The Fullness of the Church?

Continuing to roll with thoughts about true church, best church, infiltrators in the church, basis or bases for communion and so forth ...

One challenge with focusing on being "true church" is that a logical consequence is that other churches are "false churches" or, perhaps more accurately "not-actually-churches-because-there-is-only-one-church-and-that-is-the-true-church". A number of  Catholic Tweeters on X are certainly meeting that challenge with zest and joy e.g. cheerfully repeating the mantra that Anglican orders are null and void, for everyone and especially for women who dare to take up roles such as, oh, I don't know, Archbishop of Canterbury, or pouring scorn on all things "Protestant." But others, I sense, are caught between joy in being in the one true church and the agony of not wishing to deem fine Lutherans, Anglicans etc as unfit for heaven.

While an advantage of taking the "best church" approach is avoiding that challenge above, even "best church" people can end up looking askance at members of less than the best churches. 

Driving to one of our parishes recently, a familiar route on a Sunday morning taking me past a well-attended Open Brethren assembly, I got to thinking as follows.

Perhaps the important thing to focus on is the fullness of the church, by which I mean the church grows into the fullness or completeness of what is intended to be in Christ, and Christ continues to fill the church, more and more, with his fullness. Ephesians offers these thoughts on the fullness of Christ in and for the church:

"And he has put all things under his feet and has made him the head over all things for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all." (Ephesians 1:22-23)

"... the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone. In him the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord; in whom you also are built together spiritually into a dwelling place for God." (Ephesians 2:19c - 22)

"I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God." (Ephesians 3:18-19)

Can we say of any church, "Ah, that one has reached the fullness captured in these visionary texts?"

I think not. We all fall short, we are all provisional approximations to the fullness of the church envisioned in Ephesians (and in, say, John 17, 1 Corinthians 12-14, 1 Peter, Revelation 4-5). But, every church has something working well within it. Every church has an aspect of the fullness of the church which we can learn from. Here it might be depth of fellowship, there it might be perfection in liturgy, across the town a church may have the best (most devout, most beautiful, most God-honouring) music, and in some places of oppression, there lies the bravest and most faitful church.

Etc.

Rather than look askance at other churches as "false" or "not the best", what if we said, with ecclesiastical humility, "What can I receive from this church? What can I learn?"