Some Truth About Church

I have just finished reading Samuel Wells' "Speaking the Truth". It's sub-titled "Preaching in a Diverse Culture" and includes a multitude of fascinating insights about both preaching and culture, and indeed a whole bunch of other stuff. It's a great book of modelling for preachers, but also with a lot to say to all sorts of other people and, of course, that is just what the sermons which Wells quotes in the book originally did. There was lots that interested me, but particularly a few comments about church. Wells is highly realistic about church, but importantly recognises that church is how Jesus' way is expressed. For instance, he says: "Jesus didn't give us perfection, he gave us church. And church means facing up every day to the way we've failed God, failed one another and failed ourselves. Church means entering every day into the cycle of repentance and confession and forgiveness and reconciliation and healing." Of course, church is not perfect, but it's where we are called to be; it's what we are called to do. As Wells says elsewhere in the book: "Church isn't a place where we identify and lambast Pharisees while searching out and applauding tax collectors: it's a community where we meet one another, learn the complexity and texture of one another's stories, wonder at the grace and mercy by which our paths have crossed, realise with gratitude that our salvation lies in one another, and turn together in humility to recognise, like never before, our need of God."