Singing out for LGBT+ History Month - Open Table Cambridge celebrates in style
ON SUNDAY 6th February, Open Table Cambridge held a celebratory service to mark the start of LGBT+ History Month, featuring songs by local LGBT+ community choir Sing Out Cambridge.
The Open Table Cambridge community, which meets twice a month on Sunday evenings at Downing Place United Reformed Church, hosted the Sunday morning congregation for a creative Communion service.
180 people gathered in the church, and another 70 joined the livestream, making this the largest Communion service hosted by an Open Table community in the history of the Network.
Lots of people have been involved in creating a stunning display of origami cranes in the colours of the Pride Progress flag, which are hanging in the church’s ‘Welcome’ area throughout February.
Many members of the church’s various communities painted affirming messages on pebbles to decorate the church, which the community have placed around the centre of Cambridge for people to find.
Sing Out Cambridge performed three songs: Love is Love is Love is Love by Abbie Betinis, This love will carry by Dougie MacLean, and Fire Song by Emily Roblyn.
The service also included the poem If you didn’t get the invite, this is the invite by Molly Naylor.
The guest preacher was the Revd Dr Carla Grosch-Miller, a practical theologian, poet, educator and minister. She lectures widely on pastoral theology, primarily about sexual-spiritual integration, and is the author of Psalms redux: Poems and Prayers (2014).
After the event, Open Table Cambridge leaders asked their members in their Facebook group:
What was it that you most connected with… being together, the sermon, the music, making the origami hearts, sharing communion, something else, all of the above?
Jenny replied:
‘I loved the content of the service and the togetherness. Of being part of Open Table and sharing our group within the whole body of church members, also with the visiting Sing Out Choir and visitors who came as moral support to their friends. I felt privileged and it was special to me to be there’.
