Dear Patchers — Welcome to your Friday briefing.
If any of you are regular readers of Church Times, then you may be a little familiar with today’s story already. In April, groundbreaking church Inclusive Gathering Birmingham met in a room of the ibis in the Arcadian. Those leading the session hoped it would be an opportunity for prayer and closure. They wanted to draw a line under months of tension that had built up between members who had lodged complaints about a leader’s ‘inappropriate touching’ and the church’s leadership team. The issue should have been swiftly addressed, but instead it snowballed into a ten-month-long stand-off between complainants and the church’s hierarchy, culminating in an explosive meeting at the ibis. The accused leader has stepped down from their role and the church has conducted an investigation, concluding that there are no further safeguarding risks — but not everyone agrees. Read on to find out why.
Editor’s note: If you aren’t a paying member, you will be able to read a good few paragraphs of the story, but you will hit a paywall part-way down. That’s because to produce quality journalism, we need to pay for reporters, editors, lawyers and the all-important coffee and rich tea biscuits that keep us going. If you think this is an important resource for Birmingham and want our stories to keep coming, subscribe today.
Brum in Brief
🚗Street safety pressure: City and regional chiefs are in the sights of street safety pressure group Better Streets for Birmingham after a spate of recent road deaths. In a new open letter to leaders, the group is calling for them to issue a state of emergency on Birmingham roads, make urgent infrastructural changes, and speed up the next WMCA Cycling and Walking Commissioner appointment. Babiker Yahia, father of four-year-old Mayar who was tragically killed in Highgate this April, said: “We need immediate action to stop dangerous drivers and make safer roads.” Full story.
⚖️Yakoob again: Headline-making independent political candidate Akhmed Yakoob has found himself at the centre of another news report — this time in Greater Manchester. Many will have seen footage from Manchester Airport of a policeman kicking a man in the head on Tuesday evening. Yakoob is the lawyer representing the men who he says were assaulted by police at the airport. “We are headed to Rochdale Police Station to make a formal complaint of assault and wounding against the police officers,” he said on a video on X. Full story.
🛑Brum festival blow: A huge summer festival has been cancelled, despite council support and big-name local headliners. The Centenary Square Summer Series was scheduled to take place on Bank Holiday weekend, August 23-26, headlined by The Streets, Jungle, Cian Ducrot and Ocean Colour Scene but has since been scrapped. The Streets gig will now take place on Friday 23 August at O2 Academy and Jungle will play Utilita Arena on 24 August. Refunds are being processed with organisers saying they apologise for the “inconvenience and disappointment this has caused." Full story.
🍺Lager, lager, lager: While most corporate branded events we see right through, it’s hard to turn down a free drink and some Spanish ambience. Over the weekend, from 12pm to 10pm across Friday, Saturday and Sunday the team behind the now ubiquitous Madrí is heading to Brindley Place to deliver Mediterranean-style pints and Madrid-style food. Barkeep, a cold lager please!
🖼️Long-term Museum plans: It’s still several months away but on Thursday 24 October Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery will finally re-open some of its well-loved galleries to the public — so get the diary cleared! Re-opened sections include the Round Room Gallery, Industrial Gallery, Bridge Gallery and the Edwardian Tearooms. Further details.
Relations breakdown at the ‘radically inclusive’ church
By Kate Knowles
It’s not often that a church meeting descends into an argument. Less still, that a church official threatens to call the police on some of the congregation.
Yet that is exactly what happened at a meeting of Inclusive Gathering Birmingham (IGB), a flagship Christian assembly that meets in the Gay Village, on 28 April. The Dispatch has seen a video from the incident, taken on a mobile phone by one of the members as a rather grave-looking man tries to usher them out of the room. “You have let people down,” the recorder says to a reverend who is standing out of shot. “You have failed LGBT people.”
The row was the culmination of six months of increasingly fraught interactions between a handful of congregation members and church leaders at the local, district and national level. The former group had raised concerns with the Methodist Church about another churchgoer who had been appointed to the Core Leadership Team by IGB’s pastor, Danielle Wilson. The group claimed that this person had a habit of hugging church members tightly from behind and groping them, which made them feel very uncomfortable.
Wilson’s response was, at first, hesitant. In a WhatsApp message to one of the complainants (seen by The Dispatch) Wilson intimated that the alleged perpetrator was vulnerable themselves and didn’t mean any harm by the hugging. But she eventually conceded there was an issue when it was escalated by the member to a safeguarding officer. The Methodist Church opened an investigation, which has since closed, and has implemented recommendations. They have since released a statement acknowledging the “incredibly difficult, upsetting and unsettling” period.
Difficult and unsettling it certainly has been. Since January, four people have stepped down from leadership roles; Wilson has been signed off on sick leave; IGB has pulled out of an appearance at major Christian festival, Greenbelt; and perhaps most unfortunately, church services have been paused for the summer with several members saying that they do not want to return.
How did a place of worship created on a doctrine of ‘radical inclusivity’ become so divided?
Inclusive Gathering Birmingham was supposed to be ground-breaking. Founded in 2017 by a group of Methodist ministers and volunteers, including Kerry Scarlett, Trey Hall and Deacon Eunice Attwood (all of whom now have senior positions in the national Methodist Church), IGB is one of a growing number of ‘pioneer’ churches, which emphasise going out into communities to engage people in the gospel. “We’re a diverse, justice-seeking, LGBTQIA+ affirming church for ALL based in Brum’s Gay Village (City Centre),” reads the ‘Our Story’ page of IGB’s website.
In a video interview about IGB’s origins, Attwood — a smiley middle-aged woman with very short hair and a strong Newcastle accent — reflects on the pleasant surprise that many people expressed in the project’s early days. “I remember thinking how beautiful that was and how ashamed I was there were people who the church had said no to,” she says.
For the first few years, things appear to have gone swimmingly. “An inclusive church wasn't something I'd experienced before, and that was something I was very pleased about,” an IGB member, who has attended services since 2021 but has now decided to break ties, tells me. “Obviously, as a gay Christian, that isn't always a particularly easy walk. It seemed to be a very friendly and open community that was very community-led.”
That was before things began to unravel last autumn. The group of churchgoers — eight, according to our sources but only four according to the Methodist District Church — alleged to Pastor Danielle Wilson that the person who had been appointed to the Core Leadership Team had inappropriately touched, in some cases groped, and persistently harassed them during church services and social gatherings. The Dispatch has read their recorded, anonymised claims. One reads:
“The core leader would come up behind me and grab my arm muscles and chest muscles. They would squeeze and pinch my side all the way down to my buttocks and thighs. I let the pastor Danielle know what was going on.”
Another:
“At the start of a Sunday service, the core leader groped me in front of other members of Inclusive Gathering Birmingham just as the service was about to start. I told the pastor Danielle after the service.”
There was a further claim that a member of the core leaders team had shown pictures of ‘anal beads in the shape of rosary beads’ to IGB members during a church social, and had made members feel uncomfortable by repeatedly accusing them of having a ‘sex dungeon’ in the back of their van at church services.
