Justin Welby has expressed immense frustration at the Church of England's inward focus, urging churchgoers to instead concentrate on 'outrageous inequality', oppression, cruelty and abuse.

The Archbishop of Canterbury described meetings about internal politics as the worst part of his job and urged churches to 'look outward' as he launched a global prayer and evangelism initiative.

Thy Kingdom Come is part of a broader trend of churches around the world, previously split by division and disagreement, working together, he said.

It is designed to unite more than 50 denominations across 85 countries through ten days of prayers in May.

'One of my biggest frustrations in the church, as indeed in most institutions, is it is much easier to talk about what is going on inside it than what is going on outside,' an exasperated Welby told an audience of clergy and representatives from different churches around the UK at Lambeth Palace today.

'It is not more satisfying. In fact it is unbelievably frustrating. Someone once described a meeting as where a group of people can decide on something about which not a single one of us agrees.

'In the church we can get together to meet, to pray, to worship and we absolutely focus inwardly. We leave thinking, "that is not how we want to be" and every single person there thinks, "this is not how we want to be" but they still do it.

'In my experience we do it week by week, month by month, year by year, decade by decade and I am told by century. Probably by millennia.

'The business of being witnesses to Jesus Christ and of praying to be witnesses compels us to look into the world around us. It compels us to seek, to experience the compassion of God for a world caught up in lostness, in sin, but also in suffering and pain, in oppression of the poor, in cruelty, in abuse, in outrageous inequality, in all the things that go against the Kingdom of God.'

The CofE is facing a difficult few weeks with questions over its welcome towards transgender people and how it handled Bishop George Bell's alleged abuse likely to be raised at its ruling general synod in February before the Church goes before the national inquiry on abuse in March. 

Welby hopes his Thy Kingdom Come initiative, which last year reached more than half a million people across more than 85 countries including Ghana, Netherlands, Malaysia, Cuba, South Africa, Australia, Korea, Japan and the Philippines, will shake the Church of England out of what he sees as internal navel gazing.

'The moment we start praying "Thy Kingdom Come" we start looking outward,' he said.

Backed by the Catholic Church, the Methodist Church and the pentecostal Redeemed Christian Church of God, Lambeth Palace hopes to grow its reach even more in 2018.

Speaking at a separate event at Bishopthorpe Palace in York yesterday, John Sentamu, the Archbishop of York, said: 'It gladdens and warms my heart to know that many Christians throughout the world are committing themselves, from today to Pentecost, to pray for the Coming of Our Father in Heaven's Kingdom – a Kingdom of Justice, Peace and Joy in the Holy Spirit.'