No Perfect Church...yet.
Well, there is no perfect church. Well, not yet anyway. One day when we leave behind our earthly desires and stand in God’s presence the church will be perfect. But until then, there is no perfect church.
For almost a year we, my wife and I, have been looking for a new home church.
You may be thinking, “you have been looking for a new home church for a year and you can’t find one.” Yes, that’s right.
We did go into this search with some criteria and we knew going in there is no perfect church.
We have been married for just over 35 years and we have never had to look for a church home because my workplace was a church. None of those were perfect but we were in the midst of trying to make them Christ-centered fulfilling the Great Commission.
As we began our search for a new church home we had a list of things we looked for:
- Near our home. We wanted to be involved in a church in our community.
- Christ-centered, passionate worship that encouraged participation.
- Bible-based sermons, where God’s word was what chose the topics.
- A place to serve. We truly believe every Christ-follower is gifted for service and ministry.
- Community through a small group, a place to connect with people through fellowship and around God’s word.
Thinking about it now after 11 months of searching we have begun to give weighted importance to this list and defined them a little more.
- Bible-based sermons. Our first choice was to find a church that and teaching team that used a journey through God’s word to choose the topics. We have widened that search and would be happy to find a church that allowed scripture to drive the topics, even if it was a ‘topical’ sermon. Too often we found sermons to a good talk with very little scripture.
- Christ-centered, scripture-filled, passionate worship, that encourages participation. This could be any style.
- Participation means ‘singable’
- Scripture-based
- A balance between songs about God and to God. Here is a blog post I wrote on this topic: The Balance of To and About.
- Community through a small group. We need community connection with Christ-followers.
- A place to serve. We do want to be active and know the church is actively helping people find their spiritual gifts, talents, and skills.
- Near our home. It was a dream and maybe should not have been on our list.
We will not find the perfect church.
If you were looking for a new church what would be your criteria?
