014, while her parents were at a film club run by a group from St James and Emmanuel, Didsbury (News, 9 January 2015). It is not possible for me to convey adequately the explosion of grief and dismay that hit the Lowes, the church, her school, and her wider network of family and friends.

Two years on, we are all still wrest­­ling with Lizzie’s death. She would be 16 by now, and no doubt excelling at her A-level studies. The litany of “What ifs” is overwhelming.

Lizzie was gay. Nobody in her family or church knew this — how we wish we had. As a 14-year-old, she was still exploring her feelings, and trying to juggle the many powerful emotions of the teenage years, but it was painfully clear from the coroner’s hearing in December 2014 that her sexuality and her perception of faith were at odds with one another, and had become a chasm too wide to cross.

Lizzie had become convinced that God could not love her the way she was — a feeling she expressed by text message to the few confidants she had, leading up to her fatal decision.

St James and Emmanuel has undergone a revolution since Lizzie died. It is not that we were ever “hard-line”. Actually, we have al­­ways been a pretty broad expression of Evangelicalism. Like many sim­ilar churches, however, we have largely avoided the topic of homo­sexuality, to preserve the peace. I now realise, too late, that ignoring the topic of sexuality is, by defini­tion, exclusive, and unsafe for people who are gay.

In the months after the coroner’s report, the revolution at St James and Emmanuel started with a deci­sion by the PCC to adopt a state­ment of inclusion. This was followed by three structured “listening even­ings”, and inclusion is now a regular item on the agenda of the PCC.

We lost some members during the turmoil of 2015. That was im­­mensely painful for me as a vicar. But we have also gained members, including a wonderful gay couple who had been told not to play in the worship band of their previous church when people had found out about their relationship.

Worship in our church has never been more vibrant and alive. Our paradigm shift has swept a new sense of immanence into our ser­vices, and a fresh honesty into our interactions. Personally, I have crossed the Rubicon: there is no way back. When I do look back, I do so with horror at what a passively homophobic priest I have been.

I do not want anything I have written to sound like a hackneyed rags-to-riches story, or even a resurrection-after-death story. There is no way to erase the horror of Lizzie’s death, or the madness of the wider Church’s ripping itself apart over this issue. Two years on from Lizzie’s death, though, I hope that we have gone some way to amend for our failures. I am proud to lead a church that is both Evangelical and inclusive.

The Revd Dr Nick Bundock is Team Rector of Didsbury, in Manchester.

This is a statement from the network Inclusive Church, which we have adopted:

We believe in an Inclusive Church — church which does not discriminate on any level, including: economic power, gender, mental health, mental ability, physical ability, race or sexuality. We believe in a Church which welcomes, accepts and serves all people in the name of Jesus Christ; which is scripturally faithful; which seeks to proclaim the Gospel afresh for each generation; and which, in the power of the Holy Spirit, allows all people to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Jesus Christ.