the church - simply christian

I've been reading N.T. Wright's "Simply Christian". Today I read ch. 9 "God's Breath of Life." Speaking of the church he says (p.123):

It's a place of welcome and laughter, of healing and hope, of friends and family and justice and new life. It's where the homeless drop in for a bowl of soup and the elderly stop by for a chat. It's where one group is working to help drug addicts and another is campaigning for global justice. It's where you'll find people learning to pray, coming to faith, struggling with temptation, finding new purpose, and getting in touch with a new power to carry that purpose out. It's where people bring their own small faith and discover, in getting together with others to worship the one true God, that the whole becomes greater than the sum of its parts. No church is like this all the time. But a remarkable number of churches are partly like that for quite a lot of the time.

[and later on]... It is the church which, despite all its follies and failings, is there when it counts in hospitals, schools, prisons, and many other places. I would rather rehabilitate the word "church" than beat about the bush with long-winded phrases like "the family of God's people" or "all those who believe in and follow Jesus" or "the company of those who, in the power of the Spirit, are bringing God's new creation to birth." But I mean all those things when I say "church."

You know, I completely understand people's disillusionment with the church... but it is so refreshing to hear someone point out the GOOD THINGS about the church.

He also says, on p.124:

The Spirit is given so that we ordinary mortals can become, in a measure, what Jesus himself was: part of God's future arriving in the present; a place where heaven and earth meet; the means of God's kingdom going ahead. The Spirit is given, in fact, so that the church can share in the life and continuing work of Jesus himself, now that he has gone into God's dimension -- that is, heaven.

I like this chapter. I think more of "the church" needs to hear more about what we do right, rather than all the things we do wrong. Not that we don't need to hear where we're wrong, but sometimes it can seem like we never do ANYTHING right. And that is simply not true.

Thanks, Tom.