Introduction to successful church hunting:  

 

 

   Not everything done in the name of church is God’s idea of Church but Church itself is definitely God’s idea. I personally wish to apologize to you if you have had a bad experience with church in the past. Sometimes Christians can be the absolute worst advertisement for Christianity. The church is comprised of people and people always have flaws. In my personal experience though, I have discovered that the typical local church is comprised of solid, dedicated, faithful, honest and hardworking people who love God and are there for each other.

 

 

   Finding a good church will depend on things that you should look for in the church but also things you must look for in yourself. The following is a guide to finding a good church divided into three sections. The first is a description based on the authority of scripture to define and describe how church ‘should’ be. The second focuses on approaching the selection of a church with a right heart and attitude. Finally, the last section details some particular features of good churches as well as pit-falls, negative church environments and situations to avoid. I guarantee that if a person truly wants to find a good local church they will be pleasantly surprised how easy it is to find one! They are all over the place if you know where and how to look.

 

   God is multi-faceted. He is a Righteous judge. He is a loving Father. He is the Good Shepherd. He is the Prince of Peace. He is the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. He can be stern and scary. He can be soft and gentle. He can speak worlds into existence. He can shake the nations down to the very dust with a single word. He can make enormous galaxies. He can make the tiniest flower. God is reflected in all these things and a million more. Many people wonder why we have so many denominations of Christianity. Are they different religions? No, they all basically have the same core beliefs but they differ in ‘emphasis’. Some see the Holiness side of God and have trouble seeing anything else. Some see the love of God and tend to exclude anything about God from there attention that is not about love.

  

   The best church situation, in my opinion is when a church atmosphere where God will manifest His incredible Holiness where the people feel as though they so utterly sinful and defiled and unworthy to even lift their eyes toward heaven, only to be followed by another service on another day when God’s joy fills the meeting place to the point where the people feel like cheering as if they were at a football game and their team just scored a touch down. A perfect church situation would be where these various facets of God’s nature and character were revealed to the people without the church ‘specializing’ in one niche or another.

 

   We will all find the facet of God’s nature and character that makes us feel the most comfortable and where we feel the most at home. The people who feel that way tend to ‘flock together’ as the saying goes. That is natural and not necessarily a bad thing. We work together best when we are yoked together with likeminded people. I do want to caution however, against despising people whose love and zeal for God is equal to your own and who also have sound biblical doctrine but tend to emphasize a different aspect or facet of God’s nature and character than you do. If we listed some of these facets out and ranks them by number, they may put facet number 3 in the place we put number 10. We can agree to disagree on the ranking but we do not invalidate the other. DO NOT bring a disagreement about process and procedure to the same level as false doctrine. I don’t think denominations, which do that, are going to be banished from heaven but they are going to be incredibly shocked IN heaven when they see things the way the Lord sees them!

 

 

 

   The number one observation regarding church when reading the Bible is that the word church is NOT talking about a building. The church is a gathering of people joined together to worship God and grow together in their common faith as followers of Jesus. The building is simply a place to meet. The Bible tells us very little about HOW to conduct a church service. There is no prescribed order for the way a church meeting should go or what it should look like. The Bible does however tell what kinds of activities should take place in the church gathering and what components are essential when we assemble together as believers.

  

   Some parts of the typical church service are purely cultural. The typical church will have a set order for the service. The meeting will open a certain way, then go to the next part and the next part like clockwork. People find comfort in the predictability of the structure and things just seem to work better when people have an idea what to expect. This is perfectly fine and there is nothing wrong with organization and structure. We must be careful though not to confuse the things we have put in place for ourselves to help us keep order and structure with actual doctrines and commandments of scripture.

 

   The first Christians, often called ‘The early Church’, made it their practice to gather on Sunday or the first day of the week. This was a way of honoring the most important event in all of Christianity- The Resurrection of Jesus. These early church meetings were much less formal and organized than the typical church service today. They generally met in homes and often would take turns having the meetings at other each other’s homes. While they were dedicated to meet on Sunday, it was common for some groups to meet EVERY day. When it was dangerous to meet openly they met, as many do today in areas where Christians are not welcomed, in caves and tunnels, and other secret locations. Meeting together was not a religious rule to them. It was simply a natural part of their life in Christ. The same should be true for us as followers of Christ today.

 

   We need to remember that in the early days of the church the makeup of cities and towns was such that it was more conducive to ‘easy meeting’. People lived within walking distance of everything- because for most people that was their only option. It was not hard to get people together because A- The logistics were easy and B- There were not nearly as many completing options available for other things to do. It is admittedly harder to handle the logistics in our world as compared with theirs but let us not forget that we don’t have the threat of being fed to lions hanging over our heads either. I think they may have had their fair share of reasons why getting together would be difficult or ‘inconvenient’.   

 

   The early church meeting often involved meals together. These were sometimes called ‘Love feasts’ where people could bring unbelievers in to hear the message of the gospel. The believers made it a point to regularly celebrate ‘The Lord’s supper’ or Communion. This is in obedience to the Lord’s Command to “Do this in Remembrance of me.” They would drink a little wine or grape juice and each eat a small piece of bread. The bread symbolizes the Lord’s body that was broken for our sin. The wine or grape juice symbolized the blood of Jesus that was poured out to seal the New Covenant with God whereby we can be brought back into right relationship with God.

 

   They would often have people who had decided to follow Jesus who wished to follow the Lord’s teaching and example to be Baptized in water. Baptism is a visual picture of our faith that Jesus died, was buried and three days later arose from the dead. We believe that because He died for us, that we therefore have died with him to ourselves and have risen with Him to live in the power of His resurrection victorious both in the life and the eternal life to come. Baptism was a great test to see if a person REALLY wanted to follow the Lord because agreeing to be baptized was basically your death sentence if the Roman authorities caught you in those days.

 

 They would get together on Sunday and often make an entire day of it. They would start in the morning and hang out together all day long until evening. The meetings would involve prayer- lots and lots of prayer. They would pray for each other. They would pray for the salvation of loved ones. They would pray for Christian evangelists, missionaries and church leaders. They would pray for government officials. The Bible speaks many times of the kinds of prayers offered in their meetings.

 

   They made room for people in the church to ‘Testify’ or tell the things that they had seen God do in their lives. Some people had new songs they had written. Some maybe had a poem to share others wanted to tell of answered prayer. There were times available for individuals to contribute the insights and useful knowledge that had been given to them in order for the whole church to benefit.

 

   They would take up a collection. The Bible describes several uses for the offerings collected. Some was used to help impoverished fellow Christians who were in areas of severe persecution for their faith. (Remember- this was at the time of the Roman Empire and it was very dangerous to openly be a follower of Jesus.) Other funds were used to support individuals amongst themselves who had need, especially widows and orphans. The Bible says that these people never viewed their possessions as their own but were willing to share with the others, as there was need and even sold properties and gave to the church leadership for prayerful distribution.

 

   They would read the Bible together. People in those days did not have their own copies of the scriptures to read. Even if they did though, they still would have taken the time, when assembled to read the scriptures together. They would sing songs together. The songs were mostly scripture verses put to music. It was a great way (then and now) to memorize key passages from the Bible.

 

   It is fascinating to see how the early church developed from the handful of believers at the beginning in Jerusalem. The first followers of Jesus were Jewish people with a Jewish worldview. They felt very sure that God wanted them to maintain their Jewish identity and culture and that all the other people coming into the church from non-Jewish backgrounds should change to adopt Jewish customs as well. The early church soon found people from non-Jewish backgrounds clashing with the Jewish believers. The situation became very severe and almost boiled over.

 

   The area known as Judea, Israel or Palestine which was at the time a Roman province had before been a Greek province conquered under Alexander the Great. The area was a major trade corridor. I think it was shear genius for God to start the early church in the time and place that He did. God forced His people at the very beginning to learn how to blend their various cultures and backgrounds and work together as a ‘body’. The church is therefore most often referred to in the Bible as ‘The Body of Christ’. Jesus is the head and all the individuals have their own unique purpose and function.

 

   Acts Chapter two describes some of the various people groups that heard the gospel proclaimed to them at the very beginning, and miraculously, in their own languages! Check this list out; Galileans, Parthians, Medes, Elamites, Mesopotamians, Cappadoceans, Phrygians, Pamphylians, Egyptians, Libyans, Cyrenians, Romans, Cretans, Arabians, and Judeans. This is by no means an exhaustive list. These are a sampling of the people groups who heard the gospel in the very beginning. Many of these people became believers and became part of the Body of Christ.

 

   The first thing that had to be done was to decide which areas of the church gathering were ‘flexible’ and what areas were to be uniform standard procedure in any and all church gatherings. They had to make certain rules amongst themselves to keep order in the gatherings and not allow the meeting to end up in chaos. There are at least six New Testament verses that specifically deal with the church service and individuals in the church acting in an ‘orderly’ manner.

 

   They organized people to do various duties including serving food and waiting on tables. At first the direct disciples of Jesus were the ones who did most of the serving and cleaning up. They felt that was the way to go because that is the way Jesus taught them. They were the leaders so they should be the first to get in and serve and set the example. Later on the people suggested that those who had the most knowledge of scripture and could teach should focus their energy on doing that instead of doing the jobs that did not require their particular gifting and qualifications. They never said that the service jobs were ‘beneath’ them. They just felt it was a better use of the knowledge resources to train up as many others in the Bible as possible.

 

   That is another thing that the early church did in their meetings. They listened to sermons. There is one case described in the Bible where the teacher taught long into the evening and a guy sitting on a window ledge nodded off and fell to the ground dead. Fortunately the church leaders were able to gather around him and pray for him and he was raised back to life.

 

   The early church was commissioned, empowered and commanded by Jesus to be effective in three areas. First they were to know how to live in a way that pleases God with victory over Satan, their own flesh and the temptations of the world. Secondly they were to learn how to effectively contribute their time, energy and resources to help strengthen their fellow believers in any way necessary. Finally, they were to learn that every single believer has a role in taking the gospel message outside the church to their own unique spheres of influence so that others will be brought to faith in Christ.

 

   So let’s see, the early church prayed. They sang songs. They had meals together. They read the Bible together. They prayed together. They learned to make room for styles, and cultural differences without compromising the non-negotiable truths and doctrines of scripture. They took up offerings. They organized leadership. They recognized those who had gifts and ability to be teachers. They appointed people who could handle the day-to-day duties of organization and serving the needs of the people. They made room for people to make their own individual contributions to help encourage and strengthen the church. They remembered the Lord in communion. They baptized new converts. In other words they did the things we typically find in church today.

 

   The Bible never gave us a spelled out list of the things to have in a church service or how to conduct a church service but all of the parts we would find in a typical church service are found in the examples modeled by the early followers of Jesus. There is room for flexibility in the exact manner and way things are done but these basic components will be found in all truly Christian churches.

 

 

 

 

There are several things you should bring with you when hunting for a good church and there are definitely some things to leave at home. The following are NOT in order of importance.

 

 

1)      Bring a heart willing to serve: Perhaps you have great gifting and ability. Perhaps you have great skills and special qualifications. Just roll up your sleeves and ask where help is needed. If there is a potluck meal, make sure you are the one setting up and tearing down. Be the one who picks up the paper towel in the restroom that the other person carelessly threw next to the trash can. Your giftings and abilities will eventually be drawn out and you will be called on to serve in the areas where you will be the most effective.

2)      Bring a teachable spirit: The church service, systems, styles etc. can all be done in a wide variety of ways as long as all the components are present. Just because a thing is not done in a manner that you are accustomed to, imagined or seen in the past, does not mean that it is not a valid way of doing things. You may learn that there were situations that came about in that church’s history that required that something be done in a different way. If you are new to a place, ‘Hold your fire’ with your ideas and ‘suggestions’ until you have been there long enough to get up to speed with the way they do things and WHY.

3)      Bring your Bible: While there is great flexibility in the ways to do things, there is NO flexibility when it comes to tinkering with the fundamental doctrines of Christianity. If the teaching in that church does not line up with scripture regarding the person of God, His nature, His plan of Salvation, the Cross, The death-burial and resurrection of Jesus etc., then it is time to find another church. If you are a dedicated follower of Jesus, the Holy Spirit will cause a little alarm bell to go off in your heart, saying ‘Something isn’t right here’. Even if you can’t quite put your finger on it, something will just seem off. You should carefully pray and ask God to reveal what it is and He will eventually show you from scripture what is out of line with the word of God. The key here is to check if the teaching is in line with God’s word and not merely out of line with your tastes and preferences. You need to be able to separate the two and not equate the former with the latter. Which brings up another thing to bring….

4)      Bring a knowledge of what you like: This may shock some people but there are many churches that I believe are very good churches, who teach sound doctrine, who have very solid, mature, and capable ministers, that I simply do not feel I would be a good fit with. I DO NOT discredit or invalidate ministries that I feel are not ‘my style’. Finding a church is more like finding a mate than a breakfast cereal but there is one thing that both approaches have in common, namely taste. Finding a breakfast cereal is a matter of the mood of the moment and slick advertisement. You pick the product and can un-pick it tomorrow if another one strikes your fancy. ‘Product’ selection is a fickle thing. Selecting a mate requires choosing someone that you are going to be in a covenant relationship with. You are choosing this one exclusively. It does not mean that you invalidate all other human beings of that sex. It means that you have carefully selected “The One’ for you. You need to make sure it is a good match. You know the doctrine is sound but the personalities also match. You are a ‘good match’. You then proceed in your relationship with that church with loyalty, respect, honor, and full support and you would pursue your covenant relationship with your spouse. You become a part of that local Body of believers and you don’t just leave that body because the church down the road has a new music leader or nicer chairs or a cooler program.

5)      Bring a willingness to let God have the final say: Again, if you are a dedicated follower of Jesus, when you pray, the Holy Spirit will guide you in your decisions. Do not say yes or no until the Holy Spirit have settled the issue in your heart and your have peace knowing it is the right choice. This sense of God’s leading is important because there will be days in ANY covenant relationship when you will be offended or hurt or upset and feel like walking out. The church is comprised of people and people offend each other. But if you can come back to the place where what you feel like doing at the moment is tempered by the knowledge that you were directed by the Lord to be part of that church at the beginning, you cannot just unplug yourself on a whim and go on to the next place.

6)      Bring a love for the Body of Christ as a whole: We live in an age where life is very busy, spread out and complex. There are a host of very valid and good programs, events and activities that are available to Christians through various channels including books, CDs, DVDs, Web sites, and also OTHER church groups. It is not evil or disloyal to be a committed member of a local church and still attend special events, make use of certain services, or ministry from other Christian sources. When we become a member of a local body, we are a part of that body. One does this role another that role, none is an island to himself. We must never forget though that each local church is in a similar way merely a piece in the much larger Body of Christ. One does this role and another that role. No church is meant to be an island to itself. One Pastor friend of mine likens it to a restaurant concept. One option is to try and have every possible choice or option available on our own menu. The other option is to appreciate your community’s body of Christ smorgasbord. We should not feel bad if we put something on our plat offered at another location and we should not make others feel bad about it either. We are not talking about breaking your covenant relationship with you church, just appreciating and interacting with the greater body of Christ.

7)      Bring a love of life and effectiveness in God: Look for signs of life in the church you are checking out. Does the church have direction, purpose, vision? Is there a sense of being on a mission to advance the kingdom of God? Do the people seem hungry to know God and make Him known? Do the people genuinely seem to have a fire burning in their hearts that brings light and warmth into the darkness? Do the people seem to even notice if someone new shows up? Are they eager to meet you? Do the people seem to be there only out of some morbid sense of duty or obligation? Some churches are basically dead and in the grave but nobody has bothered to close the lid on the coffin. Unless you have a particular gift and call to go in and revive dead churches (and some actually do) don’t go there and do not subject your kids to the toxic environment of such a place. Get out and don’t let the door hit you on the backside on the way out! Find a church where there is love and joy in the Holy Spirit. You will not need to find with your kids to go there. They will want to drink in the life as well. Find a church full of life and add your zeal for God to it. Note: I am not talking about hype and bells and whistles. Cool programs, big budgets, and slick presentations are often nothing but a mask over the dead church corpse.

 

 

 

 

1)      Leave behind a critical, judgmental, faultfinding, nit-picky spirit. If you want to find things wrong, you will. If you are looking to find things right-you will find them also. If you have the kind of person that sees something wrong in every person you meet and every church you attend, you will never be happy ANYWHERE and you should stay home and not bring the people around you down with you. You KNOW who you are!

2)       Leave behind a victim mentality: Don’t go to church looking for a place where people are there to ‘meet your needs’. Don’t label yourself as a bottomless pit victim with a list a mile long of all the things that have happened to you and the people who have hurt you and let you down. I once had the privilege of hanging out with a man in China who had spent more than twenty years in prison for his faith in Christ. He had been beaten and tortured and lost every earthly possession. He found the way in Christ to be full of joy, speak words without a hint of bitterness and minister love and power to everyone with whom he had contact. Don’t seek out a church to find a new batch of ears to hear you whine. The church was born during the persecution of the Roman Empire. It exists today in places where it is not safe to openly say the name of Jesus or read a Bible. If you have had bad things happen to you, I am sorry. But we cannot let the past rip off your future. If people messed up your childhood don’t hand over your present as well! “To those who are in Christ Jesus, they are new creations, old things have passed away, behold ALL THINGS have been made new. (2 Corinthians 5:17) Believe it- Live it.

3)      Leave behind your consumer mentality: You are not shopping for shoes. You are not shopping for breakfast cereal. You are looking for a covenant partnership. Forget whether it is the closest, or most convenient or has the best program to meet your needs, wants, desires as a ‘product user’. Think about your place as a soldier in the army of God. Think about your place as an ambassador for the Lord. Think of your mission to lead and guide your family into spiritual maturity and effective Christian service. If that means going to a small little country church where the pastor and church members are the strongest and best equipping church in the area, then go check it out even if it means driving extra miles and passing other churches with a lot bigger buildings, fancier programs and cooler gadgets. Look for life and power in the Holy Spirit. Go for the best training, the best equipping the most effective the most alive church you can find and plug yourself in. Advertisers aim products at consumers with slick slogans and gimmicks. You go right past the packaging and look ONLY at the content.

 

That is enough info to work with. Some churches may not be perfect. They may be a bit less than ideal at times and could always stand improvement, but so could we. They say that if you find the perfect church-Don’t join it or it won’t be perfect anymore!