The Next Steps Group reviewed the preparations for General Synod at which Living in Love and Faith will be one of the areas of focus on the afternoon of Sunday 10th July following the service in York Minister that morning.  The Group expressed the hope that everyone attending Synod would be able to interact and engage well with all the opportunities that the various activities around Living in Love and Faith would provide over the course of the five days.

The Group heard that work on bringing together and analysing the responses from the churchwide engagement on LLF was going very well and that they would shortly be receiving a first draft. The meeting was reminded that the responses would be published in September in good time for the College of Bishops to draw on these responses as they begin the process of discernment and decision-making. In addition to the report of responses, there will be a more detailed resource that includes full details relating to methodology and the responses received through the questionnaire, creative contributions, focus groups and independently submitted responses.

The Group discussed plans, roles, responsibilities and resources for the Autumn series of episcopal discernment meetings. They agreed that it was important to establish a working group in support of the discernment process and suggested that the July Next Steps meeting review a suitably diverse list of names to approach to join such a group.

The Group noted that the latest draft of the resource, ‘The Gift of the Church’ would be available to members and to the House of Bishops before it is finalised in time for publication alongside the listening report in September 2022.

The meeting ended in prayer.