I think enough time has been spent explaining away the church.

It is a shallow approach that only says, ‘I just emphasise Jesus’. That’s nice. And what do you say Jesus taught? ‘We should love one another.’ That’s nice too. And would you like to live this way with Jesus’ people? ‘Of course’. Well then, that’s how we define the church. You can forget the buildings, the robes, the denominational enclaves and defining a whole country as ‘Christian’ (but you know all that and you’ve said it manys a time yourself).

When I wrote the book Sorted in 2013 people asked me, ‘where is the church in this book?’ I said, ‘everywhere’, since every time we come across Christians, whether scattered or gathered, we are dealing with the church. By this I mean the whole Body of Christ including, prominently, the local church.

The beauty of the Church’s history has been the working together of the universal Church (throughout the world and the centuries) and the local church (where the accountability buck usually stops). I find it hard to see (as many do) that the New Testament teaches the local church as the only way. But I have asked leaders in my local church to hold me accountable. If they see things going wrong in my life, they are the most likely ones to notice and blow a whistle.

On the universal side – would you know which local church the following people belonged to – St Augustine, John Wesley, George Frideric Handel, Florence Nightingale. No? I wouldn’t know either. They belong to all of us.

So why is the church so embarrassing? – a group of people afflicted by problems ranging from hypocrisy to sexual deviation, grandiose leadership, theft, jealousy, and lukewarm namby-pamby commitment – and that’s just the first century!

Before the New Testament was scarcely begun it was having to spend page after page on things going wrong with the church, very human things. But this was going to be the first community in history where repentant human beings could walk in the light, having fellowship with one another, and having the blood of Jesus Christ cleanse them from all sin.

It was never meant to be a superhuman community – it was meant to be supernatural, in which sin was not swept under the carpet but found out and confessed. Indeed, our culture is indebted to Christian teaching for developing the very notion of hypocrisy. And the church is headed for a great destiny. You will one day be glad you scrambled on board. The recurring media noise about “The church won’t last another 20 years” is laughable and displays a gaping wide ignorance of history and of the power of the Holy Spirit.

And who’s embarrassed? Did I come to the church fully formed and walking along the moral high ground? Or do I owe much of what I know about God and the Bible to the kindly contribution of God’s church in my life?

Why have we allowed unbelievers to take over the question, “What about at the record of the church”? That’s our question. The many centuries of history in which Christians have provided education, health services, and indeed hospice services, is not old hat. It continues unabated in movements such as Tearfund and myriads of others. No embarrassment there then.

And why did they take a hammer and chisel to change the front of Westminster Abbey in 1998? To record the momentous contribution made by the Christian martyrs of the 20th century by installing statues of ten representative cases – like Oscar Romero and Martin Luther King Jr. Which brings up another question – is the persecuted church embarrassed about us? I don’t think so, but I hear (from organisations like ‘Church in Chains’) that they pray earnestly for us.

How does the future look? Crawford Gribben, professor of history at Queen’s University Belfast, wrote a definitive book in 2021 on The Rise and Fall of Christian Ireland. When he was then interviewed by the Iona Institute, he was asked about the future of the church he said, ‘I think about what Jesus said when he speaks to the 12 apostles and he sends them out, “Fear not little flock. It is the Father’s good pleasure to give you the Kingdom” [Luke 12:32] For a long time it was hard to believe that Christians in Ireland were part of a little flock. But once we discover ourselves to be part of a little flock we’re able to take our eyes off our own strength, or the strength of our own institutions, and instead look to the One who is the Good Shepherd of the little flock, who promises us that is the Father’s good pleasure to give us the kingdom. No one can take it from us. It’s his to give and he intends to do so’.

So, it’s not exactly ‘I’m from the church’. To be precise, I’m from the Lord. But that means I’m with the church. Like it or lump it. I’m proud of it.

Christ will stand with his Church, the bride, at the Big Wedding. Don’t you think I can afford to take that stand now?

P.S. When I turned to writing again last year (The Electrician’s Children) I did manage to get the church in!