A Good Church

I started composing this whilst considering my frustrations with Church. This is unlikely to be an exhaustive list and yes, I have styled it on the closing passage of proverbs which talks about "A good wife". We are Christ's bride after all. I have deliberately not used the terms 'perfect' or 'ideal' on the basis of it not existing... & our ruining it if we joined.

Please feel free to add other lines as you see fit. Or to disagree. Or to improve.

A good church – who can find?

She has a culture of honesty about her failings

She desires to worship always. And in all ways

Her sung, corporate worship is an expression of her joy in serving God in the community she lives in

She values substance over style

She desires practice over theory

She is desperate to know God, to serve God and to love His people

She upsets the comfortable and comforts the upset

Her friends & allies are the poor, the outcast, the unlovely & unloved

She does not seek change for change sake

She is intolerant of pretence, preferring even the most painful truth

She loves those who hate her and seek her destruction

She cries at injustice, and poverty, and brokenness

She wants to understand God's Kingdom. And make it real – here and now

She is both admired and feared – usually by the same people

She frequently finds herself in trouble

She survives, even thrives, by seeking others needs above her own

She loves truth and will only sing truth

She makes friends of the lowly & is regarded as an enemy by the elite

She rejects earthly riches

She fails in most, if not all of the above

She carries on anyway – to stop trying would be the greatest failure of all

All God's children will rise up & call her blessed