Do you have a woman vicar in your parish? If so please give her a hug this week and a thumbs up from me. She needs it because it has not been a good week for the Church of England, and especially not for the hundreds of hard-working women clergy who serve in our parishes. Nearly one in three priests in Chelmsford Diocese is a woman. Without them the church would be in a very bad way.
As the Archbishop of Canterbury put it: "We have some explaining to do."
How is it that with a vast majority of people wanting to have women bishops our synod voted the idea down? How do we explain to the world that there is discrimination in the church? And how do we explain to ourselves that our decision-making processes do not deliver what the vast majority want?
Well, I don't want to defend what has happened, but I do want to try and explain, and then place what has happened in a bigger context.
Most people in the Church of England do want women bishops, but because we are a family, and because like all families we disagree on some issues, we are trying to find a way of doing this that won't exclude anyone.
This is hard. Before we act, we seek consensus. But this is an honourable way of doing business. It is something the rest of the world needs. Many of our problems arise because we don't try hard enough to live with legitimate differences.
But care for the minority should not mean being overruled by the minority.
Therefore, sadly, we have more work to do, so that there can be women bishops in the church.
But I fear we have put too much faith in legislation. We need to find loving and pastoral ways of living with differences, and I hope we will soon.
In the meantime, I take this opportunity of paying tribute to the women clergy I work with in Essex and East London and thanking them for their sacrificial ministry. The church's credibility has been damaged by what has happened this week, and as a result our job will be that much harder.
But we will soldier on: the church exists for the needs of the world, and despite this setback, and whatever your views on this issue, this week we will be getting on with our job of telling people about Jesus Christ and serving our local communities.
