It is not often a husband and wife are both “promoted” at the same ordination ceremony, but to go on to serve in neighbouring parishes, in churches with matching names, seems bordering on divine intervention.

The Revs Andrew and Carol Avery, both 58, are leading lives of symmetry at the moment, in St Mary’s Greenhithe and St Mary’s Stone, respectively.

But things were not always that way.

A lifelong Christian, Andrew has served for many years, while Carol was a latecomer to the church.

Carol said: “I was brought up in a family that never went to church. I came from quite an abusive background. Our church was very judgmental too, they didn’t like women.

“I didn’t like it. I didn’t make a commitment to faith of any sort.

“But then I had my own children and wanted them to be brought up in a good environment. I started going to a different church.”

In 2002 she quit her job in market research and started working with a toddler group based in a church in Northampton. Over time she took up pastoral work and became a lay minister.

“It was the best thing I ever did,” she said, “I didn’t like my job, the ethics were all wrong.

“A number of people said to me, ‘you should be ordained’ but I’d never even considered it as an option because I always felt women didn’t do that.

“But I spoke to a director of ordinands and went for it. It was a big step, having come from a very misogynistic environment where the role of women in a church was to make the coffee and put flowers in a vase. We weren’t even allowed in some of the rooms, it was ridiculous. It shows you how far things have come.”

Now she has been ordained as a deacon at a ceremony in Rochester Cathedral and was given a role as a curate in the Stone church.

Her husband, already priest-in-charge at St Mary’s Greenhithe, was given the role of assistant diocesan director of ordinands during the same ceremony, which means he will help select people for ordination and take them through the process.

The pair have been married 23 years, with five children between them, one granddaughter and another on the way.

Andrew started his working life as a PE teacher, focusing on helping children with behavioural difficulties, before working as an education officer in local government.

He was brought up in a church family but on the breakdown of his first marriage joined a new church and it was the vicar there who said to him ‘you’re meant to be ordained’.

They have been part of the same church since 1994, and when Andrew joined St Mary’s and Carol would help out with events there, including the weekly community cafe.

Now she is a curate, or trainee priest. She had to study two years of theology before being ordained as a deacon and must now serve the parish as a curate for three years, working with an experienced cleric, the Rev Kenneth Clark, who will be her mentor and role model.

Andrew said: “We do have a bit of banter about the whole situation and there’s some friendly rivalry. I’m envious of Carol having a roof that doesn’t leak, and I have been asked how I feel about giving my wife over to a younger man in Kenneth.

“They are very different styles of church. Stone is much more traditional with its own organist, whereas Greenhithe has a music group and a lot more young people and families.

“But it works well and we’re trying to do more to pull the churches and communities together. In being married we’re almost a visible symbol of the new relationship between the two St Mary’s.”