No Church is Pleasing to God as...

At the Earl's Bu, the site of a dwelling and church at Orkney’s village of Orphir, was found a stone upon which was an interesting runic inscription. In the Latin script it is translated:

ikirkirkiakop(i)uf (:) s-... ...

and was translated into English by Andrea Blendl as

No church is pleasing to God as...

I should dearly love to have known which words followed. Does it mean ‘No church is as pleasing to God as...one which prays regularly’, for example? Or ‘No church is pleasing to God as...they are corrupted and useless’?

The issue into which pastors, elders and deacons should regularly enquire is 'does God approve of their church?', of its structures, its emphases, its worship and its doctrine? The early chapters of the book of Revelation address seven churches, offering Christ’s own assessment of their quality. Some are commended, while others censured, with several receiving a little of each. Whether individual members, leaders or visitors like a church is ultimately irrelevant: does a church please God?

So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth. Because thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked: I counsel thee to buy of me gold tried in the fire, that thou mayest be rich; and white raiment, that thou mayest be clothed, and that the shame of thy nakedness do not appear; and anoint thine eyes with eyesalve, that thou mayest see. Revelation 3:16-18