At the beginning of 2025, my church began the journey towards becoming a single friendly church, by working with the Single Friendly Church Network (SFCN). This is a UK‐wide organisation whose aim is to encourage churches to welcome and value single people. For a while we had been working on creating a stronger feeling of family among our members. This had initially focused on families themselves, but a small number of us gradually came to see that we needed to improve our ministry to single people.

How are you feeling about Christmas this year? Are your emotions positive, negative or mixed? For some, Christmas can be an unavoidable annual reminder of the gap between how things are and how we wish they were. This can be particularly the case when it comes to our relationships, but there can also be a felt gap in connection to work, finances, living arrangements, the political situation in our homeland or in myriad other ways.

I was about 15 years old when I realised I was gay. Though I grew up in the church – my dad was a vicar – it wasn’t a topic I ever remember being addressed. My only frame of reference for what Christians thought about homosexuality was a quick mention in a Religious Studies class, where it was stated that Catholics were against gay sex, but that Protestants thought it was probably OK! Goodness knows how that summary had been arrived at, but I took it as gospel. Fine, I thought. I’m not ready to come out yet. This was the early 2000s and I didn’t know any gay people in my rural community.

I was born on January 12th 1948 into a family of Anglican church goers who sent away their male offspring to boarding school as a matter of course. I have to say all nine years from the age of eight were traumatic for me. The second school, one of the top public schools, was supposed to be established for the sons of Anglican clergy. It was there I first encountered homosexuality.

When I was asked to give this testimony, and told that the theme was about accountability, I was instantly a bit nervous. As I was trying to work out what to say for this, I kept finding myself trying to avoid one particular aspect of my story. But I really felt God put it on my heart to write about. So, just to rip the bandage off right away, this testimony is about my struggle with pornography. I have been in recovery from a porn addiction for the last 4 years or so.

This article explains why Capernwray Bible School is planning to extend and deepen its curriculum regarding what the Bible teaches about gender and sexuality for its students.