I embark on this subject tentatively. With trepidation, because I am neither a missiologist nor an ecclesiologist. Nor did I know, when I agreed to the invitation which Mark Hill put so persuasively over a year ago, what would be happening in the Church in the autumn of 2020. Yet it is in many ways a good time to be having a discussion about mission and structure. As I am sure you know, there is work under way on both these questions within the House of Bishops and beyond. Archbishop Stephen Cottrell is leading some work on a vision and strategy for the Church of England for the 2020s. Bishop Nick Baines is leading a group looking at the governance of the national church institutions, in support of that work.

They are asking two important, related questions. First what do we want of the Church in this decade? Or, rather, what does God want of us in support of this part of His Church in this decade? And secondly, once we know what we believe the Holy Spirit is calling us to in this decade, how should we configure ourselves best to help deliver that?

It is not my purpose to talk here about where those groups have got to so far. Both are ongoing and very much work in progress. But the background of the work going on is perhaps particularly relevant for some personal reflection on these matters. I will, however, turn the title which I was given around: first mission, then structure. That is on the familiar basis that form follows function. To begin with mission: what is the mission of the Church of England? Specifically, what is the mission of the Church of England in this time and this place? I emphasise the specific – this time and this place – because it is all too easy to talk about mission in a much more general sense, as it might apply to the whole Church of God. Moreover, Anglicans are particularly guilty of the habit of eliding the Church of England with the Church of God and ignoring the rest of our Christian brothers and sisters, here in England, let alone abroad.

Nonetheless, in talking about mission we should start with the general principle of the Mission of God, the Missio Dei: a mission from God to the world, with the Church (in all its forms) being the instrument of that mission, of that movement of love from God into the world. Or, to be a bit more specific, we could start where many in the Anglican Communion would start, with the Communion's ‘five marks of mission’: tell, teach, tend, transform, treasure. (There is a longer version, with less alliteration.) And indeed I expect that Archbishop Stephen's work on vision and strategy is very likely to be expressed at least partly through the five marks of mission.

But the five marks are, if not all-embracing, certainly very wide. I have found that, even when using the five marks, mission can mean everything, or – if you are not careful – it can come to mean nothing. Many dioceses have or had boards of mission (or did so when boards were more in fashion) and what they did could vary enormously. Within Church House we found a few years ago that, in order to give an extra impetus to some aspects of mission, we needed to create a new Department of Evangelism and Discipleship (whose role corresponds quite closely to the first two marks of mission) out of the existing broader Department for Mission and Public Affairs.

So what is distinctive about the mission of the Church of England, particularly at this time? Let me suggest a few components. First, we are a national church. Since the Elizabethan settlement, we aspire to be a church for everyone, or at least for everyone to some degree. In principle, you have to opt out of the Church of England, if you live here, rather than opting in. As Anglicans we are so used to this idea that we do not recognise how unusual and rare it is. Secondly, and entwined with the first idea, we are an established church, intimately connected with the State and with civil society: through our Supreme Governor, through the role of the Lords Spiritual, through appointments, and bound by oaths of allegiance. But more important than these national elements is the fact that we are established locally.

That local and cultural establishment goes deeper. The parish system, the cure of souls. Access for anyone, subject to very limited controls, to baptism into the church, marriage in the church, a funeral at the church. And beyond this, the sense that the churches belong to the people. That every community has its own parish church. That the vicar is available for everyone. That anyone and everyone can call upon the church, at any time, but especially at times of heightened emotion, whether emotions of joy and celebration or of grief and sadness. This connection between people and church is of course much less strong than it was. We are told constantly, and not necessarily wrongly, that we are no longer in an age of Christendom. But we do not always realise how much and how distinctive is the continuing connection between people and church, in this place, even in this time.

Some years ago, a colleague from another Anglican province (in the developed world) remarked to me how striking he found it to see that in London in Advent so many carol services were advertised: carol services organised by banks, by insurance companies, by charities, by government departments. ‘Oh yes’, I said, ‘carol services are still very popular.’ He replied

We still refer to this perhaps residual sense of the particular mission of the Church of England in our occasional strapline: a Christian presence in every community. You will see that on the screens at the entrance to Church House, if you ever have a chance to visit it.

A Christian presence in every community: good as far as it goes. But perhaps a bit too comfortable. Perhaps on the one hand a bit complacent: are we really present in every community? Is it still true that we offer the presence of Christ to everyone? There are many towns and particularly the poorer parts of towns – the inner and outer estates – where we are not actually present. And anyway, is not ‘presence’ rather inert, rather static? Is mission not supposed to be about sending out? Should it not be more active, more engaged, involve more movement?

Here is another perspective on mission. Seventy-five years ago a Church commission in the name of William Temple called for the conversion of England. Ah yes, we nod, we have all heard of William Temple. But pause. The conversion of England! How odd; how radical; how angular; how un-Anglican. Why should he need to call for the conversion of England, when England had already had for many centuries a national church to which everyone was invited? Because all were invited, but even in 1945 only some came. Archbishop Justin has said that the Church of England faces an entirely new situation. That situation is of being a missionary church, when it has never previously in its history had to be missionary. And if William Temple felt in the 1940s that we needed a missionary endeavour in order to convert England, how much more do we need it now.

Those who have had the misfortune to hear me speak before know that I can never get through a talk about the Church without reference to numbers. This is no doubt a professional deformation arising from a misspent youth in the Treasury. But it is also because numbers can convey important truths. And for those allergic to numbers – a phenomenon not unknown among clergy nor among lawyers – please remember that every number I mention refers to a human soul. Of the 65 million people in England, a little over 1 million are in Church of England worshipping communities. There are around 800,000 worshipping weekly in our churches. Fewer than 100,000 children and young people worship regularly in our churches. These numbers are declining by 1–2 per cent every year – before the COVID pandemic. The Anglican worshipping community is down at around 1.6 per cent of the population. These trends of decline have been going on for around sixty years – I am tempted to say, since the publication of Honest to God. In the absence of significant change, we can expect a continuing trajectory of decline into the indefinite future.

And one observation about these numbers. It can be hard to hear them, hard to contemplate them; it is all too tempting to try to ignore them. A distinguished retired bishop of my acquaintance once said to me about this, ‘William, you have to realise that all through my ministry I have been hearing that the Church is declining, but look, it is still here.’ To which I would now answer: do not take that as a false hope. If you have been hearing throughout your ministry that the Church has been declining, it is because the Church has been declining throughout your ministry. It is, I suggest, the mission of the Church of England at this time to stop this trend – to turn it around. I think I can suggest that this is a theological, not merely a statistical, concept. Metanoia – one of the only Greek words I know – repenting and turning around. There is another strapline which you will see on some church documents. It is the motto of Renewal and Reform. That motto is: ‘A growing church for all people in all places’. This at least has some sense of motion and action, and ambition.

Why do we need to repent and turn around? At one time I did not think it was necessary to answer this question. Surely the answer is self-evident. Not, to be clear, to increase what some people dismissively refer to as ‘numbers’. Not to save an institution. Not to pay for particular diocesan or national structures. Nonetheless, surely the answer is obvious? Before I came to work in the Church, I used to think so. It had not crossed my mind that any priest would not think that increased numbers of worshippers was unequivocally a good thing. Nor that any bishop would not regard declining numbers as a bad thing. Now I know different.

So why should we wish to be a growing church for all people in all places? First, because we are commanded to do so, to go and make disciples of all peoples. Second, because people need the gospel of salvation; people need community; people need hope. And third, because we need to be there for those times when people will need us. As Philip Larkin puts it:

And they can only satisfy that hunger if the Church is there to feed it.

But can we be a missionary church when we have no missionary history? How can we evangelise when we have not needed to evangelise seriously since Anglo-Saxon times? How can we look outward into society when deep down we arrogantly continue to assume that Church and society are linked? Perhaps my story about the many carol services in our cities can mislead us and give false comfort. Can we be humble about this, while also being bold? We do need to be humbler, given how often we refer to ‘the Church’ when all we mean is this denomination, the Church of England. But we also need to be bolder, in not simply assuming that we have a literally God-given right to our place in society, but recognising that we have to work for it.

I would argue, though, that there is something special and specific to the mission of the Church of England – something that is both permanent and also particularly important at this time. We have a particular calling, a particular duty, a particular burden and a particular opportunity. That calling and opportunity is to be active and present in every place in our country, in every community. Because at our best we can do what others cannot. We reach the parts that others cannot reach. The other traditional Christian denominations are facing the same decline as us, or worse. One sees this in the huge numbers of closed and converted chapels in villages and towns. The new churches, whether evangelical or Pentecostal, can do great things in many places, but for the foreseeable future they can inevitably only operate in some parts of the country. Only the Church of England can still aspire to provide a vehicle to make the faith of Christ available to everyone, everywhere. Also, as the Church of England, we have another – secondary, but important – calling: to speak ‘gently but assuredly’, as Her Majesty the Queen put it in 2012, on behalf of people of all faiths, and to speak up for the position of all faiths in society.

I cannot say what the work of Archbishop Stephen will produce by way of a vision and strategy for the whole Church for this decade. But I do venture to hope that it may encompass a number of things. First, that we will still aim to be in every place, for everyone. Secondly, that we will aim to be more active, more engaged, more committed to our missionary calling. Thirdly, that we will aim to be younger, more diverse, more widespread, more faithful and, yes, more numerous. Fourthly, that we will be more committed – but not committed in such a way as to limit our reach, or to become sectarian. And finally, that we may be more confident in our faith, while humbler about our pretensions.

All the elements of mission come together on the basis of our ability to work for the faith and to be the expression of God's mission everywhere. Without that presence, without that activity, without that commitment, we cannot hope to fulfil any of the marks of mission – let alone all five. As the Diocese of Liverpool put it in their own mission statement, the aim is to be a ‘bigger church making a bigger difference’. Being present, being active, being seen, bringing people to Christ. For what is the alternative? What should the structures be to support that more active, more engaged, more committed mission in every place?

I hope it will be obvious that any reflections on structure will have in mind the missional purpose I have outlined. Remember who this mission is for. It is not just for churchy people – not just for those splendid and committed, but rather unusual, people who are willing to give their time to deanery or diocesan synods, or even to the General Synod. It is not even just for church people, for the million or so people in our worshipping communities. Nor even for the wider fringe of people allied with or with some residual affection for the Church of England. No – it is for all people.

An important observation on culture, approach and therefore structure has been made recently by Archbishop Justin and Bishop Sarah in an article in The Telegraph. They reminded both Church and society, and also Government, of the importance of the local and of decentralisation. They did this while admitting that the Church has not always been good at either. So let me begin with the local. I am a churchwarden in my parish. Prior to taking up the role of the Secretary General, churchwarden was the most senior role I had played in the church. I hope I am a good supporter of my parish church, even if not as good a Christian as I should be. The parish system, or rather a strong local attachment to a parish church (since it is hard to be passionate about a ‘system’), is in my blood.

My grandfather was a parish priest, in both small and large parishes – parishes which illustrated the flexibility and variety possible within that system. He started as a curate in St John's, Southend, in south-east London, which was a very new parish with a new – and indeed still today incomplete – church. A new church plant, one might say. He moved to St Michael's, East Wickham, again in south-east London, to a parish where he built a new 1930s church next door to the old mediaeval church as the population of the parish changed. Then he moved to St Mary's, Portsea, in Portsmouth, where the parish church had three daughter mission churches and a clergy team that included ten curates at a time. Finally, he moved to two small villages in Dorset.

Even in the middle decades of the twentieth century the parishes that made up the parish system were hugely varied. We have added, or have appeared to add, to that variety by labelling some churches today as plants, or fresh expressions, or by giving them different legal status as bishop's mission orders. And they have added to our vigour and variety. But this is not wholly new. The combination of parishes, and fresh expressions, and pioneering and chaplaincies – and now of course additional online services and churches – is sometimes called a mixed economy, or mixed ecology for those who do not like economic metaphors.

Structurally, I suspect we will continue to encourage this mixed ecology and to encourage its variety. Can we have the best of both worlds in our attempt to be a growing church for all people in all places? On the one hand, can we retain and strengthen that territorial community that is at the core of so many, though not all, parishes? Can we support people's sense of community in a place, their identity as a group of local people coming together not just as a gathered congregation but as the body of Christ in and crucially for all the people of that place?

For very many people in our country, notably those described by David Goodhart in his wonderful book The Road to Somewhere as ‘the Somewheres’, this will be important. I suggest that in many places, often transcending the Christian Church, we have seen during the pandemic a strengthened desire for local identity and community, for knowing and supporting, and yes for loving one's – literal – neighbours. Parishes at their best, in many places, can do this. We can go on supporting and strengthening them.

But secondly, we have of course seen another phenomenon of community during the pandemic: that of non-geographical community, particularly through online means. Before COVID we knew about these associational communities, based around different identities and networks. This is not a new or a worrying phenomenon. Anyone who lives and worships in London or our other large cities must recognise how many gathered communities there are, groups of like-minded people, in many parts of society, who will travel – or now Zoom – to be with others like them. This applies outside the Church; it applies inside the Church. Plenty of our urban parishes have been like this for years. Many have strengthened it during 2020.

The conclusion is that we need both. We need territorial community through parishes and we need associational community through both gathered parish churches and non-parish churches. Perhaps we need to work on how to give each value and parity of esteem, and to plan our resourcing covering both. But perhaps we could at least stop throwing insults from one type to the other, as if the mission of God was a zero-sum game in which winners must entail losers.

Secondly, dioceses. I am not sure I want to say very much about dioceses. I am somewhat unsound on the subject and do not want to be drummed out as a heretic. Of course we are an episcopal church and a bishop implies a see, and hence a diocese. But for most Christians in our churches, let alone Christians or non-Christians outside our churches, it is hard to imagine that they truly think of themselves as a body of worshippers gathered around a bishop. For most Anglicans, I suggest, their primary identity is in their local church and/or in their belonging to the whole Church of God, then to their adherence to the Church of England, and only some way afterwards to belonging to a diocese.

The diocesan structure is worth considering. While some of our dioceses are many centuries old, some are of course less than a hundred years old. The Diocese of Leeds, from which no doubt many lessons can be learned, is only six years old. There is certainly a very real question about what functions might best be carried out at diocesan level, or regionally by dioceses working together, rather than at national level. That was one of the points suggested by Archbishop Justin and Bishop Sarah. But placing too much emphasis on the geographical map of dioceses could easily be a distraction from the work of mission if we are not careful.

Thirdly, national structures. I am hesitant about saying too much about this. Bishop Nick Baines is currently leading a group which is reviewing national-level governance and I would not want anything I say to be taken to pre-empt that. But there is plenty for Bishop Nick and his group to examine. We do have a complex system of national governance. That is not surprising. It has evolved through many centuries. Sometimes through gradual evolution, sometimes with apparently dramatic interventions and changes: at the Reformation, in the early nineteenth century with the establishment of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, perhaps in 1970 with the creation of the General Synod, and perhaps in the late twentieth century with the National Institutions Measure. But many of the structural arrangements reflect culture and practice as much as legislative decisions. In particular, they reflect the fact that the Church of England is an institution, or perhaps better an ecology, not a single organisation. Power and authority are dispersed. There are checks and balances, some deliberate and some by custom. These reflect both our local identities and also the breadth of our church traditions.

Talking of national structures and national governance can be misleading. We can too easily imagine a pyramid structure, with the Archbishop of Canterbury at the top, and an organisation chart which looks like the diagram of an army group with armies, divisions, brigades and battalions cascading below in perfect order. But the Church of England is not like that. The Church exists locally and the national structures are not for command and control. They are for support, for resourcing, for setting the terms of operation, for necessary joining-up and for mutual encouragement. National governance refers as much to the governance – that is the proper oversight and assurance – of these support functions as it does to governance of the whole Church across the nation.

Thus there are three related but separate elements. First, what is the shared understanding of the whole Church and its mission? To put it another way, do we have a shared vision for the Church and its work? This is the prime function of the bishops in an episcopal church – and it is precisely this that Archbishop Stephen is now developing, on behalf of the House of Bishops and of the whole Church. That is the leadership function of the bishops envisaged by the Turnbull report, Working as One Body, and the bishops are (finally) doing it. The House of Bishops has other functions or modes of operation: their legislative function and of course their teaching function. But I shall not consider these further here.

Secondly, how are rules and laws set for the church? We are a Church of laws – not just because we can make some of the law of the land but because we are a complex institution or ecology covered by agreed law, rather than ruled by command. This is the legislative element of our governance, which is of course the principal function of the General Synod.

Thirdly, there are the executive functions. These relate to the administration of the laws and the rules; to the implementation of the vision and strategy set by the bishops; and to the provision of those support services best provided at a national level to help the ministry of the Church locally. This set of executive and administrative functions – not legislative, nor judicial – requires oversight. That oversight is the province of national governance. Part of the oversight and scrutiny can come through the General Synod, approving budgets and asking questions. But detailed governance and oversight need to be provided by one or more oversight bodies. For historical reasons, we have two such bodies, in the form of the Archbishops’ Council and the Church Commissioners, each responsible for various aspects of those national functions. Moreover, those bodies have a not fully defined relationship with each other, and with the House of Bishops. Part of the task of Bishop Nick Baines's group is, I suggest, to see whether he can bring more simplicity and clarity to that element of governance and to those relationships. I very much hope he can. Not because the present system is broken: we have found ways to make it work. But because we could certainly aim for greater simplicity and hence greater effectiveness in order to provide greater support for the mission of the Church.

Our mission requires that effectiveness. The people whom we are seeking to serve deserve no less. If our aim remains the conversion of England, we should support that with the most effective structures that will contribute to that aim. We can simplify our structures, while recognising that they are there to support a diverse and dispersed national church, with the sometimes frustrating but often glorious messiness that entails. If we do reform our structures, I hope and pray that they will help make it possible to look back and reflect again at the end of this decade – and to say thank God for the strange rebirth of the Church of England.