Things to Look for in a Church

Periodically I get the question of what is important in looking for a church. Let me lay out what I believe are some essential things to look for when trying to find a church. The preaching of the Word (expository or any other way) is a given and this list is in no particular order:

Community. A church should have a friendly atmosphere which is more than skin deep. Hospitality should be ever-present and on-going. Visitors should receive immediate and multiple offers of meals and needy members of the flock should never be without.

Sacraments: The Lord’s Supper should be offered weekly and joyfully with bread and real wine. Baptism should be taken seriously and honored by the church. A church that does not do this has not thought through the sacraments seriously enough. For example, a church that demands those baptized as infants be re-baptized is ignorant of church history. Likewise, a church that serves up grape juice and crackers instead of bread and wine is like a French restaurant that serves you a plastic pudding cup and calls it Crème brûlée.

Historical: A church should see itself in history. Creeds should be recited because they teach us and remind us that we are a church in God’s long continuum of the faith. There is orthodoxy long before us and there will be orthodoxy long after us. Our generation is in the midst of history and is not the apex of history. Every cult in the last two centuries (Jehovah’s Witnesses, Shakers, Mormons) have all seen themselves in apocalyptic terms: They are the last generation before the coming of Christ and it’s been an epic fail. Christian groups have done something similar with Dispensationalism. While the Dispensationalist church has been sitting on the roof waiting for the Advent of Christ, the world has carried out a twisted cultural mandate and transformed Western culture for the worse.

I may return to this list to add to it in the future.

Comments

[Trent Hunter]

Keep posting! I enjoy the comments.

Your section on church history made me think about the way we celebrate holidays. I would like to see our culture give more attention to Easter. That is the sine qua non Christian holiday, not Christmas. It should receive much more attention and festivity than it typically does. Food for thought.

[kevin+]

Good start, However, I probably would have included GOSPEL in my list.

Just saying.

[Garrett]

Kevin,

I assume a certain maturity level with my readers that it wouldn't be necessary in a post of this nature to tell them to look for a church that declares the euangelion, or other things that I was remiss in mentioning like Jesus or the Trinity. They are already presupposed through everything: preaching, community, sacraments, history, just saying...

[Jen]

While the overall trend in Baptist churches is towards an unfortunate ignorance of history, to say that _any_ church who baptizes an adult even if he was baptized as an infant is ignorant of history isn't true. For Particular Baptists, history is a very real issue. (Though even two Dutch Reformed fellows from South Africa studied the patristic authors and decided that for the very earliest part of the early church–first 200 years or so–the predominant practice was to baptise only believers.) For example, I'm currently reading a document titled "Storming of Antichrist" (1644), which deals with patristic writings in its arguments against paedobaptism.

[Garrett]

Hi Jen,

I would say that any baptistic church that demands an already baptized person be baptized again is, indeed, ignorant of history. This goes against the Creeds themselves. Remember, Blackwood's position was for religious toleration for a persecuted minority of particular Baptists. The tables are turned on their head now with paedobaptists being forced to be re-baptized. I think the vast majority of baptist culture wouldn't know the difference between doughnuts and Donatists. Even John Piper sees this.

BTW the communion I serve in allows a great deal of latitude on baptism so the issue isn't paedo or credo baptism for the sake of this argument but how historical understanding informs toleration in the acceptance of it.