About Living Faith

Living Faith Convictions

As an organisation of the Sydney Diocese of the Anglican Church, the Council of Living Faith are committed to the Lordship of Jesus Christ and the authority of the Bible as God’s revealed word, the 39 articles, and the theology of the Book of Common Prayer.

Living Faith operates under the doctrinal and pastoral guidelines of the diocese. You can read more about the heart and beliefs of the Sydney Anglican Church here.

 

On Sexuality and Gender

Living Faith affirms:

• All people are created by God, made in the image of God and deeply loved by him. We see our gender and sexuality as good gifts from God, imprinted with his good and perfect purposes that image him. We are accountable to our Creator God for the way we use the gifts he has given us.

• From the beginning, God created us male and female, two distinct sexes. This maleness and femaleness includes our sexed physical bodies, our sexual expression, our gender identity  and our gendered relating to ourselves and one another. God’s creative purpose is that our gender is congruent with our sex.

• The intimacy of sex is gifted by God for marriage between a man and a woman. There is value and dignity in sexuality being expressed in marriage with sex, and in singleness with celibacy.

• All of creation, including human nature, has been damaged and distorted by the sin of Adam and Eve. All people are still made in God’s image, and are still loved by him, but now each of us experiences brokenness, including in the areas of gender and sexuality. Some people experience an incongruence between their biological sex and gender. Some people experience patterns of romantic or sexual attraction that include, or are exclusively toward, people of the same sex. With this experience, all of God’s people are still called to live according to the designed purposes of God.

• God invites and welcomes all people, whatever their gender or sexuality experience, into relationship with him. He reveals this in the scriptures through the gospel of Jesus Christ, who offers forgiveness and new life to all who trust and believe in him. All who are ‘in Christ’ find their identity in him as sons and daughters of God. It is with this perspective that we understand and express this and all other aspects of our identity.

• All of God’s people are indwelt by the Holy Spirit, who helps us understand and live our identity in Christ. 

• God gave his people the community of church to live and grow in faithfulness together.

• While the experience of gender incongruence and/or various attractional patterns will look different for each of us, and for some might be distressing and impact day-to-day wellbeing, we look to Jesus’ teaching and example and the teaching of the wider Bible, depending on God in prayer through the Holy Spirit, to understand what biblically faithful expressions of our gender and sexuality will look like.

• All of God’s people look to the future hope of the day when all experiences of dissonance, frustration and distress will be gone forever.

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In broad terms, Living Faith’s pastoral approach is as follows: 

• We see all of God’s people as ‘in Christ’, and more than just their sexuality or gender. We approach each person with empathy, listening to their unique experience. 

• We work with Christians who hold to the historic Christian faith. This means the scope of our ministry does not include evangelising the LGBT+ community, or engaging in lobbying or political activities.

• We recognise that understanding what a faithful expression of gender or sexuality looks like can be more challenging for some people than others, and together we humbly seek to listen to God for his wisdom and guidance as revealed in the scriptures. 

• We seek to rejoice in the Lord always, giving thanks in all circumstances, as we grow in faithfulness. We seek repentance and restoration, wherever there is sin. We seek obedience and perseverance, wherever there is temptation. We seek patience and hopeful dependence, wherever there is suffering.

• We encourage all Christians to see their local church community as their primary place of discipleship

• We do not practice or endorse any form of conversion or reparative therapy, which have been proven to be ineffective and distressing for those who have participated in it. 

• Because we see all people as made in God’s image and valued in his sight, we see all expressions of homophobia or transphobia as sinful and inappropriate.