Finding a New Church

One of the most common questions I’ve gotten over the last few weeks is whether we’ve found a new church to attend.

About a month ago, I did a search on churches in our new community.  I want to live near the place where we attend so that my son has a better opportunity to interact with the children and so that it’s not a huge ordeal for us to go to activities.  The church must also be focused on teaching the Bible and encouraging people to apply that which they are learning.

I weeded out some that were obviously not a good fit and ended up calling five churches for more information.  Calling helped me to narrow down to three churches.  One of those three is further away than desirable so it is a last resort.

Over time I’ve learned to be aware of when the Spirit is indicating a particular location or item and I’ve felt a pull toward one of the two churches, in particular.  Today we visited the church.  I let my kid go to the class for his age group and I attended the service. 

The regular pastor was on vacation today and his substitute reminded me of a couple pastors we had when I was growing up.  The service was fairly full; the worship team was multi-generational; they clearly treated senior citizens and the disabled with respect and an expectation of involvement.  They teach the Bible and have a huge focus on prayer.  (Incidentally, the sermon  also focused on the need for focused, corporate prayer.)

After service, I went to get AJ and he was all ready to head up to service.  Since it was our first visit, we just stayed for one service/class so that I could gauge where we were at.  He was very excited about his class and wants to go back.

As a rule, I like to attend a church two or three times and hear the regular pastor before making a decision.  I also want to read a copy of their statement of faith, which is not posted online, so I’ll be asking for a copy of that sometime this week.  We will go back a couple more times before deciding for sure but after just one visit, it’s looking like a good fit.