Having been on hiatus, I have resumed a periodical column with Evangelicals Now. The current edition carries the most recent article. I reproduce it unedited and in full here.

At the time of writing, a coroner’s report concerning the headteacher, Ruth Perry, has just delivered its verdict. The inquest determined that her final Ofsted inspection “lacked fairness, respect and sensitivity”, states that at times the inspection was “rude and intimidating” and ruled that it “likely contributed” to her death. Mrs Perry took her own life whilst waiting for the Ofsted report to be published.

The death of Ruth Perry sparked a public debate about the role of Ofsted and how school inspections work more broadly in the UK. BBC News report, ‘Ofsted chief inspector Amanda Spielman said last month Mrs Perry’s death had been used to “discredit” the schools watchdog. Referring to these comments, Ms Connor [the senior coroner] said this suggests a lack of learning from this case.’ She stated that there was a marked difference between the evidence of the council and Ofsted, suggesting the council was open and accepting with a clear desire to improve matters.

There are those who read these things and immediately assume the answer is to revoke school inspections and wind down Ofsted. Others, the Chief Inspector of Schools amongst them, appear to think all is well and little if anything needs to change. Because schools clearly do fail at times, standards do slip and some children are badly let down, evidently school inspections are necessary, sensible and valuable. But the goal of such inspections ought not to be the tearing down and annihilation of those doing their best in the systems they are asked to work within, but to seek improvement so that those trying their best might be more effective and helped to serve their children and communities most helpfully.

Of course there may be times when teachers and senior leadership teams are so damaging they may need removing, but I suspect most need help to improve rather than being pilloried in the public square as though they purposefully failed. I equally suspect – along with the coroner – that the processes employed to discover which schools are being effective, which need help and whether anybody is dangerously damaging children needs some serious revision. Whether teachers and senior leaders need removing from post or not, it is possible for us to have abusive processes set up to find such things out.

Much like in schools, few (I think) would argue there should be no checks and balances at work within the church. Few think untrammelled freedom and absolute power vested in the hands of one church leader is a good thing. Leaving aside my personal ecclesiological view that such would be deeply unbiblical, it is pragmatically incredibly dangerous. As an aside, Anglicans who insist they do not submit to the authority of errant bishops need to think very carefully about their polity when they consider they are “functional independents” for they are essentially rejecting the external oversight of their bishop without any other credible check on the power of their appointed vicar. What has been charitably termed a model of “monarchical presbyters” others have less charitable labelled it as ruling their own personal fiefdom.

But (and here is the point), whilst checks and balances are vitally important – whether you get them from a bishop, presbytery or within your local congregation – we must be careful that such things do not become abusive in themselves or operate with abusive processes. Just as Ofsted may be necessary to check schools and ensure they function properly but their very process now seems to abuse those it is designed to help, so churches can allow their checks and balances to effective abuse those they are designed to help. Rather than helping leaders to flourish for the good of the church, many view the dissemination of power in the church as their opportunity to wield it less for the good of the church and more as means of controlling, or even destroying, the leaders God has gifted to the church.

It has been noted many times that abusive leaders do exist in the church. But it also pays to remember that abusive members and congregations exist too. Whilst there are some who have faced church hurt and genuinely abusive leaders, almost every pastor has experienced serious harms and abuse from within their congregation. Much like Ruth Perry, the checks and balances rightly granted to the church are often used less to help leaders honour the Lord and serve their churches well and, instead, are frequently used by disgruntled members or those who love power without accountability to destroy leaders when they do not get their own way or they, for whatever reason, simply take a dislike. Even the processes employed to investigate these things are themselves interminable. I know of several pastors, accused of abuse of power yet exonerated in the end who were hauled over the coals for a period of years, with the most trifling minutiae pored over, in a bid to find anything that might stick. Nobody, in any of the cases I am aware of it seems, considered this the evidently abusive process it clearly is!

Unsurprisingly, fewer and fewer are even willing to countenance going into ministry. Nobody ever got into it for the money (certainly not here in the UK where we typically function on the ‘treat em mean, keep em keen’ philosophy!) But now with the threat of ill-defined spiritual abuse hanging over the head of many like the sword of Damocles, and abusive processes that – even if you are found to be entirely innocent – make people in actuality wish to take their own lives, that tend to chew people up and spit them out, is it any wonder – just as we have a huge teacher shortage in this country – we are finding a similar problem in the pastorate?