How to choose a church

posted by Darin M. Stone

We live in a unique country and at a unique time in history because we have never had more options from which to choose. From food to cars to clothes to which university to attend to what to major in to which career path to choose, the options seem limitless. And the same is true with regard to choosing a church. There are a lot of them out there and how to choose the right one is nebulous.

In ages past, choosing a church was easy. Most people were born and raised in a particular locale that might have had one or two churches within reasonable traveling distance. In other places, the national church was the only option. If you were Scandinavian, you went to the Lutheran church. If you were English you went to the Anglican Church. The Scots went to the Church of Scotland. But times have changed and the world has become more complex. That complexity has led to a greater breadth of options, which has subsequently led to greater competition between those who produce goods and offer services. So when it comes to widgets and gadgets we shop for the best product at the lowest price. There is nothing more American. On the ecclesiastical level, our tendency is to gravitate toward a church that offers the most and requires the least of us. We apply the same principles to choosing a church as to apply to choosing a car or a television.

But I would contend that there are better criteria for choosing a church than what is most entertaining, has the most rockin’ music, has the funniest and most engaging preacher, and is where our friends go. None of those things are inherently bad, but it’s not the best criteria upon which to select a church. So upon exploring the thoughts of other people, reflecting upon my own experiences and the mistakes I have made, and more importantly, upon exploring God’s Word, I have developed a list of things I encourage you to consider as you go about choosing a church. Here they are:

1. Choose a church where the Bible is central: I promise you that every single Christian church you go to, from the Roman Catholic church to the Baptist church to the Non-denominational church, to the church that wants to ordain and marry homosexuals, to the church that wants them all thrown in prison, to the Reverend Robert Schuler to the Reverend Jerry Fallwell to the Reverend Jesse Jackson all would say that their churches are biblical. But, the fact is that some of these churches are blatantly heretical and many are more subtly unbiblical.

Choosing a church that is biblical is paramount. If the Bible is relegated to a subordinate role, is not deemed authoritative over all of life, or is viewed as one of a few aspects of authority we look to in order to understand God and ourselves in light of who God is, then you can be sure you’re not at a Biblical church. The reason why it’s so crucial is that it is through the Bible that we have the only authoritative way in which God reveals and communicates himself to his people. “The Scriptures principally teach what man is to believe concerning God and what duty God requires of man” (WSC Q.4). God is God over all things and we learn general wisdom through the humanities, social sciences, physical and life sciences, and so forth, but the only way we can truly know God as he is and ourselves in light of him is through the Scriptures. So specifically, what does this mean?

2. Choose a church with a Biblical understanding of the gospel: Nothing is more important to a church than its stance on the gospel. If you read Galatians, you will see that false teachers made their way into the Galatian church and essentially said, “Yes, you need Christ in order to be forgiven and in order to be reconciled to God, but you also need to add some works to that. So your salvation is based partially on God’s grace and partially on your works.” And Paul doesn’t just say, “Let’s talk about our disagreements and maybe we’ll just agree to disagree,” or “They’re just a different denomination, but at the end, we all basically believe the same thing.” Paul says, “Let them be accursed!” He says that the notion that we are saved partially by God’s grace and partially by our works is a toxic stench because it is an entirely different gospel.

Most churches that Evangelicals are most prone to attend are churches that do not entirely deny the gospel, but they do distort it. For instance, there was some research done a few years back on the preaching at one of the largest and most influential churches in the country. And the research indicated that 75 percent of the sermons were about God’s love, only seven percent even mention (not discuss) God’s holiness, and sin is virtually never heard.[1] There is another church which is one of the biggest in the country and I know that almost all of you would know it if I mentioned the name – where the crux of the “prayer of belief” is “Jesus, I believe in you and I receive you.”[2] Do these churches believe in God’s grace and that it is necessary for salvation? Yes. But their view of grace weak because of their nuanced view of human depravity. The problem with “Jesus, I believe in you and I receive you” is that it does not even deal with what keeps us alienated from God in the first place. The problem with rarely hearing about God’s holiness in a sermon is that you rarely see God as he truly is; perfect in righteousness, justice, truth. When we see how majestic and holy and righteous God is and then when we see ourselves in light of him – people who lack holiness, righteousness, and truth in and of ourselves – then we come to understand our need for God’s grace and the depth of God’s love for us, not because we are so great and because there is something so loveable about us, but despite our sinfulness. We see that God, in his great mercy, comes and bestows his grace upon his people who outside of Christ deserve nothing but condemnation and wrath because of our sin. Yet Christ comes and forgives us of our sin and gives his righteousness through faith.

At our church, we say, “I am weaker and more sinful than I ever thought, but more loved and accepted in Christ than I could ever imagine.” A church that is all about me or is all about how good I am, makes me big and God small. But a church that makes God big helps us to see that we are professional sinners who have been forgiven and cleansed by a God whose grace is greater than our sin.

Furthermore, a truly gospel-centered church will be interested in proclaiming that gospel at home and abroad. A gospel-centered church is intentional about domestic church planting, evangelism, and mercy ministry, as well as foreign missions. The extent to which a church is involved in domestic and foreign missions depends on its size and resources (obviously a smaller church will not have the number of missionaries as a larger church), but any church can and should be missions-minded and outward-faced.

3. Choose a church with a Biblical understanding of the Christian life: The Christian life is about an ongoing, vital relationship with God whereby we are continually confronting our sin, turning away from it, and turning to Christ, by grace through faith. The Christian life is not about being saved by grace and then doing this and avoiding that throughout the rest of your life. Colossians 2 says “just as your received him, so walk in him.” How do you receive Christ? Through faith! How do you continue to walk in him? Through faith. It’s about looking to the gospel for your growth. Yes, there are things we should and should not do in the Christian faith, but if you look at the rules and forget to look at the gospel, then one of two things are going to happen.

On the one hand, you can become a legalistic person who’s proud of how godly you are and you will overestimate your goodness and undervalue the virtues of other people. Or you will despair because when you fail to keep the rules, you will see yourself as the screw-up of the universe and you will get into a major spiritual funk. On the other hand, you will see the rules as overwhelming or irrelevant and say “forget it.” You will say that since you are saved by grace, it does not matter how you live, so the rules do not matter. Neither the legalist nor the antinomian lives the Christian life.

The Christian life is about looking to the gospel for the way in which you initially come to Christ, but also the way in which you go about living in him. The gospel says that wherever you failed to obey, Christ succeeded. And he gives that righteousness to you. So for you, that means that no matter what you did if you have truly received Christ by grace through faith, then God the Father sees you as having the same righteousness that Christ has. He has exchanged his righteousness with you for your sin.

But the flip side of the gospel is that in order to receive Christ’s righteousness, it cost him his life. The grace that you have received is not cheap grace. It is costly grace. For God the Father to give up his only Son for you – for the Son to willingly take your penalty that you deserve for your sin upon himself – is a deep love. And if you really grasp the depth of that love and how much it cost, then the result will be a life that committed to turning from sin and turning to Christ by faith. And that faith brings about obedience.

4. Choose a church that worships God: Here is what worship is not about: Worship is not primarily about exciting music with a great worship band that plays the best in contemporary worship tunes. Worship is not about the funniest or most culturally relevant sermon. Worship is about us hearing from God and responding to him with repentance and faith. That is why in the best churches I have attended the perspective on worship was that they “read the Bible, sing the Bible, pray the Bible, preach the Bible, and see the Bible (through the sacraments).” As the Bible is read, sung, prayed, preached, and seen, God is in fact speaking revealing himself to us. And true worship elicits a response to him by listening to the Bible being read and preached, participating by praising God through the music and partaking of the Lord’s Supper .

Many church worship services may lead you to a feeling of worship, but it’s not really worship. The word of God is rarely read, the prayers are “Jesus, we just wanna…” and the songs are fun to sing and listen to, but devoid of much substance. Here’s an example:

The Happy Song
By Chris Tomlin

Well I could sing unending songs
Of how you saved my soul
I could dance a thousand miles
Because of your great love

c'mon everybody dance
Everybody dance

My heart is bursting Lord
To tell of all you've done
Of how've you changed my life
And wiped away the past

Well, I want to shout it out
From every roof top sing
For now I know that God is for me, not against me

I could sing unending songs
Of how you saved my soul
I could dance a thousand miles
Because of your great love

My heart is bursting Lord
To tell of all you've done
Of how've you changed my life
And wiped away the past

Well I want to shout it out
From every roof top sing
For now I know that God is for me, not against me

Everybody's singin' now
Cuz we're so happy
Yeah,Everybody's dancin' now
Cuz we're so happy

If only I could see your face,
See you smiling over us
And unseen angels celebrate
Hey! The joy is in this place
Yeah,The joy is in this place

I could sing unending songs
Of how you've saved my soul
I could dance a thousand miles
Because of your great love
(repeat)

Now compare to this hymn:

When I Survey the Wondrous Cross
By Isaac Watts

When I survey the wondrous cross
On which the Prince of glory died,
My richest gain I count but loss,
And pour contempt on all my pride.

Forbid it, Lord, that I should boast,
Save in the death of Christ my God!
All the vain things that charm me most,
I sacrifice them to His blood.

See from His head, His hands, His feet,
Sorrow and love flow mingled down!
Did e’er such love and sorrow meet,
Or thorns compose so rich a crown?

Were the whole realm of nature mine,
That were a present far too small;
Love so amazing, so divine,
Demands my soul, my life, my all.

You’re going to have to look long and hard to find a church that genuinely sings the content of the Bible. Most churches in America - particularly in California – sing only what is five years old or less (C.S. Lewis calls this “chronological snobbery”). But insofar as you can, find a church that reads, sings, prays, and preaches the Bible. Worship that is weak on Sunday mornings will lead to worship that is weak in the rest of our lives.

5. Choose a church with an “integrated theology”: What does that mean? It means that you want to choose a church that really loves God with all of its heart, soul, mind, and strength. Most churches in America (and again, particularly in California), worship with a lot of heart and soul, but there isn’t much mind. You never get anything deep, only surface-level stuff. That is the story of my church background until after college, so it’s no wonder I had a lot of good times in the church, but didn’t really learn much about God.

Yet on the other hand, there are some churches that are so intellectual and dull and the preaching so pedantic that you leave with glazed over eyes and a spirit that’s been squashed. The hymns might be sound, but are so poorly played and sung that you feel like you have been pumped with anesthesia

A church with “integrated theology” is a church that engages the mind and the heart. It is a church that challenges you, causes you to see God in a new light, causes you to confront your sin and leads you to the throne of grace. But it is also a church that takes the deep theology of the mind and applies it to one’s own personal life and relationships. The seminary I attended had a motto that I thought was fitting; “A mind for truth and a heart for God.” The mind and the heart are not divorced from one another. Emotion without the mind is false worship and the mind without the heart is dead orthodoxy. Find a church with a mind for truth and a heart for God.

6. Choose a church with Biblical Christian fellowship: Philippians 2:1-4 says, “If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any fellowship with the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose. Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.” There are so many “one-anothers” in Scripture – “love,” “serve,” “encourage,” “correct,” etc. A church that truly worships God expresses love for one another. There is genuine community. God does not just save us to be isolated individuals, but he saves us into a community that is transformational. The rest of the world battles against one another, competes against one another, complains against one another, and hurts one another. But a gospel-transformed community expresses the love and grace that we have received as individuals to one another. A church that is full of complaining, in-fighting, and jealousy is a church that needs to return to the gospel.

7. Remember that there’s no perfect church: There is no perfect church in this world nor will there ever be. Every church has its complainers, fighters, and enviers (and you have been one of them at some point). Every church either falls a bit too far on the false worship or the dead orthodoxy side. Every church could use a worship face-lift, and every church can lose sight of the gospel for both our salvation and growth in the Christian life. So search for a church that is seeking growth in these areas and is going hard after God. Someone once said, “No one is perfect. That’s why pencils have erasers.” Well, churches need erasers too. But some churches need less erasing than others and some churches know they need erasing more so than others.

8. Finally, choose a good church and stick with it: Back in the day, churches used to have a high view of church membership. I am a big fan of this because when you become a member of a church, you are saying that you are committed to it with your money, time, and spiritual gifts. And the church is saying that it is committed to nurturing you and giving you its pastoral care and expending its resources on your own spiritual well-being. Also, when you become a member of a church, the church is affirming the validity of your faith.

But whether or not you actually become a member of a church, find a good one and commit to it. Give it a chance. If you give to the church and invest yourself in it, more than likely, you will reap great rewards. If you take on the mindset that this is your church and you seek to know the people and ministers and you seek to invest yourself in what is happening there, you will most likely find yourself identifying with and growing from it. The challenge is to overcome the consumer mentality when it comes to the church – the constant search for the next big thing to which you do not have to commit. But as we resist going the way of the culture with regard to our church selection and we identify with a solid congregation, the rewards we give and receive from God will be bountiful.

[1] G.A. Pritchard, Willow Creek Seeker Services, (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1996), p. 263-264.
[2] Rick Warren, The Purpose Driven Life, (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2002), p.58-59.