Mistakes are good. They help us learn, change and improve. A ‘defect’ is a mistake which goes undetected for a long time – an error repeated at both increasing risk and cost. The circumstances that have led to the Church of England’s woeful record of institutional racism reveal terrible defects in the way the Church has attempted to fulfil its mission.

The Church of England has been a part of my life for the whole of my life. My grandfather was a churchwarden in a Lancashire market town, and my grandmother a founding member of the local Mothers’ Union. I climbed up into the pulpit at an early age while gran was arranging the flowers. She told me off and made me come down. In my mid-teens I told my grandfather that I was feeling a call to ordained ministry. He left the room immediately and without a word. When he came back I asked him what had happened – he said that he’d gone to be sick. He had worked with the clergy at close quarters.

Many clergy would attest to attitudes and actions which have hampered their ministry or prevented its development. Couples where both parties are clergy have stories of unfair treatment and a lack of facilitation in supporting two people in parish ministry. At one level it feels that the Church can occasionally be encouraged across the threshold of change, only to fail substantially in taking the steps that enable change to become a reality.

I am one half of a clergy couple. Across 30 years of ordained ministry there has never been a time when we were both in parish ministry. In various meetings and in correspondence before we married, it was made clear that it would be impossible for us to both continue in full-time stipendiary positions. The fact that we have enjoyed fulfilling roles despite these attitudes is not a mitigation for a Church that focused on legislation with little thought for implementation.

In 2008, along with two colleagues, I was involved in the research and publication of an article which explored some of the characteristics of Anglican health care chaplains in the NHS in England. We had not anticipated being surprised by the basic demographic data which formed the first part of the survey. However, it revealed that 27% of participants were married or partnered to someone in ordained ministry. Also, from the whole cohort, 20% of respondents stated that they were in a same sex relationship. This kind of data begins to reveal something of the silent processes which channel clergy into particular roles.

I was invited to present the findings to the Church of England’s Council for hospital chaplains. It was a full meeting, stacked with the good and great, and I talked through all the key insights from the study. There was one person who pushed back on the implied correlation between clergy couples and people in same-sex partnerships moving into chaplaincy. ‘Maybe there were other things that linked these individuals – did they all have grand pianos?’. Apart from that, nobody spoke (but everyone knew).

Some of the most pernicious forms of prejudice lie just below the surface. Silently they nudge choices one way and not the other. Excluding candidates from roles for which they are eminently qualified and allowing an unrelated characteristic to lead, ‘mysteriously’, to their non- appearance on a short-list. I would love to see a study into the way people change roles when senior leadership moves from one Diocese to another. There is plenty of anecdotal evidence that prior association is a key driver in Church appointments. In 2017 The McGregor-Smith Review (independent review) reminded us that “organisations and individuals tend to hire in their own image”.

The vocational pathways experienced by clergy are an accessible and easy way for the Church to understand the negative forces which shape the deployment of ministers. Forces neither benign nor divine.

It has always appeared to me that the most charismatic element of the Gospel is the offer of radical inclusion. At a time when birth defined status, opportunity and religion, Jesus founded a tribe like no other. A community where nothing is a barrier to belonging and the Church is called to continuously pattern a way of life that prefigures the full coming of the Kingdom. In its words, worship and service, the Church has the most wonderful and amazing job in the world.

Each of us has an obligation to speak and act in this situation. We cannot allow the defects of our mission to continue as the vain repetition of past errors and failings. It is time the Church was recalled to its fundamental, exciting and life-changing role for individuals, communities and society.