What I Want in a Church

August 25th, 2008 by Steve

I’ve been giving this some thought recently. I’m reading so many blogs and touching so many sites and reading so many books about church and leadership and so on, that I started wondering what my perfect church would be. So here it is, all out in the open…

  • I want Bible-based teaching:
    • Enough with this ‘God is love’ stuff, and relationship psycho-babble and, “Let’s not get people annoyed because the preacher’s saying things that are inconvenient” – I want to hear something about His holiness, His righteousness and His purity and the need for me to get cleaned up (by Him) if I want to be in His presence. I understand He’s love, but I want some meat please.
    • I want to hear a call to repentance from the pulpit, not a lot of make-nice.
    • I want to see some witnessing from the pulpit – witnessing to changes that Jesus Christ has made in the preacher, not just a bunch of cute stories and jokes. It’s OK if the minister is broken and he/she talks about it. It’s not OK if the minister pretends he/she is OK and that all the failures are in the congregation, ‘coz I know that’s a dangerous lie.
  • I want a chance to be involved in guiding the church body. I want to make a difference.
  • I want a church that speaks to new people, especially kids and young families.
  • I want a church that makes use of the tools God gives – such as technology – to reach out to people outside (and inside) the building.
  • I want a church that has no hymnals in the pews, because they have screens in the front so your head’s up when you’re singing (and someone in the control booth that knows how to work it!). That way, people will hear the praising instead of the organ.
  • I want a church that starts with people and becomes the Body, not a group of people who say, “We’re a lot of people, so we must be a church.”
  • I want a church whose minister is accountable to someone else locally – an elder or the minister from another church.
  • I want comfy chairs/pews in the sanctuary. Why turn people off or make them uncomfortable? We’re not Victorians; we don’t need to suffer to feel good about ourselves.
  • I want to bring my coffee to drink during service. I often drink coffee or juice when I’m with friends. God wouldn’t mind – after all, I’m friends with Him. In fact, I’m betting He’s all for it if it helps people come and listen to Him. Again, we’re not Victorians dressed up in our best bibs and tuckers, sitting beautifully in a row. A lot of us don’t even wear ties to church anymore – some (gasp!) even come in jeans and T’s!
  • I want a church family that tithes. I’m not talking about the people in the church – I’m talking about the congregation giving away 10% of the church’s budget to other ministries…and not all social ministries either. Missionaries abroad, missionaries in inner cities, missionaries in my home town. Supporting ministries that don’t have much chance otherwise because they’re not that popular. I believe that people who aren’t tithing don’t grow. I believe that churches that don’t tithe are dying.
  • I want a church that can’t wait to get together to have fun. Church dinners (what ever happened to tuna noodle casserole? I love that stuff, with the crunchy Corn Flake thingy on the top), bowling nights, ice cream socials – totally corny stuff with lots of love and joy and connecting.
  • Speaking of connecting – I want to connect with God’s vision for this area. He must have one! But I’m not in on it yet. Why not? So many possible reasons – need to wait on the Lord; assail the battlements; the parable of the importunate woman; time isn’t right yet; I’m not right yet; I’m supposed to be somewhere else. Has He closed this door, or has the enemy?
  • I’d like to see one of these big-name people with a lot of experience in the emerging church – from DC or Georgia or Texas or California or Michigan or some other comfortable Bible Belt-ish place – have the wherewithal to move into this area and put that experience to good use. Want to really reach the unchurched? Try a small town in New England instead.
  • I want a challenge that’s doable – a way to stretch that may have risks but has a plan and milestones. I may not be able to take the complete journey on faith, like an apostle or a missionary, but I can get to the next milestone, for heaven’s sake, even if it’s out of sight around a corner. A milestone says that someone else has been there. I can handle that.
  • I want a church that talks to people in bars and on the streets. I don’t want to do this personally … but I know I should. I just don’t know how.[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/1710532[/vimeo]So I’ve made a decision – I’m going to go down to a bar once a week for – say – 2 months and see what happens. I lead Bibles studies on Tuesday and Friday nights, Wednesday is my night with my daughter, Thursdays with my grouping buddy and (for a while) praying for all the 3-day teams going on here. But Monday I’ve been keeping for myself. Maybe that’s why. So … tonight. 7pm.

(Thanks to Em for using Brandon Heath’s song “Give me Your Eyes” during the Aventura reunion, and Paul Watson at Reaching the Online Generation for the video clip that I retro-added to the post.)

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One Response to “What I Want in a Church”

  1. Hephzibah Joy Says:
    August 25th, 2008 at 9:15 pm

    What I’ve Got in a Church… ;-)
    Your rating system ought to offer 10 stars… Your comments on this topic are outstanding…worth at least 10… (Can you hear the “AMEN, BROTHER!!!” resounding from this mountaintop?…) …so I clicked the 5 stars twice…;-)
    I’ve also been giving this topic a lot of thought lately, and being so thankful for my own church (we’re not by any means “there” yet, but actively working (well, at least a lot of us) at allowing God to transform our church life into His design…!) I’ve also been reading a zillion blogs/websites and reading books and listening to audio messages about church (emergent {some good and some weird stuff there} and otherwise) /leadership/releasing and developing the gifts that God has given each member to build up His church and further His Kingdom, being open to His creative ideas of doing things, etc… My comments are in the parentheses after your quotes… just because I’m excited about what God is doing, and it’s all to His glory…
    • “I want Bible-based teaching:”
    (Messages from our pulpit are mostly straight from the Word of God and usually full of exhortation, as well as comfort…The pastor has been preaching through the book of Acts… the intention being that it should be our training manual for what church should be like. He switches to other topics for messages as appropriate, such as holidays and when he feels God has a specific “non-Acts” message to deliver, or when we have a guest speaker… )
    o “Enough with this ‘God is love’ stuff, and relationship psycho-babble and, “Let’s not get people annoyed because the preacher’s saying things that are inconvenient” – I want to hear something about His holiness, His righteousness and His purity and the need for me to get cleaned up if I want to be in His presence. I understand He’s love, but I want some meat please.”
    (Amen! Meat served most every Sunday at our church, often with spicy condiments…If the Word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, it OUGHT to cut so we can feel it, sometimes…shoulda been here for yesterday’s message…Eph. 5:1-20)
    o I want to hear a call to repentance from the pulpit, not a lot of make-nice.
    (See comment directly above…)
    o I want to see some witnessing from the pulpit – witnessing to changes that Jesus Christ has made in the preacher, not just a bunch of cute stories and jokes. It’s OK if the minister is broken and he/she talks about it. It’s not OK if the minister pretends he/she is OK and that all the failures are in the congregation, ‘coz I know that’s a dangerous lie.
    (Our pastor preaches with great humility and depth and does not hesitate to ask for prayer if he is struggling with something… very few “cute stories and jokes”…and if correction or tough words are needed, he delivers them with a liberal dose of love and humility, and includes himself in the target audience).
    • “I want a chance to be involved in guiding the church body. I want to make a difference.”
    (We have congregational meetings 3-4 times a year to have a say in what goes on here and the direction we are heading. We also have a Communications Forum once a month, where anyone can offer comments, input, ideas, and our leadership is always open to hearing suggestions, and often specifically requests input from anyone and everyone because they are convinced that the whole Body matters and God can bring a good idea or message through anyone who knows Him… I was just talking to one of the elders yesterday about some of the great insights that I was getting in a book I’ve been reading by Graham Cooke, (“A Divine Confrontation – Birth Pangs of The New Church”) (about building/growing a congregation God’s way, not by imposing “the vision for the church” from the top down, but by finding out and nurturing the giftings that God has already given to the individual members) and he immediately asked to borrow it, saying it sounded great for leadership to learn more about how to help the congregation identify and flow in their gifts. I’m going to a conference by Graham in September, and the elder asked me to buy him any tapes/CDs of the talks, too.)
    • “I want a church that speaks to new people, especially kids and young families.”…
    (We practically pounce on new people… especially if they have kids!!! We keep praying for more families with lots of kids…And the Pastor & his wife and another couple are working on starting a mentoring group for young married couples…Christian or not yet so…)
    • “I want a church that makes use of the tools God gives – such as technology – to reach out to people outside (and inside) the building.”
    (We’re in the process of upgrading our website to include a bunch of resources (links, etc. They are being worked on behind the scenes so not visible yet.) plus we’ve started posting the Sunday sermons/messages in audio format on our website {after figuring out how to do it/what programs needed/ how to edit sermons out of the whole Sunday service CD, etc.}, so members who are sick or out of town can still hear the message, plus new people looking for a church can hear what our messages are like…and hopefully some “pre-Christians” will stumble onto the site and hear some words to draw them to the Lord. We’re also working on developing a list of online websites for releasing publicity notices about our events, to invite a larger audience of both churched and unchurched folks.)
    • I want a church that has no hymnals in the pews, because they have screens in the front so your head’s up when you’re singing (and someone in the control booth that knows how to work it!). That way, people will hear the praising instead of the organ.
    (We’re halfway there… but we like a variety of praise and worship styles, so we use hymnals for some of the 5-verse old favorites with 4-part harmonies, and/or new (to us) songs that you really need to see the music for, and we use overhead screen for a lot of the praise choruses… which certainly facilitates raising our hands and/or clapping and/or using a tambourine ;-) …Also, some of the older folks are way more comfortable singing from a book, and they can’t all see that well to use the overhead screen. The “control booth” folks are on a learning curve, because this stuff is all still so new, but they’re humble enough to be willing to work at it, even though they have not yet perfected their skills… and we all appreciate their efforts. )
    • I want a church that starts with people and becomes the Body, not a group of people who say, “We’re a lot of people, so we must be a church.”
    (We’re being knit more and more into a Body every day…)
    • I want a church whose minister is accountable to someone else locally – an elder or the minister from another church.
    (Our church has a Council of Elders… 3 men plus the Pastor. They are all mutually accountable, plus the Pastor has a Pastor’s Advisory Board. When I was looking for a new church a couple of years ago, I refused to even consider any that did not have a plurality of leadership with local accountability…and no more belonging to “hierarchy” denominations with national leadership that hijacks the denomination and confiscates part of the local tithes and offerings to fund their “let’s all support butchering babies in the womb and let’s all celebrate homosexual perversion euphemistically renamed ‘gay marriage’ ” agendas… And no way would I ever submit to or join a church with women in positions of governmental spiritual authority over men… sheesh!)
    • I want comfy chairs/pews in the sanctuary. Why turn people off or make them uncomfortable? We’re not Victorians; we don’t need to suffer to feel good about ourselves.
    (Comfy is good…;-)
    • I want to bring my coffee to drink during service. I often drink coffee or juice when I’m with friends. God wouldn’t mind. In fact, I’m betting He’s all for it if it helps people come and listen to Him. Again, we’re not Victorians dressed up in our best bibs and tuckers, sitting beautifully in a row. A lot of us don’t even wear ties to church anymore.
    (Oy, I think it’s more of a practical consideration… have you ever tried getting coffee stains out of wall-to-wall carpeting?… And the kidlets would want equal access for their juice drinks with bionic dyes…;-)
    • I want a church family that tithes. I’m not talking about the people in the church – I’m talking about the congregation giving away 10% of the church’s budget to other ministries…and not all social ministries either. Missionaries abroad, missionaries in inner cities, missionaries in my home town. Supporting ministries that don’t have much chance otherwise because they’re not that popular. I believe that people who aren’t tithing don’t grow. I believe that churches that don’t tithe are dying.
    (Our missions committee is diligent to bring speakers and/or DVD presentations, etc. about excellent Missions organizations to consider supporting, as well as updating us about the ministries that our church budget supports. We do use our church budget- I believe it’s 10% – to support worthy ministries… one consideration that we ALWAYS apply is “not one penny to otherwise good organizations that do not openly share the Gospel as part of their work”. Tragically and outrageously, this includes some organizations with the word “Christian” in their titles! And our objective is to have everyone in the church actively involved in some form of missions – including at the very least being a missionary to our neighbors (i.e., evangelism)…
    • I want a church that can’t wait to get together to have fun. Church dinners (what ever happened to tuna noodle casserole? I love that stuff, with the crunchy Corn Flake thingy on the top), bowling nights, ice cream socials – totally corny stuff with lots of love and joy and connecting.
    ( You just missed our annual Ice Cream Social, open to the public, free, with live brass band…with ads and professionally designed and printed colorful posters, invitations posted/handed out in our community and all over the surrounding towns… and a Community Outreach tent full of free gifts for visitors, including evangelistic stuff and Gideon bibles… We use any excuse to have a potluck gathering, plus in months that have no such “events”, we have a potluck “Hospitality Night” (or afternoon, if it’s nice summer weather) at someone’s home… Yay and Yum! We also have a totally delightful Church Campout in June, for a weekend of great fellowship, games, potluck meals, …etc…And a Harvest Festival to reclaim 10/31 from the “other side”… with lots of fun, games and food for King’s Kids ..of all ages, including those with grey hair. We also started having a Saturday evening potluck followed by Praise and Worship 3-4X a year… the next one is in September.)
    • Speaking of connecting – I want to connect with God’s vision for this area. He must have one! But I’m not in on it yet. Why not? So many possible reasons – need to wait on the Lord; assail the battlements; the parable of the importunate woman; time isn’t right yet; I’m not right yet; I’m supposed to be somewhere else. Has He closed this door, or has the enemy?
    (Methinks the enemy hath possibly fiddled with thy door…
    NWAC – NorthWest Alliance of Churches -”reaching Lichfield County for Jesus Christ”… a group of area pastors and other Christians (I hate the term “lay”… we’re all supposed to be ministers, and Jesus said we’re not supposed to call anyone “Father”, “Rabbi”, “Pastor”?…) from Northwest CT and a couple of other nearby towns – gather together on 1st & 3rd Mondays at 6:30 PM in Torrington to pray for revival in our area, to seek God for His plan for our area, etc., plus it’s great to fellowship with people from all different denominations… In nice weather we meet in Coe Park under the trees; in other weather we meet in Advent Christian Church in Torrington, usually downstairs in the prayer room. Not meeting Labor Day, though…)
    • I want to see one of these big-name people with a lot of experience in the emerging church – from DC or Georgia or Texas or California or Michigan or some other comfortable Bible Belt-ish place – have the guts to move into this area and put that experience to good use. Want to really reach the unchurched? Try a small town in ‘New England’ instead.
    (Yup! And maybe some big-name Willow Creekies will come and be sure to explain how thoroughly they got it wrong, just like Dr. Spock and his terrible advice on how to raise children… http://www.crosswalk.com/news/commentary/11558438/)
    • I want a challenge that’s doable – a way to stretch that may have risks but has a plan and milestones. I may not be able to take the complete journey on faith, like an apostle or a missionary, but I can get to the next milestone, for heaven’s sake, even if it’s out of sight around a corner. A milestone says that someone else has been there. I can handle that.
    (Challenge is good… don’t know about plans and milestones, though… God sent Abraham out, not knowing where he was going…his only plan was, “Listen to God, then obey, step by step, for as long as it takes.” {And he didn’t have the benefit of Isaiah 55:8-9…} When he listened to Sarah with her plan and milestones, he got in big trouble! And the Middle East has been paying the price ever since…so did Hagar… big time!)
    • I want a church that talks to people in bars and on the streets. I don’t want to do this personally … but I know I should. I just don’t know how. So I’ve made a decision – I’m going to go down to a bar once a week for – say – 2 months and see what happens. I lead Bibles studies on Tuesday and Friday nights, Wed is my night with my daughter, Thursdays with my grouping buddy and (for a while) praying for all the 3-day teams going on here. But Monday I’ve been keeping for myself. Maybe that’s why. So … tonight. 7pm.
    (1. Some of my best conversations about God with “pre-Christians” have been in bars… but that was years ago when I would accompany the “Friday-after-work-let’s-have-a-drink-together-before-the- weekend” group from a previous job… it’s a little different these days, I think, for a woman to go alone into a bar for witnessing…
    2. Our church has developed “Invitation to our church” cards – business card size – that are made available to all members to keep in their wallets/purses for use in discussions about God, inviting people to services and events, etc.
    3. We have a Healing Service open to the public two Tuesdays a month… when people are in distress, it seems that they are open to being invited to a special prayer service, even when they are “unchurched” /”pre-Christian”, and won’t otherwise darken the door of a church.
    4. I have been getting the idea to bring my guitar to the park and plunk down and start playing some praise music, which could attract some people and start some interesting conversations about God… but first I have to get back in practice again…
    5. The last few weeks at church, we have been getting good messages about the importance of and practical ideas for sharing the Gospel…
    6. We’re having a Holy Spirit Conference in November, open to anyone in the area who would like to come… when we have more details, we’ll be sending invitations/registration info to area churches…the whole reason for the conference (speaker is a Spirit-filled pastor from an Assembly of God church in Mass.) is to teach people about the Baptism in the Holy Spirit, (and hopefully how to start functioning in His gifts) followed by prayer to receive it, SO THAT more members of the Body of Christ in our area will have a Spirit-empowered witness when they reach out to share the gospel with people.)

    So…. how did 7PM tonight go?……

    The one topic you didn’t specifically mention is prayer, which I think is one of the most important areas of any church’s life, and any Christian’s life… we believe that prayer is where we connect with God in the most intimate way, both individually and corporately, and that’s where He gives us HIS ideas and direction for our activities and plans, (for our church as well as for our own lives), otherwise we are running around doing our own thing and using up Kingdom resources to do things that God did not ask us to do…(not to mention, “That which is not of faith is sin…”, and one cannot have real faith for what God has not asked one to do…) We have many opportunities in our church for people to ask for prayer about specific concerns of body/soul/spirit, for themselves and/or for their loved ones. It’s a great way to be knit together, also.
    Shalom…

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