Church

Lately we've been struggling some with our home church... it's a strong church for the most part, but as it's made up of sinners, as all churches are, there have been some minor imperfections.  In thinking things through we've been looking at what are the critical aspects of a church home, both in general and for us specifically.  And yes, we have started attending a church much closer to our home, though we will terribly miss our church family we've been with for the past 5 years.


The Gospel, of course comes to mind quickly as the number one requirement of any church.  By the Gospel, I mean that the teaching of the church emphasizes, consistently, that All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God (Rom 3:23), but God demonstrates his own love for us in this, while we were still sinners, Christ died for us (Rom 5:8).  I could throw in a few other points to the Gospel that I believe to be very foundational, but those two Scriptures sum it up quite well.  I honestly don't think it matters in the least whether you believe you'll meet your dog who passed away last year in heaven or not, or whether you were baptized as an infant, by sprinkling or immersion, if you believe in a literal 6-day creation (as I do) or some other length of a day not defined version of the story- I really don't think these kinds of things have anything to do with your eternal destination and once we arrive in heaven, well- I really don't think we'll even care what the answers to any of these questions are.  For the record, we've been in the PCA denomination since college, though that's not where either of us were raised, and we mostly subscribe to the Westminster Confession and Shorter Catechism, although we don't participate in infant baptism (but this isn't about that.)


The other things that define a church these days, well, it's a little more vague how important or not they are.  But here are a few of the things we consider important...


The worship and music.  We look for a church whose worship music really sings the praises of God.  There has to be depth.  I love old hymns for the depth, but there are plenty of contemporary songs that have depth as well.  We do find it a little annoying to be singing contemporary praise songs that grab one line and repeat it over and over and over and over again though.  We all enjoy a praise band with drums and guitars- the boys especially, but I don't think that's necessarily critical.  It is critical that the praise band isn't there to put on a show for the congregation and be applauded after every song.  They should be there to worship God Almighty, not draw attention to themselves.


The feeding of ourselves and our children of the Word comes to mind as another important role of the church in our lives.  This is one we've been struggling most with lately.  I grew up with Sunday School for all ages, between worship services.  The trend now seems to be "Children's Church" for kids through 2nd, or 5th, or whatever grade- DURING the worship service.  This is a huge problem for me.  My boys NEED to be in worship with us, regularly- and I firmly believe all children do, though I can see why many prefer to send them off to Children's Church.  There is a new book coming out on this topic, titled Children in Church, published by Great Waters Press http://childreninchurch.com/... I just got my pre-reading copy and can't wait to hear what they have to say about the topic and making it work practically.   For us, we would also like to be able to have our kids in a Sunday School class, studying the Word with their peers and participating in the fellowship of being around other believers just as we do.  


Aside from the kids, we want this combined fellowship and study time for ourselves on a regular weekly basis as well, which makes adult Sunday School also critical to us.  


Small Groups- we love our small group and getting together in homes with other families.  We feel like this is important for our whole family and something we all look forward to.  Again, back to that fellowship thing.


Outreach- so far most of my points have been about us and what we need from the church.  Well, it's true, we believe the main purpose of the church is to support the membership.  Then it becomes the responsibility of the membership to reach out to the community and everyone they interact with on a daily basis, fulfilling the great commission of Matthew 28.  If you haven't been well-fed it's pretty challenging to attempt to reach anyone else.  I am constantly reminded of a Children's Sermon that Pastor Kazen gave when I was in Kindergarten (yes, I remember it distinctly, even though it was that long ago and I was that young.)  He had a basin of water and a sponge.  The sponge was us, we showed up in church, at Sunday School, etc and soaked up all the water and then gradually squeezed it out on everyone we came in contact with during the week... but then the sponge was empty again.  Not perfect, but a good illustration- if you don't have it, you can't share it.  This is not to overlook that it is the calling of the church body to reach out to the community, so we like to look at what we are doing as a church body to actively reach out to the community... it's been a struggle for us, living in a different community than where our church is located to be actively involved in much of what they do for outreach- though we do some of our own outreach (admittedly, not enough) in our community.


Other things... organization, church structure/leadership which varies between denominations, communication, fellowship- because you can't mention it enough times.


That's probably enough words from me for now... what are some important ones I missed?  Thoughts?