A guide to choose which church to visit (Oct 15-21)
This week’s snapshots:
Happy Saturday nerds!
Had a lovely week eating dinners and playing games and hanging out with my southern Wyomigos as I (vainly) attempted to fill my “whistling” cow tag. A huge thank you to all of you who made this break restful~
One of the things I do to keep my life normal no matter where in the world I am is that I choose to attend church in-person every week regardless of where in the world I am over the weekend - and not just because my home churches’ livestreams leave much to be desired! Even Bethel, Upperroom, and Elevation’s Sunday livestreams carry no interest to me. I go to real places where real people gather every Sunday to testify about and witness what God is doing in his “capital C” Church. Since I only get to participate in my local community once, maybe twice a month, I make sure to participate in my global community all the other Sundays.
Because I go to testify and witness, I don’t want to go to just any ol’ church. Sure, God is working and moving in every place where his people gather, but some of those movements matter more to me than others, and I always want to choose a place that would provide godly conversation should my pagan/atheist coworkers join me in the morning. As such, I usually spend all week looking on Google Maps and scanning church websites to choose the gathering I join. Here’s how I decide on a church to visit, and what makes me come back for a second Sunday if I’m on the road that long.
Do I have family or friends who live here/have lived here?
God’s plan for the world is for people to love one another - so if I have loved ones in the place I’m at, I’ll probably defer to attending church with them over finding a spot of my own researching. Because it’s usually not the flavor of church I would choose, I get to testify/witness to God’s working in ways I wouldn’t normally see, and I get to love my loved ones by celebrating God’s work in their lives through the time we spend together :)
Even if my loved ones have moved on from the city, I take the opportunity to check in with them and ask for recommendations or simply for the name of the church they used to attend. That way, when I introduce myself I can name-drop my loved one and provide a greater witness to God’s goodness for that body of believers when they realize we have a shared connection! More importantly, it deepens my connection to my loved one when I love on their former home churches~
Do they have a good relationship with Holy Spirit?
While God is surely in the midst of any two or three who gather in his name, I choose to attend places that are interested in His continued and living Presence and will immediately pass over churches who ignore or diminish Holy Spirit’s active interference with our lives. This helps ensure that I don’t accidentally cause an Incident if the Lord highlights someone for me to talk to :)
This is where denominational knowledge is pretty handy, although a church’s mission statement on their home page usually clarifies their stance right off the bat (and if not, most have an “About” page with a statement of belief that further confirms what you glean from the mission statement…)
What size gathering is it?
When you pass the 200-person mark, people in a group no longer have group-cohesion and instead clique up into smaller groups (facilitated by proper programming). If I could attend a weeknight service and meet the real people in a church that is larger than 200 people, maybe I could attend a larger Sunday gathering; as it is, because I want to have at least the chance of meeting and having a meaningful conversation with a real person, I look for smaller churches.
How diverse is the staff?
If a church’s pastorate is all the same kind of person, I suspect their teaching has echo-chamber issues. This isn’t the most important value, but I will typically choose a church that has men and women of more than one race and age pastoring before I choose a monolith of old white dudes.
I often will search “international church” to see which churches pop up for those search queries. While the landlocked states usually don’t have any proper international churches (aka churches made up primarily of non-Americans), the churches who appear on this query usually have multiple nationalities represented in their leadership. The table of the Lord does not seat only people like me!
Do they have a prayer team?
If a gathering doesn’t have room for the laying on of hands during the service, I’m not interested. How can I witness God’s personal movement or testify to him doing something if there’s not a chance to ask him for it? This is not usually something that you can find on a webpage (though there may be a contact form for prayer requests or a feed of answered prayers), but will determine whether or not I come back. Another way to hack this is to see what churches pop up if you type in “house of prayer” into Google.
The exception~
If there IS an actual house of prayer in town (IHOP, Upperroom), I’m going there regardless of all of the other factors because the quality of Christian who attends a house that is praising and praying 24/7 is the same quality of Christian I aspire to. The prayer team stands at the front of the stage after service, but I’ve already received and given prayers for my neighbors during worship and/or the greeting time!
Should I go again?
Sometimes it’s just easier to go back to a church than to keep researching for another week - even if the experience wasn’t meaningful. But sometimes, even if the experience was meaningful, it’s meaningful in a “wow, people love Jesus like that” more so than a, “I want to practice loving Jesus this way” genre of experience.
If I don’t have any conversations with real people, I probably won’t come back. Most of the other elements of the experience don’t matter so much - the quantity or quality of musical worship, the orthodoxy of the teaching, the sound and lights, or the kind of communion cracker they serve… sure, these things are more or less impressive, but Jesus didn’t die so we could sing songs and preach while looking cool. He died for the husbands, mothers, widows, orphans, and aliens sitting to my left and to my right.
…
So - if I didn’t know you, would I attend your church if I was in town? What kinds of things do you weigh when considering whether or not to visit a church? To attend a church long-term?
Let me know,
—Beth
